Louise  0:00  

We acknowledge the Yuggera and Kaurna nations as traditional custodians of the land on which we work, live and learn, and they continue in connection with the land, waters and community. We pay our respects to them and their elders past and present.

Andy  0:12  

All content related to this programme is for general informational purposes only and contain stories and discussion around mental health that may be disturbing to some listeners. If you’re concerned about yourself or someone you know, please seek professional and individual advice and support. More details are contained in our show notes.

Snark Tank Host  0:31  

Welcome back to this week’s Women’s Product Special of Snark Tank. Our two finalists will now wrap up their pitches. Dismissed, you’re first. Why should we award you the $100,000 prize money? 

Dismissed  0:43  

Well, our research has taken in feedback from 500 women from a diverse range of backgrounds, culturally, linguistically, and demographically the consistent message was that ergonomic design, utility and function were the most important. Our prototype has been tested on a control group with a similar product in the market. And 95% of respondents showed a preference for our design indicating a very high demand for what we have produced.

Snark Tank Host  1:06  

Sounds like you’ve done some research there. Our next finalist,  Al F’douche What have you got for me?

Al F’Douche  1:13  

Well, you’ve seen the product, it speaks for itself. And unlike Dismissed’s products, ours is pink, 

Dismissed  1:20  

But our research shows- 

Snark Tank Host  1:21  

One moment please, Dismissed. 

Dismissed  1:23  

Okay, sorry. 

Snark Tank Host  1:24  

That’s okay. So Dismissed. Do you have anything else you’d like to add?

Dismissed  1:29  

The research has indicated to us that actually, the visibility and safety of the product are more important, which is why we’ve gone for a high vis orange.

Al F’Douche  1:38  

Did you see that making sandwiches for the kids in your 1970’s kitchen?

Dismissed  1:42  

I don’t have kids. 

Snark Tank Host  1:44  

So when you do have kids, are you going to have the time to see this idea through?

Dismissed  1:49  

I don’t see how that- 

Al F’Douche  1:50  

Yeah sometimes I’ve got to give up my evening to help out with the kids. Because the missus needs time to catch up on her housework when she gets home from her job, because she can’t keep up with everything.

Snark Tank Host  2:01  

There’s a lot of factors to consider and a very competitive round on Snark Tank tonight. But we can only give $100,000 to one person. Dismissed, you’ve obviously put a lot of thought some heart and soul into what you’ve presented tonight. Thank you for such a great presentation. Some feedback from the judging panel. Would it be fair to say that you’ve possibly thought a bit too much about your products? We know that’s something women do. And you did sound a little bossy. But for a woman you present well. You might need to smile more though. If you want to be a She E O down the track.

Dismissed  2:43  

I wouldn’t say it’s overthinking. We’ve spent hundreds of hours researching our product with extensive focus group workshops.

Snark Tank Host  2:50  

Al F’Douche a fine example of keeping it simple. You’ve really shown you understand the women’s market even better than the actual woman who had to research it, making it pink. Legendary. You will be raking in those pink dollars in no time.

Dismissed  3:08  

Doesn’t that term refer to the gay community? 

Snark Tank Host  3:10  

Don’t interrupt 

Dismissed  3:11  

sorry

Snark Tank Host  3:12  

Dismissed. We like some of your ideas. But looking at real time, logistics and planning, we really feel this is a $70,000 idea. Which means Al F’Douche. The $100,000 is yours! Congratulations!

Al F’Douche  3:30  

Thanks, mate. Loser has to clean up the studio, right? 

Andy  3:35  

It’s easy to feel like the odds are stacked against you,

Louise  3:37  

especially if you’ve been othereded by someone or something in the past. I’m Louise pool.

Andy  3:42  

And I’m Andy Le Roy, and this is Reframe Of Mind. 

Louise  3:46  

The podcast that cuts through platitudes and gets to the core of living authentically challenging our assumptions and improving mental health with the guidance of good science, philosophy and learning from other people’s lived experiences.

Andy  3:57  

Last time on Reframe of Mind we met 2021 New South Wales Young Australian of the Year, Nathan Parker.

Louise  4:04  

His personal journey of recovery from a serious bus accident which led to the amputation of his left hand, resonated on a personal level with his attitude towards getting better.

Nathan Parker  4:14  

To me there’s a big perspective shift I had during those days after the accident I was in Hospital where I couldn’t go and change what seat I sat on. I couldn’t change what had happened. But I had to then focus on what I could control and that was my recovery and what I did today, rather than tomorrow and the next day to get better, it sticks in my mind as this perspective shift of getting better, not bitter.

Andy  4:37  

Something else he said kept playing through our mind as well as we started to feel overwhelmed by choices and tasks, starting a brand new business located in separate cities.

Louise  4:46  

Tiny recap to bring everyone up to speed. Andy and I started a business last year, Welcome Change Media and we both work from separate cities. Andy’s in Adelaide and I’m in Brisbane.

Andy  4:55  

Yeah, so basically what we wanted to do is make podcasts that are meaningful to us. 

Louise  4:59  

Like this one

Andy  4:59  

So hopefully other people- like this one- and help other people make their own podcasts too

Louise  5:04  

So it all came out of our initial idea to create Reframe Of Mind which you’re listening to. now.

Andy  5:08  

Suddenly, we had this massive idea, but didn’t really know how to get there. But Nathan’s recollection of how he moved from having to focus on seemingly the smallest of tasks, made us wonder how we could apply that to our own situation,

Louise  5:19  

then there’s the doubts that kick in just for some extra fun. 

Andy  5:23  

Yeah. Can we really expect to have the audacity to start something like this and be successful so much later in life than the typical entrepreneur?

Louise  5:32  

Would people want to listen to something that’s basically us just being ourselves talking to people you don’t normally get to hear in depth conversations with?

Andy  5:39  

And what if… What if we tried to subvert the patriarchy, and make content that appealed to audiences outside of the usual male targets?

Louise  5:47  

I would love to subvert the patriarchy with you, Andy. 

Andy  5:50  

Thank you, Louise. Let’s do it. Now, although this might sound like an episode about business, you know, it’s gonna get personal these deeper than that. So stick with us, and you might get a different perspective on your own value and the value of others.

Louise  6:05  

So we went out of the way to seek advice of some experts that could help us on our business journey, one of which was the Professor of Entrepreneurship, Alex Maritz from La Trobe University,

Andy  6:16  

who uncovered some interesting facts about what have become known as senior-preneurs,

Alex Maritz  6:21  

Late career transitions to self employment or possible, we’ve got case studies, we’ve got the research already to show that this is the case that over 30% of all entrepreneurs in Australia are senior entrepreneurs, it’s the highest growing sector.

Louise  6:39  

So Alex has worked at the executive director level in multinational companies as a corporate entrepreneur for over 10 years.

Andy  6:45  

He’s got an international reputation in entrepreneurship education and has received a multitude of awards in areas like technology ventures and global innovation,

Louise  6:53  

entrepreneurship education, and a numerous best paper and esteemed paper awards from leading academic conferences and journals. 

Andy  7:01  

Now our other guest today Jacinta Carboon, is a Non-executive Director of Neami National, Melbourne Market Authority and RSPCA Victoria

Louise  7:08  

and jJacinta’s been instrumental in the fight for gender equality in the corporate environment for several decades. Her executive career includes posts with top ASX 200 companies for over three decades, with a strong background in strategy, business development, stakeholder management and sales and marketing. 

Andy  7:23  

In this time, she was the National Manager of the Telstra Women’s and Business Awards for five years. And at NAB , held the position of Project Director, Women and Money.

Jacinta Carboon  7:33  

I think that largely the economy hasn’t really paid attention to women. There’s a lot of reasons for that, mainly because it’s society and cultural issues around it. But it’s been that, you know, most businesses in the past have been run by men, for men with thinking about men from a man’s perspective, not actually thinking about women, but can see this massive opportunities in that space. And a lot of people aren’t really taking advantage of which well, if they did, it would be good for everybody.

Louise  8:03  

So Andy, with those two guests, Alex, Maritz and Jacinta Carboon, I think we’ve tapped into some really top talent in the business world. And it may be starting to sound like we’re making a business podcast

Andy  8:14  

It might do, too. We’ve got another podcast called Elevating Experts, which is a little bit like that. But this is Reframe Of Mind. And this is about our personal journey as well. So building your business is significantly different to playing an episode of Sim City, which we found out.

Louise  8:28  

As it turns out.

Andy  8:29  

Spreadsheet day, as lovely as they were, with the projecting of how much we could potentially earn also needs us to buckle down and get to work.

Louise  8:37  

And that involves sometimes facing our own inner demons along the way, those voices in our head that have been telling us ‘who are you to do this?’ and ‘you’re not good enough to do this’. If you want to start an empire, well you’ve got to be prepared to turn the mirror on yourself and look at those things.

Andy  8:52  

So at this stage of our story, we’re dipping our toes into the pond of business ownership.

Louise  8:57  

And I’d only just recently exited a career that had become a strong part of my identity, was something I’d once considered a dream but outgrew,

Andy  9:05  

and I had ended a temporary contract and was looking for something different at this point in my career.

Louise  9:10  

So it’s about late 2020 When we spent time working on the idea for Reframe Of Mind. This podcast. And then the more we spoke about it, the more we landed on the idea not just to make a podcast but to make a business.

Andy  9:21  

We didn’t just design a business, Louise, we designed an empire.

Louise  9:26  

The next logical step was to speak to someone about starting that, 

Andy  9:30  

but we don’t live in a vacuum, 

Louise  9:32  

you do not live in a vacuum. And even though our identities shouldn’t be tied to work, it’s a large part of our lives and it’s better if that can be something that fulfils us.

Andy  9:42  

Yeah, for sure. Ever heard the term ‘bring your whole self to work?’ 

Louise  9:45  

Oh, I heard it. Bought the poster.

Andy  9:50  

Bought the The T shirt. Well, just stepping back a little bit when we’re both we’re both mature people. And when I say that we’re At this stage of life where people are saying, what Louise is 40, Andy’s 50. So why would you even think about starting a business now?

Louise  10:06  

and there’s a pandemic. You’re brave!

Andy  10:09  

You’re brave.

Louise  10:12  

You know, when they say brave like that, though, Andy, they don’t mean brave. They mean Ohhhhhh….kay…….

Andy  10:19  

You’re really braaaaave. So here we are. Business owners. Entrepreneurs, when people are normally starting to think about winding down, we’re just getting started.

Louise  10:28  

And it felt like we needed to educate ourselves a little bit about this. So we armed ourselves with a bunch of questions to ask Alex Maritz, starting with the notion of risk.

Alex Maritz  10:37  

Entrepreneurship is all about taking risks, we usually say calculated risks, because anyone can take risks. So what we teach in this acquisition skill of entrepreneurship is we provide models, we provide networks, we provide knowhow and that type of thing, to mitigate or to minimise that risk of failure. In essence, that’s how it can be acquired. But again, the research also indicates that heredity has a lot to do with entrepreneurship. So if if, if younger people come from a family of, let’s call it multiple entrepreneurship, people, parents that that have been in multiple ventures, that mindset, because entrepreneurship is a mindset, that mindset goes down to all the other generations and everything as well. And that’s an important thing as well. That’s why some people like myself, I grew up in a very formal kind of family where my parents weren’t risk takers, you know, everything was done by the book. And that’s probably the mindset and framework I had. And that comes to the fore. So yes, those those skills can certainly be acquired. But it all goes about your entrepreneurial orientation, you know, your appetite for risk, because not all of us are prepared to take that kind of risk

Louise  11:54  

So how did you that if that’s it’s not something that you were born with that risk taking element? How did you then change that because now you’re running something yourself?

Alex Maritz  12:04  

I’m kind of am and not, I’m not, if we go by the true definition of high growth, process, exit that type of thing. Not really, I’m more a small business operator. So personally, I’m an entrepreneurship educator, and researcher. And I’ll say that because I come from a background where I was in corporateI was Chief Operating Officer, for my last 15 years was at Sony PlayStation, I started out when we launched Sony PlayStation, but we might call that a corporate entrepreneur. So in other words, I was quite comfortable spending other people’s money and other people’s risk, all I could lose was my job, I couldn’t lose my livelihood, I couldn’t lose my house. So it comes down to a lot of that way that drive is, although we do get this thing called necessity entrepreneurs, where people are driven to entrepreneurship because they have no other alternative. Now, this could be senior entrepreneurship, they made redundant at the age of 50, or 60, can’t get a job anywhere else, because of a myriad of reasons. It could be discrimination, ageism, whatever it may be, they are then forced to go and start their own business. So we broaden that entrepreneurship definition to also starting up your own business. And it could be in something that did before, it could be something unrelated. And we find that that’s why we busy in our ecosystem on there, because we find a lot of those people, although they’ve got all this wealth of often corporate experience, their corporate experience often isn’t transferable to a startup. Some of the things are, you know, your marketing skills, you’ve got network capabilities. Yes, they are. But a lot of it isn’t. And I always say this to people. A start up is not a small version of a big business. And I often get these looks taking my background as an executive director of a multinational, I often get these people that have had these big positions similar to it. And then they come out and they they start giving mentorship to SME’s and to entrepreneurs, and I sometimes frown upon it, because these people didn’t even make their own tea. And yet, they’re trying to tell entrepreneurs how to bootstrap. So it’s a different skill set. And I always say like this as well, I say, managers manage resources, those executives, manage cars, budgets, people and those kinds of things. Whereas entrepreneurs manage opportunities, it’s a different skill set. And that takes risk. proactivity, innovation, creativity,

Louise  14:29  

Some good insights from Professor of Entrepreneurship, Alex Maritz, but he is talking about people who are retirement age, which is not quite us yet.

Andy  14:37  

I know, right? And look, we went through the process of looking for some grants and the only grant that we could find that suited our circumstances… just… was a computer skills for beginners for over 50s

Louise  14:51  

And you weren’t even 50 yet, you were 49 we would have had to wait another six months. And then when they’re learning how to turn the computer on and off,

Andy  14:58  

so you know, do I spend all my time I’m trying to forget the skills that I’ve got so can relearn them for the grant? Or do we just press ahead?

Louise  15:04  

It would have been very helpful for you too, after having spent all that time on the Help Desk of an internet company. Yeah, totally. It’s really surprising with the grants, not only were there not a lot of grants for people our age, I’m 40, Andy’s 50, who were trying to start a business. A lot of them required either that kind of co-contribution where they would front up half of the money, and you had to front up the other half in a bulk sum, and as someone who was bootstrapping it, we didn’t have that money to front up. No, but also a lot of grants you had to pay for to search for

Andy  15:36  

Yeah, I found that really odd that you have to pay a fee to search the grants, and then you have to apply for the grants, which you might not even get. So that didn’t really seem like a great option to us. And we wanted to talk about some other ways we could bring some money in for the business. So you know, it also got us thinking like if we’re having that kind of issue at 40 and 50 years of age, and people already saying to us, ‘geeze, you’re brave!’ what are the naysayers saying to people who actually older than us and feel like that, you know… they’re ‘old dogs’… can’t learn new tricks.

Louise  16:06  

Is it actually more risky for people who are edging closer to retirement age?

Alex Maritz  16:11  

the barriers these people face, and those barriers are unique to senior entrepreneurs, we often go with things such as ageism. Now just basic ageing. And then allied to that is often health. Some people are healthy, some aren’t. I’m just giving myself an example of seven, eight weeks ago, I had cervical spine surgery. Now I’m pretty fit. I still train three, four times a week, that type of thing. My previous life, I was a rugby union rugby player, and I do athletics I do, I do that kind of stuff and martial arts. But although I’m healthy, a lot of those things catch up with us when it comes to health. Now mine is probably from when I had 150 kilogramme people jumping on me when I was in my 20s and 30s. And only at the age of 60, that it decided, well, now you have the problem. So those health things come in as well. There are other things a big one that comes up very much with there’s a lot of age discrimination, with a lot of people thinking it used to be 60, it’s come down to 50. Now it’s come down to 40. So if you’re 40 Plus, what do you know about digitalization? What do you know about XYZ? And you think if people knew the facts I’d actually be very, very surprised that those people are actually more savvy than the younger guys. It’s not just about apps, you know, there’s more to it, and so on, then, then and then apps on an iPhone, and that’s not being derogatory, so that discrimination is rife. It often happens, I’ve seen it happen even in corporate work appointments, where they look at often rather getting this young, dynamic MBA in that, let’s say, 30s, then rather getting this person in this in their 50s with this wealth of experience, because can you teach our dogs new tricks? And some people, the younger people think, well, we want more creativity because many older people aren’t creative. Well, that’s also a fallacy. Many older people are not IT driven. Well, you know, the whole thing was Scenic Tours, and all these boat tours, and cruises and everything. Let’s look pre COVID That business was built upon people 50 Plus that wanted to go on retirement cruises. And they booked 90% of those trips online. Now if they weren’t online savvy and all that how would that business like that be born?

Andy  18:23  

So there’s a lot of external factors that are going on. Are there any internal representations you find are common with the people who are taking on entrepreneurship at a later stage of life that maybe they have to come over some kind of psychological barrier, for example?

Louise  18:36  

are they internally discriminating against themselves?

Alex Maritz  18:39  

we often call it we talk about things called enablers and disablers. It could be psychological, a be a realistic, even economic factors that get all these juices going to become self employed, so to say, and a lot of those things, those let’s call it those enablers or disablers drive this entrepreneurship, I’ll give you one example, I mentioned that entrepreneurship, the word risk comes into it all time, because if you’re looking for big returns like going on the stock market, which isn’t entrepreneurship, but if you’re playing on the stock market, you want to make high returns, you usually have to take bigger risks. The same thing in entrepreneurship, because you’re usually creating value that either doesn’t exist or it exists in a different way and you providing new ways of doing it. Let’s just say new ways of listening to music or something. What that… those enablers come in so when I talk about risk, the tolerance to risk decreases with age. So the older you get, the less likely you would want to engage in risky activities.

Louise  19:44  

So maybe now is a good time to start talking about our friend from the skit at the start of the show Al F’DouChe 

Andy  19:51  

Ah good old Al!

Louise  19:51  

Because hashtag not all men,

Andy  19:53  

No, not all men and look, we’ve had, I don’t think we’ve had heated discussions around this concept of not all men But I do remember from time to time and clutching my pearls a little bit when you go on justifiable rants about how men do this and men do that. I’m like, hang on a minute, and then you’re like, Well, no, but you’re not a man.

Louise  20:10  

Well, but I didn’t, I didn’t. Okay. I didn’t mean it like that. 

Andy  20:13  

I know. I know.

Louise  20:14  

There’s been a few times in the interviews that we’ve done with people throughout this series where I’ve kind of put my foot in my mouth and I’m like, ‘I just have the audacity to act like a straight white man would’. And then I’m like, Well, okay, I have to clarify that because then that now sounds like I’m just tarring everybody with the same brush. And I’m talking about that Al F’Douche character that… or alpha douche, if you didn’t get it. And he’s a specific character. And he’s not even necessarily a he to be honest. Some women can be alpha douches. 

Andy  20:45  

Well, yeah, you know-

Louise  20:46  

That person is someone who talks over you like I just did to you that you know, steals ideas like I will do to you later. 

Andy  20:57  

Yeah, absolutely. 

Louise  20:57  

What are some othe Alpha douche characteristics Andy?

Andy  21:00  

Well, look, I mean, the alpha douche is typically that kind of behavioural thing we’re talking about. So you know, we can very easily get caught up in hashtags and compact things into slogans, which a lot of prominent people, not even prominent people, a lot of us tend to do these days, we, we find a concept that we really dig, we really relate to it. And suddenly we’re plastering it everywhere as a hashtag. And suddenly, you get something really weird that washes up against something like ‘not all men’, and it’s like, ergh, hang on. No, that’s that’s not quite right. Because from that perspective, where we’re talking about gross generalisations, I think is where the territory is we’re in at the moment, and okay, yes not all men, but the reality is that there is a big deficit in opportunities for promotion and work opportunities for women in general. And, you know, to come at that with a ‘well not all men do that’, as far as behaviours and boardrooms and that sort of thing. Well, well, no, they don’t. But it really is time for us to kind of look at are the opportunities growing for women, you know, are they being treated well? I remember, okay, here’s a little Andy story. Okay. Okay, you ready for this one?

Louise  22:06  

I promise I won’t talk over it. 

Andy  22:08  

No, youcan talk over it as much as you like, I know you will. So one place where I worked once upon a time, we were recruiting some people, and we were actually recruiting for some senior positions. And a manager that I worked with, alongside of said to me that they didn’t want to promote the younger woman, because they thought that she might want to have a family soon. Right. And that really shocked me, because I didn’t expect for that, number one, to be a thing these days, and I didn’t expect it to come out of the mouth of a woman.

Louise  22:43  

It’s that internalised what would you call it in this way? internalised misogyny, I suppose internalised? 

Andy  22:49  

Yeah, 

Louise  22:50  

it’s that you know, like, I mean, we’ve been brought up in this patriarchal society where sometimes to climb ahead to be a woman who is a manager of a group of people, you almost have to have behaved like the alpha, douche yourself,

Andy  23:04  

a man in a skirt, as someone once said, 

Louise  23:06  

as a future guest

Andy  23:09  

a future guest, yes.

Louise  23:09  

That’s Andy forgetting where he is in the timeline. I mean, look, I’ve I’ve managed people for a long time, I think in my earlier management career, because I do, I started managing staff when I was about 22. There are a lot of instances that I can think of that I would never do now. But they were things that I did to prove myself, because there was extra pressure placed on you, as a woman, especially if you’re in male dominated industries, they expect you to not be soft or weak, they haven’t hired a woman for those reasons. So it’s almost like, you don’t have the penis, but you’ve got twice as many balls. So I think that, you know, that ex colleague of yours, was probably inducted somewhere into that school of misogyny.

Andy  23:57  

Yeah, I think that’s a possibility. Also, for someone like myself, Okay, so another story, in a similar vein, recruiting someone for a senior position. And I promoted the woman, different team, I promoted woman into the senior role. And then a week later, she came to me all apologetic, and she said, Look, I didn’t know whether to mention it to you at the time. And I’m really sorry, I didn’t and I understand if you want to, you know, reconsider giving the role to me. But I’ve just found out that I’m pregnant. And I said, Congratulations. I said, you won the role fair and square, and you got it on your merit. And we wouldn’t even think about taking that role off you because it’s yours

Louise  24:35  

She deserved it. 

Andy  24:36  

She earned it, yeah, correct. And, you know, the upshot of that was that she did go on parental leave, which was totally fine. You know, I’m sure she got some benefit out of having parental leave with the higher rate of pay that was given but also we got the benefit then, when she returned to work part time, of being able to promote somebody else part time into that role as well. So there are more ways to look at things and more ways you can benefit from some things if you think outside of the square, because the option might have been that, you know, we said, Okay, well, thanks very much yep we better not give that role to you… give to somebody else. And then she goes on parental leave and never comes back because she’s not valued. And what a way to lose a great employee.

Louise  25:15  

I get where she’s coming from, though. I mean, I haven’t had kids myself. And I’ve often felt like part of that is I couldn’t have kids and a career. Media is a lot of adjectives that I probably can’t use, but

Andy  25:32  

not on this programme anyway.

Louise  25:35  

And that says a lot because we’ve given this an explicit rating, but it’s a hard cutthroat industry. 

Andy  25:41  

As somebody once said, it’ll chew you up and spit you out. 

Louise  25:45  

It certainly will. I remember at one job that I’d only just started with this business. And the CEO of the company was doing a talk publicly, this was to all the staff. This wasn’t private at all. This was an all staff were there. And they were talking about having recently renegotiated one of the star talent contracts with a woman for three years. 

Andy  26:09  

Awesome. 

Louise  26:09  

Yeah, I know congratulations to her very talented person absolutely deserved a contract renegotiation, and whatever else came with that. But at the end of telling that story, then they said, of course, after we renegotiated that contract for three years, then she told her she was pregnant. Why make that comment, if that’s not how the culture is? Yeah, so I can understand where that other woman was coming from thinking that her pregnancy is going to stand in the way of her promotion, and probably being afraid that if she didn’t disclose it to you that someone would fire her for it. Well, sorry, not fire her for being pregnant, because we all know, that’s discrimination, that we can’t do that. And obviously companies can’t just do something like that. But they can choose not to renew your contracts for another reason. And it’s just coincidental,

Andy  27:01  

and they can choose to I don’t know, suddenly bully you in different ways or keep you from certain opportunities, or whatever managers do to manage people out, I think is the term. Do you think that you would have actually been more successful if you were a man?

Louise  27:16  

Yes. It’s something that I’ve thought for a long time, I was very good at what I did.

Andy  27:23  

Well, you taught me and look how good I am.

Louise  27:29  

And I also don’t want to be someone who is blaming any other circumstance for I suppose, not being as successful as I could have been. But I really feel like gender has played a role in that for me, whether that’s because of there being less opportunities for women. If you look at radio stations in general, around the country, of all the staff that are on air, there might be one woman, maybe two, and we’re talking about commercial radio stations.

Andy  27:54  

Funny thing is too, like, I don’t know, correct me if I’m wrong, but all the times when I see a team of a man and a woman, it’s usually the man who’s got top billing 

Louise  28:02  

Often. And the other thing to go with that, that I I’ve noticed a lot is that it’s the men who are funny, 

Andy  28:08  

And the ladies like to laugh. 

Louise  28:10  

The ladies are the laugh track. We just have the woman in here for the woman’s view, and this is what the woman can talk about. She can bring her drama in and personalise it and make it relatable, but the man is the one that tells the jokes.

Andy  28:21  

Of course, there are some really great exceptions to this. This is of course, a generalisation

Louise  28:27  

We are making a generalisation.

Andy  28:29  

There are some really talented women who are getting into some great spots. But by and large, it’s not an equal playing field.

Louise  28:35  

And I couldn’t tell you what the difference is between why it happens for some women and why it doesn’t happen for others. I mean, I don’t know why I was never on breakfast radio in a long term role in a capital city. I did hold that role, temporarily, and was certainly good enough to achieve number one ratings while I held that role, but I don’t know why did I never make it to the billboard why? Why are some women picked over other women?

Andy  28:59  

Was your voice too high?

Louise  29:03  

Something back when I was first starting out in radio, like and we’re talking about when I was 14 or so. So this is late 90s. It was told to me by older women at the time who had an even worse now in media then was the things that they had to put up with and go through to push through in their careers. But they had to change the tone of their voices because they were told that women don’t like to hear other women. Women don’t like to hear this sound of another woman’s voice. So if you listen to like a lot of the old jocks, particularly on the old jocks, a lot of the mature women, 

Andy  29:39  

Seasoned announcers

Louise  29:41  

Seasoned announcers, or maybe you remember them, if you’re in the middle age entrepreneur category along with us. They wouldn’t use a normal talking voice like this, they’d actually drop their voice, so they’d be able to talk a little lower like this.

Andy  29:56  

And after the break, we have Fleetwood Mac. You can go your own way 

Louise  30:00  

you can, 

Andy  30:01  

But I can’t, because I’m a woman

Louise  30:04  

my bosses thinks that women don’t like to listen to women that talk high. So I’m talking low and I hate it. But I get money, and they pay my bills. And I just want to earn a living doing something I enjoy. And so now this is how I talk all the time, but I fucking hate it.

Andy  30:26  

You really went there, didn’t you!

Louise  30:30  

Okay, so somewhere in the middle of that is, you know, young me in the 90s. And then in the 2000s, training myself to be a professional radio announcer. This timbre of voice, this pitch, this is where I’m at now, it is my voice. It’s my normal voice. But I would say that I’ve refined it a lot over the years, just the ways that I’ve learned to talk. So it is traditionally a feminine trait, which I’m going to get letters about this… hashtag not all women, 

Andy  30:59  

not all women, 

Louise  31:00  

where you will put upward inflections on things and it’s really, really common in the Australian vernacular.

Andy  31:04  

I went into the shops, and I bought some fish and chips.

Louise  31:07  

Yeah, I went down to the shops, and I bought some fish and chips. That’s, that’s how I’ve trained myself to say it. But an untrained announcer person might say, I went down to the shops, and I bought some fish and chips. 

Andy  31:18  

I went down to the shops, and and I bought some fish and chips. And it was really nice. And the sun was shining.

Louise  31:23  

No, we, I think we just made her sound terrible. I went to the shops and I bought some fish and chips. But okay, so it goes up towards the end. So I know that in that transition from women talking like this, too. We want more natural sounding women like me, also came and we don’t want women talking like this. 

Andy  31:43  

Look, I think that the upward inflection isn’t just women. I think

Louise  31:47  

it’s not it’s hashtag not all inflections. 

Andy  31:51  

Yeah, yeah, now I don’t think it’s a bad thing to train oneself out of upward inflection. It’s because it’s nicer to listen to someone who’s making a statement rather than asking a series of questions. But this whole thing of lowering the pitch of your voice so that you actually sound you know, closer to the upper register of a man. I don’t know it. It’s weird one because, personally, I like to hear women’s voices. You know, it’s odd from a gay man. But I do prefer to listen to women singers. I love to hear women’s voices. I’ve always been the odd one out, I suppose

Louise  32:24  

the patriarchy hurts everybody, because men don’t always have the deep bassy voices either. 

Andy  32:30  

No, you’re right there Louise, 

Louise  32:32  

They were the, they were the only men that were allowed as well for a long time. I mean, no. You don’t not have something to say just because your register is slightly higher.

Andy  32:42  

So voice pitch aside, what else is going on out there that is denying women of their fair go?

Louise  32:47  

I think this is a hard question to answer because as a woman, maybe our internal monologue is saying, is this really all in my head? Am I really being denied these opportunities? 

Andy  32:57  

Am I really not good enough? 

Louise  32:58  

Am I really not good enough? Because there’s so many things we have to look at systemically. So for example, media, not just we’re not just talking about radio here, but we’re talking about media in Australia is primarily only controlled by a few people. And then even the managers that are underneath those few people are pretty much all middle aged, straight white men who are probably all neurotypical but

Andy  33:19  

also, I think, amongst that as well, like, they kind of learned the lines to say and how to talk the talk. Whilst not walking the walk. 

Louise  33:27  

Yeah, well, the patriarchy hurts everybody. 

Andy  33:29  

I made that comment before about how I promoted the young woman who then came back and said that she was pregnant. I’d be very quickly labelled as ‘woke’ for my attitude with that… ‘oh, he’s just being woke… thinks he’s good’. But if being woke means you’re treating people respectfully, then yeah, I’ll be woke. 

Louise  33:44  

Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve heard woke tried to be used as a slur or ‘you’re taking things too sensitively’. And you do wonder then if it is you, that’s the problem. 

Andy  33:55  

But it’s not 

Louise  33:56  

But it’s not. So say, for example, there’s a breakfast show and two women hosted and maybe it works, and maybe it doesn’t work. But whatever happens at some point down the line, the show gets cancelled. 

Andy  34:07  

So shows have their their like, their lifespan, don’t they? Not everything goes forever.

Louise  34:12  

What happens next, a cancelled show was replaced with another show. And it’s got a male co host and another male co host or a male co host and a female co host. And then you start to wonder, well, why aren’t they trying two more women together, and then the overall culture of the cisgendered straight and middle aged white men that are making the decisions primarily says, we tried two women once and it didn’t work. We’ve also tried to men a fuckload of times, and that hasn’t worked and you keep giving them opportunities, it has nothing to do with their genitals. Sometimes people don’t gel very well together and they don’t make good radio and that has nothing to do with the fact that whether they women or not, so there can be situations where X was given an opportunity and it didn’t work. So what that told us is that the audience don’t want to hear two women together. So there are lots of justifications that are made, whether consciously or unconsciously, that will back up people’s privilege.

Andy  35:11  

They just make this straw man argument to say, oh, that didn’t work this time. So people obviously don’t want to… let’s just go back to what we know. 

Louise  35:17  

So I think part of this is that lack of opportunities that are being presented for women, or for anybody who is marginalised in any kind of way. Um, but I think the other part of that is that even if someone is ‘woke’ and wants to do, right, because there are a lot of good men in media, a lot, a lot of good men, they don’t necessarily know how 

Andy  35:35  

Can I just say, as well, that someone who is like, for a man who does have that wokeness that that way of thinking that is actually appropriate… He’s also fighting against that establishment that, that established…

Louise  35:52  

that established patriarchal culture.

Andy  35:54  

Yeah

Louise  35:54  

Yeah. 

Andy  35:55  

Yeah, let’s just call it that. That’s what it is.

Louise  35:57  

It’s hard to be the salmon thats swimming the other way. 

Andy  36:00  

Yeah, it is. 

Louise  36:03  

It’s hard to swim against that current. 

Andy  36:05  

So can we talk about this concept of the patriarchy and 

Louise  36:08  

I thought you wanted to talk about salmon? You don’t want to talk about salmon anymore? 

Andy  36:11  

We can talk about salmon, I do like salmon

Louise  36:15  

Would you rather be a salmon or trout?

Andy  36:17  

Oh, I didn’t know either way, you’re gonna get eaten, aren’t you? So we talk in terms of patriarchy, and matriarchy. And people often severely criticis feminists for making statements about wanting to give women more opportunities. And they’ll say that these feminists are just trying to take over that they just want to tip the balance in the favour of women instead of men. And you know, I have got a real problem with that line of thinking, because, to me, it’s always just been about equality. And if there is a quota in place, that quota is there, because there is a lack of equity until we have equal rights and equal access for women, then the men just need to suck it up and allow those women to take up those opportunities because it should be about merit. And you can’t tell me that it’s only the men who have the merit for the jobs. I mean, of course, okay, so I’m gonna let go of the clutched pearls. 

Louise  37:15  

Yeah, yeah, Ican I can hear Andy’s feminist rant coming on, go on. 

Andy  37:18  

You can. But you know, as a white man, I’ve had a lot of privilege in my life. And I know that yes, yeah. I know that I can walk in somewhere and not be treated certain ways. Because I’m white. I’m a man. For all intents and purposes, I seem to be straight. How many times have I been asked to forgot kids? Yeah. And I know that kids aren’t just something for straight people these days. Thank the Lord. But

Louise  37:42  

yeah, but it’s straight passing privelege yeah.

Andy  37:45  

Correct. When we talk about patriarchy on this programme, and smashing the patriarchy as we like to say, sometimes,

Louise  37:52  

that’s because I’m mad. 

Andy  37:54  

Yeah, but you should be

Louise  37:56  

I say smash the patriarchy because I’m mad because I’m 40 years old, and I’ve put up with this the whole fucking time. 

Andy  38:03  

Yeah, absolutely. 

Louise  38:03  

Yes. Hashtag not all men. Definitely. It’s not everybody, but the systems, the systemic problems that we have. And it’s not just even equality, it’s a lack of equity until the equity underneath everything is addressed in an intersectional way, we can’t have true equality. And it’s not about women being better than men. It’s about everyone having equality,

Andy  38:27  

so everybody needs to have an equal chance. And it doesn’t just come down to men and women, you know, it comes down to people with disabilities, it comes to people from different cultural backgrounds, from different religious backgrounds. You know, here’s ‘woke Andy’ okay, so if that’s what you want to think, then good luck to you. But I would hate to think that somebody who had a cure for cancer was overlooked because they were of a different religion, or because they were the wrong gender, or because they were the wrong, whatever, you know, it’s stupid. It’s the stupidest way of thinking that I can imagine. And it’s got a stop.

Louise  39:04  

And I do have another answer for the question before, why else hasn’t always succeeded? Because she’s a woman is because I’ve also been a woman who said something, and people like people who are compliant. And so every time I’ve gone into your boss’s office, and I’ve said, I don’t think we should say that, that sounds racist. I don’t think we should do that, that sexist, I’m not saying this. And I’m not doing that. Because those things go against my moral values. A non compliant person is not the one you promote, but they are the one the world needs.

Andy  39:35  

That’s right. And you know, you come out with as many

Louise  39:37  

Patriarchy! 

Andy  39:39  

Fuck the Patriarchy. And also you can come out with as many statements as like say, well, they’re all men like that. Well, yeah, hashtag not all men and hashtag also some women but you’re losing the point. If you’re gonna boil everything down to a hashtag, or a slogan then, you’ve completely missed the point of the conversation,

Louise  39:55  

and now that we’re mad, it’s probably time to get into Jacinta to calm us down a little bit because we do treat everything like it’s that opposing team game. Where we’re all polarised, we have to choose between one or the other. There’s no space in between it’s men versus women. It’s boys versus girls in the early life before people are even born, it’s politics. Yeah, liberal versus labour. It’s right versus left. It’s my religion verse, your religion

Andy  40:21  

Choose your side. Make your choice. You’re with us or you’re with them. And it’s nothing in between.

Louise  40:26  

As long as we’re polarised like that, then the patriarchy wins, we need to come together to find common ground and achieve parity.

Andy  40:35  

And as someone who’s been trying to achieve gender parity for decades, Jacinta Carboon, is well versed on where we are and how far we still need to travel on the road to equality. Jacinta, you talk about the perception of women being the homemaker and that kind of line that we’ve really come to kind of follow, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes, consciously. These were things that were actually written into law, into employment law. Some years back, I remember my mum telling me about how she, when she got married, she had to leave work, that women weren’t allowed to return to the workforce after they were married. And as it progressed, you know, we got better, are we still in a point of transition where we still need to really understand that we have these valuable people in our economy and in our workplaces, and that their power is now more than running a household budget on an allowance, but more about they’re erning the money, and they’re the ones who are now in control of the spending decisions.

Jacinta Carboon  41:31  

Yes, yes, there’s still we’ve come a long way. And my grandmother was in that timeframe, which, you know, when women were married in government roles anyway, they had to step out of the workforce, they were not allowed to get their employment, which is quite bizarre when you think about it. So yes, it was written into policy and government perspectives and the way that things looked at there, but even so even in that time, women were still working in different ways, quite possibly in unpaid roles. So they weren’t actually generating an income or, and or they were trying to do the best they could with a little amount of support. But women make up 50% of our population. And the number of women graduating from university actually outstrips men. And so we’re actually by not making the most of women in, in just as an example, in employment situation, we’re not making the most of the talent that we have there to make better decisions about business. And by not also, you know, on another line, by not actually engaging women in the in business, as much as we could and should, we are getting better, but it’s still got a long way to go. We’re not having influence on the way that we produce products and services. So we actually really tailoring not necessarily tailoring then to the market. A lot of as I mentioned before, a lot of the way that businesses have been set up is with men in mind. And what products and services have been designed and marketed and delivered is with a male perspective, as opposed to a female perspective. So we’re not actually delivering services for 50%. And largely, a lot of instances are 50% of the population. So from our economy, and from a GDP perspective, you know, the figure is enormous. If we actually tapped into the talent out there, the female economy is not being tapped into it, we could have an enormous impact on the wealth of our country and for companies. So there’s some, it’s still it’s come a long way, but it’s still got a long way to go. And a large part of that is due to bias. And it’s not just it’s ever, ever will have a bias or biases, I mean a male and female’s perspective on what they think should be happening and how should be happening. And that is changing over time. And that’s changing over time by more role models, and, and people becoming more involved in their family life and seeing what it all means and understand anything. So it is moving. But it’s moving at a very slow pace, but it’s getting a lot better than it was when I first started my career,

Louise  44:04  

how much do you think that our internal biases stops us from reaching for those opportunities? I think a lot of our beliefs and thoughts do come from this, you know, the patriarchal ideas that have been embedded in us but at some point, why don’t we grab those opportunities in the same way that men do?

Jacinta Carboon  44:22  

Yeah, there’s lots of reasons for that. And society and cultural information that you’ve had fed into your all your life comes out. So that comes out in self doubt, and self talk. And you know, the things that we’re telling ourselves, and we’re not necessarily having anyone help to break that cycle as much as what men potentially may have access to. You know, as an example, I remember, at one stage when I was doing a lot of research into this space, there was a survey that was done around young mums, mums just in general and how much pocket money they gave to their sons and how much pocket money they gave to their daughters. And the children around at the same age now giving more money to their sons because they thought they were doing tougher chores. So yeah, this is , they’re doing the same thing. And they’re not, they’re not physically or mentally draining roles, these chores. But mothers were thinking, Oh, well, the boys work a bit harder, they’re a bit stronger. So I’ll give them more pocket money than what I would give my daughter. So you know, all these things are feeding into women, from the moment you’re born, and all the marketing and advertising and what you read in the newspapers, you just see, you know, these men taking on these big roles, and they’re making these big decisions. And they’re involved in the discussions around what’s going on in the government and in the world. And that’s all feeding into your, your perception of yourself and your ability to be able to step up and do things. And so you know, that self talk and self doubt is really hard to beat without somebody helping you change that.

Andy  45:49  

We are, you know, advocating now for, thankfully, gender parity with with pay and equal pay for equal work and that type of thing. But to hear about allowances from parents actually being dispersed in that way, is really puzzling. What sort of tasks were they differentiating to justify it

Jacinta Carboon  46:05  

wIt was taking out the rubbish and drying up the dishes or something like that, you know, so that’s sort of almost irrelevant, but you’ve picked up on a good point, it’s a perception of these women, these mothers thinking that, that’s their own perception of themselves. And what they are seeing so you know, they’re, they’re thinking, Oh, well, my job, the homemaker Maybe is not necessarily as important as my partner’s because he is working full time, and he’s bringing home the money and I’m not, you know, some not actually valuing what you contribute yourself. So that’s, that’s just history repeating itself. And that’s, you know, that we’ve got, we have to break that. And we, well we are, and it’s good, it’s moving in that direction. But that’s, you know, so it’s all self perpetuating. Unfortunately, I like to remain thinking it’s getting better, because that makes me feel better. You know, things are changing. Because the people who’ve been running business for a long time, I’m getting older and changing, but you’re seeing in society, and I can sense my own experience with my son who’s his wife have twin daughters, he and his wife both work, they very much share the home duties and the caring for the children and dropping off at kinder and creche, etc. And all you know, and preparing the food and all the things that back in my day was very rare to see dads doing that because they were the breadwinners, and they came home and they were exhausted, and mum looked after them. You know, that was sort of how it all happened. Whereas I’m seeing much more parents both sharing the duties, which is fantastic. For both you know, I’ve heard so many stories of men just saying, I missed out on my whole child’s life, you know, I’ve just worked and I haven’t participated in my child and I haven’t had the opportunity to be the parent, I would have liked to have been, I haven’t been able to have the inputs as much that I would have liked to. So I’m seeing that changing very much. And you know, that’s it, society is expecting parents to participate in life, things are changing the expectation around that it’s changing. Even for example, when I was a single mum, and I started work when I was 18, and had a child, you know, I didn’t, there was no flexible working, there was no consideration about whether you know, me getting to the creche on time, well I just had to make that work. Whereas now policies and employment laws, etc, are much more open to the flexibility of working in understanding parents have to do different things. And that by getting the most out of their employers as well 

Andy  48:29  

I can’t help but go back to some comparisons with the women in my family. My grandmother was widowed by the time I was born. And so she had the benefit of the pension, that my grandfather had left to her and my mum and dad they stayed together. So mum was supported until she died and dad passed on some some years later. But I think they’re probably exceptions to the rule, seeing the things we’re seeing with women over 60 Being a growing percentage of the most likely to become homeless and the financial issues that we’re seeing. How do we fix that?

Jacinta Carboon  49:02  

Well, the awareness about it in the first instance, but then going back to just what I just said, basically, we get it helping these women to understand particularly at a very early age that you have to be in control of your life. Because you know, because if you’re not and your life means your finances your emotions, everything but you know, in particular money perspective because the chances like if your dad had died early on that your mum, where would she be? Which is what’s happening to a lot of women is their partner dies or they end up divorced or whatever. THey’ve got to start to understand all this because if not, they’d be pushed and pulled and whatever all around the place. So it’s, it’s actually ingraining in young people that you have to be in control of your life because if you’re not somebody else will be and that person may or may or whoever it is may or may not be good for you about they, there’s a chance they may not. Why would you want to leave yourself that vulnerable?

Yes. I don’t think we talk about money enough. A lot of situations I’ve been in, particularly in workplaces. Everyone keeps their salaries guarded, you know, you’re not allowed to discuss it. There’s things in contracts that say, don’t talk about this with your fellow employees. I don’t think we talk about money enough to actually…

Louise  50:05  

No, and women don’t, and when I look at, you know, employers don’t want to because it’s difficult for them, because then you’re going to say, how come they’re getting paid… getting paid

Yeah. 

Jacinta Carboon  50:25  

So they don’t want you to talk about so it’s not encouraged. Men will talk about it with theie close group, generally speaking, because they want to supporteach other, they talk about oh, hey, I’m going to, you know, I’m going to go and ask for pay rise, women don’t talk about it’s almost like it’s just never talked about, it’s not appropriate. And I’m not, I must admit, I never really ever did in my career either. And we need to, we need to have that conversation. THey need to work out, ‘you know actually, what I’m doing, this really good job, I should’ so then using it to, you know, to in an appropriate way not just to go complain because I’m not getting paid for what I should be getting paid this much. Because I’m this, I’m adding thiss much value etc. Yes, it is. It needs to be talked about a lot more and that will help women. Women are very unlikely to negotiate for a pay rise much more unlikely to ask for a pay rise what men are because, you know, men just think, that they deserve it. Women don’t think they deserve it. So they don’t do it as much and are uncomfortable, or I don’t really value that ‘oh well I don’t actually I can’t really do all of these things are probably not worth that. Whereas the men will go ‘well actually I can do some of those things, I am definitely worth it’, you know, like. So it’s just it’s a different perspective, the way that you look at and I used to say to managers in the organisations that I work with, you have to be aware that men and women negotiate differently on pay rise, and on getting a pay rise. So you, you, as a manager, or leadership person need to be aware of that. And you need to think about is it fair? Am I being fair to that person? Am I being… am I really doing the right thing by that person by not giving them a pay raise, because I can get away without doing because they’re not going to ask, you know, is that the appropriate way to approach your team members? And you know, that all comes back to money. So a lot of people have tried, they’ve tried to come and get pay rises, of course, because of business reasons, etc. But you’ve got to, you know, if you’re a real leader with real qualities, you’ve been working out what is fair, what is appropriate, and watching how they’re doing not just doing it, because I can get away with it

Andy  52:22  

with the work you were doing with the NAB and helping women with their confidence around money. I wonder were theer any common things that you’ve found actually helped them the most?

Jacinta Carboon  52:33  

it’s all about understanding people understanding themselves, and why they think the way they do and their relationship with money and their perspective on life. And so it’s actually it’s very much around self awareness. There is some old research just this one little side thing, to that, if you had, you know, 12 young girls in a room, the statistics show over a lifetime, only two of those will not be supported by… young girls, and they will be supported by their partner, the other 10 will have to support themselves, it’s actually bringing into reality, there’s some that think that they’re going to be supported by their partner or you know, that’s the way life should be. It’s not real. Doesn’t happen, you know, it’s very rare that’s happened. So it’s actually bringing some awareness to people’s minds about what their relationship with money is. Why it is like that? What’s of all the messages that are being fed. But then it’s also actually, probably the biggest thing is helping people, women, but people to understand that you have to be in control of your life and your money situation. Because if you’re not somebody else is, it doesn’t matter where you are, what you’re doing, you’re moving, you’re moving either in a positive way or in a negative way up, down. You’re not sitting constant. And if you’re not in control, and you’re not aware of it and you’re not understanding how that’s being effected, you are not in control of your life, which means somebody else is so that message is probably the biggest one that comes out of it all.

Louise  53:59  

You know, another dichotomy in our society is young versus old.

Andy  54:03  

Yeah. Now, female news readers. How many have you actually seen go to retirement age that haven’t actually-

Louise  54:11  

You mean 35? 

Andy  54:12  

Yeah, I know, right. Because typically, they fade into the distance as they age and we have these rusted on old men reading the news every night. No disrespect…

Louise  54:23  

No disrespect to the rusedt-on of old old men. It’s the same thing where you know rusted old men or sex symbols, but Oh, no, a woman over 35 in a bikini! (hiss)

Andy  54:36  

I know. But you know what? That term rusted on old men. Okay, so derogatory, but also why can’t we have a few rusted on old women?

Louise  54:44  

I mean, we can 

Andy  54:45  

Why Can’t We? They great! 

Louise  54:46  

Some rusted on old women. 

Andy  54:49  

Yeah, get ’em in! 

Louise  54:50  

that’s gonna be on our new T shirts. Welcome Change, Reframe Of Mind, now with rusted on old women.

Andy  54:57  

Rust me on boys, rust me on.

Louise  54:59  

Do you know, like even when I started my media career as a young thing, I always felt like I probably have a shelf life that I would get to a certain age and I’d be past it and

Andy  55:10  

which seems odd on radio of all places because it’s a voice

Louise  55:14  

youth are just favoured in the media

Andy  55:17  

you know the brief time that I did spend in commercial radio and even before I entered it, it’s pretty clear to see that you’ve got you your young hip, youth stations or young people’s stations, they play all the young hits and all the great hits, they play P!ink every hour

Louise  55:32  

Do you know you referring to it as young people stations has just made you seem a lot older than 50 

Andy  55:37  

I know 

Louise  55:38  

The young people stations

Andy  55:39  

I’m heading towards AC  territory, aren’t I, because the alternative is Adult Contemporary 

Louise  55:45  

Adult Contemporary? 

Andy  55:47  

Jesus, don’t go near AM though. If you get to AM you know you’re on the last of it. If you’re flicking your radio to the am dial, you’re gonna be hearing a lot of funeral ads

Louise  55:55  

Has this has this episode become a Louise’s media beat up, is that what this is gonna be? 

Andy  56:02  

Aren’t they all?

Louise  56:01  

So Louise is working on a lot of different places around the country in a lot of different formats, because she’s done a lot of things to try and advance her career which got to the top of something, presumably. And then went (raspberry sound) some of those things included looking after what we would call heritage brands when I was in my early 20s. Because it was uncool. And nobody else wanted to do it. And I liked radio for the sake of radio. And I did it. And I enjoyed it. And I learned how to connect with people who, when I was 25, they were over 40. And what I learned is that they pretty much like the same shit, only slightly different music,

Andy  56:41  

there are a lot of assumptions that go with that kind of general demographic sort of stuff, like people will assume… Oh my god, okay… so people have assumed throughout my life or different stages of my life, that I’m a parent. Okay, so and I’m not a parent. And it’s not because I’m gay that I’m not a parent, I could have been a parent if I wanted to be, but I just haven’t had kids. None of my boyfriend’s ever had a uterus as I’ve been telling people for some years now. So when I see things pitched at people in my age bracket, and it’s addressed to mums and dads, there’s nothing in there for me to relate to. And, well now I’m 50. You know, a year or two back it started early, someone said to me, oh here you go, I’ll give you this for the grandkids. What?

Louise  57:25  

What this is about people making generalisations and assumptions based on your age

Andy  57:30  

Yeah, people make generalisations and assumptions based on a lot of things and they can be useful. assumptions can be useful, you know, if, if I make an assumption of a morning that the sun shining, therefore, I won’t need to put on a heavy jacket and take an umbrella, that’s pretty useful to make. But when you start making assumptions about people and their personality, and what they like and don’t like and what they shouldn’t shouldn’t like, then that’s kind of dangerous territory. 

Louise  57:50  

It’s reminds me of someone who I once worked with hypothetically, who said that when it was a brand that was pitched at, let’s say, over 50s. They said that everybody over 50 doesn’t like 90s music.

Andy  58:07  

They do now!

Louise  58:12  

this person said, no, no, no, we don’t play 90s music for the over 50s They don’t like it. The whole decade. They couldn’t find one song they maybe they liked in the whole decade.

Andy  58:23  

Wow, there you go see, it’s just that narrow, narrow way of thinking.

Louise  58:27  

Yeah, I think we write individuals off we write whole groups of people off by not allowing ourselves to include them in our model of the world.

Andy  58:35  

So coming back to our friend, Alex Maritz, who is the Professor of Entrepreneurship at Latrobe University, we’re starting to explore the concept of senior preneurs. So people who are much older and starting their own business, and we also wanted to know, you know, what some of the biggest predictors of success might be?

Louise  58:53  

Would you say that’s a true statement? Or is that their perception? Is it actually more risky for them as a senior preneur, or does it just feel more risky?

Alex Maritz  59:03  

The risk perception. So I’m saying risk tolerance. So the senior people generally take less risks than the younger counterparts. I’m talking about higher growth ventures. Yes. However, I always say one thing. And then I’ve got five caveats behind it. We must also however, take note, too, that there are some huge enablers. These senior people have usually got formed networks. People that know this know that or a friend that knows a friend that knows a friend. So those networks and those collaboration partners arealready there. Many seniors have often got that financial back standing already, even if it’s a super, but they have some kind of financial backing, usually, unless their kids… I mean, we’ve interviewed a lot of seniors where they are actually supporting their kids. So they don’t have that financial means. Their kids for whatever reason, don’t have a job and they’ve moved back in with their parents. Now, I mean, we get that in life too. So I am generalising more that senior entrepreneurs usually have better networks better financial, we call that a higher propensity to sell financing. Financing is usually the biggest stumbling block in entrepreneurship, to get financing to start your business. And what I’m saying is senior entrepreneurs, or seniors usually have that finance to start up,

Andy  1:00:21  

I was also interested to, to read that senior entrepreneurs tend to spend less time working in the business where younger entrepreneurs tend to spend a lot of hours working on the business. And that seems to come down to life experience and their capacity to try and manage better or to, to bring in the resources they need more quickly.

Alex Maritz  1:00:42  

You got that one, you’ve been reading? or you know something about this stuff, because I’ve got an answer directly. Andy, so the seniors didn’t really have now although their risk tolerance is less than the younger cohort, their fear of failure is also less. So I’ve got this caveat that I often say in entrepreneurship, entrepreneurs do not fail. Their startups do because they, they’re in a risky environment. But that’s a bit of a cop out. But because of these enhanced networks, let’s call it University of Life. senior people have life experiences that they can often lean on, because of it and, and work backgrounds and that type of stuff. They’re more confident in themselves to start a business. And that could lead to what you were saying is that they often spend less time in their businesses, then the younger counterparts, I don’t want to say this too loudly, maybe they smarter, and I’m saying smarter because of their life experiences, that older folks. And that’s that’s why. So they therefore believe that, you know, by doing that they can do things right, I often refer to it as efficiency, or use the words efficient and effective. So I say, Our research has indicated that senior entrepreneurs are more efficient, they spend on with our research over 1200 people, they spend about five, plus or minus, five hours a week less in their businesses than the younger counterparts. So that’s where the efficiency comes in where the effectiveness comes in doing the right things, our senior entrepreneurs are making twice the profits of a similar cohort that we studied with the younger entrepreneurs. Now, there are many things that we can say about that, because it could mean, those senior entrepreneurs are often in their businesses for longer time period. Therefore, they’ve grown their businesses more. Or we find about 35% of the senior entrepreneurs we interviewed were what we call serial entrepreneurs, or another word is portfolio entrepreneurs. They had more than one business and they’d often started a business with some other family member or friend or somebody else has actually taken that business over to run it. And then that entrepreneur exits business emotionally, and moves on to something new. That is the true entrepreneurship spirit. And that is what the senior entrepreneurs are very good at.

Louise  1:03:10  

Why do we have it wrong as a society, then? Why do we think that entrepreneurship is a young person’s game and that once someone is over 60, they should be put out to pasture? Because that’s not what this research supports. So why do we have that wrong?

Alex Maritz  1:03:25  

Well, why do we have many things wrong about COVID? vaccinations and everything? Yeah, we can go … there’s a lot of media hype about young entrepreneurs, young entrepreneur starts a new app becomes a billionaire in four weeks, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, you know, Rags to Riches, start the business in the garage and grow into this, we must realise that that’s this thing is 0.1% of all people. And I often say this to even our students is just think if you’re going to become a professional tennis player, not everybody is Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, may not even the one percenters, those entrepreneurs you hear about, they were there at the right time at the right place with the right value addition with the right market, if Bill Gates came into the market, he came in a year later, he probably wouldn’t have made it, he would have eventually because he’s an entrepreneur, you know, they bounce back and so on and learn from failure. That’s a very important thing. But that is a myth. The fastest growing sector of entrepreneurship is senior entrepreneurship, that’s, that’s global research. It happens to be the same thing in Australia, and their contribution not only to the economy, and people often think well, you go into self employment, you don’t have to rely on the pension or, or that type of thing. But the main thing about entrepreneurship isn’t only about yourself, it’s about creating employment, because these seniors come into business and they create on average, two and a half jobs per startup. So in other words, they employing two and a half people on average in the startup, and not necessarily senior entrepreneurs. So that’s a very important thing. The other very important thing about senior entrepreneurs as to the importance is the mentorship. These people, entrepreneurs by nature give back to society. So they love the mentorship, I was on a tangent earlier I was speaking about ageism and discrimination and saying about discrimination in the workforce. I’m not really one for that, because I believe my roots and my background is tell me fight for who you are and what you are. But from a perspective of conformist of being, let’s say, in the total economy, and that this thing with discrimination, and so on, it’s very surprising that when we do the studies of discrimination of mature aged people in the workforce, and is a big tick, yes, it’s predominant, it’s very big in the workforce, we do not see that prevalence in entrepreneurship. So in other words, younger entrepreneurs like mixing with old entrepreneurs, because they know they can get information from them. They know they can get a wealth of experience from them, they’re savvy enough to realise, they see that opportunity. So we don’t see that same kind of discrimination in entrepreneurship, per se, which is a pretty cool thing. An entrepreneur always talks about themselves, you give them the stage, you’ll never get them off the stage. And that’s a cool thing. That’s a nice thing that they’re prepared to share.

Louise  1:06:13  

So do you think we’re entrepreneurs, Andy? Or are we just small business owners?

Andy  1:06:17  

I don’t know. Yeah, I mean, I’d like to think I was an entrepreneur, because it sounds kind of cool. But you know, I think it’s equally as cool to be a small business owner, but I really can’t answer that at the moment. But what I do know is that we are definitely out of our comfort zone.

Louise  1:06:28  

Yes, definitely out of our comfort zones, how has that manifested for you?

Andy  1:06:32  

having recently turned 50 starting a business, to me feels like a big risk. And also, having spent the last 12 months living off savings trying to support that really feels uncomfortable. Yeah. Because, you know, if I was a 20-something living by myself with nobody else to think about in the equation, then it would all be on me, and I would have that sense of okay, well, I can do this a bit longer, I can try this, there wouldn’t be any kind of pressure for success, but I’ve got a partner, he works. And we run a household together. And at some point, I need to know that what we’re doing and what we’re creating is going to be successful, so that I can contribute financially in an equal way as well. Also, in that risk, there’s, you know, God forbid, if it didn’t work out, then how long would it be since I actually was in paid employment? Would employers then look at me and say, “Oh, well, you know, you haven’t worked for a while,” or “you’ve been doing that little hobby there for a few months”. And I know that you’ve got your own challenges as well, amongst all of this, as you know, we both want this to be a success. And I think it’s really easy to get caught up in other people’s generalisations other people’s view of what they think is the correct pathway. So for a 40 or 50 year old, okay, so you should be saving for your superannuation, saving for retirement, don’t take any risks that are undue, all of that kind of stuff. And it starts to impact on the choices that we make for ourselves, because we start listening to other people’s opinions and not actually trusting our own intuition. Yeah, we spoke we joked earlier about that course, for over 50s that I qualified for Yeah, you know, I’d worked on a help desk for a couple of years, for an internet company. So I’m sure I’ve got, not to disparage anybody who wants to do one of those courses because they’re very useful, but I’ve got a lot more skills, and the generalisation they’re making is that someone my age doesn’t have that. And that presented in my last workplace where there was a young guy on the team who couldn’t figure out how to do something or other with his keyboard and get something to work on his screen. And it was something that I was familiar with, because I’d seen it happen before. And I’d talked to people through it. And I said, you just need to do this, this and this. And his response, pretty much, was just to ignore me and keep asking other people around him. He just looked at me odd and then said, “I can’t get it to work” to the person next to me. So I went over to his desk, and I did the operations that I told him to do, and it fixed it, and his mouth opened, and then the other team leader laughed. And it was pretty apparent that he had made an assumption about someone who was twice his age, admittedly, but was perfectly capable of having that knowledge.

Louise  1:09:12  

I have had that experience. Well not that specific experience, but ones like that, based on the fact that, I think, I’m a woman, really, let’s say I went to a meeting introduced myself to somebody, first time I’d ever met them. And my male assistant was there with me, whOho would someone talk to for the answer?

Andy  1:09:33  

Oh they’d speak to the male assistant for sure. Or your boobs.

Louise  1:09:37  

Both answers are correct. Plenty of people have had conversations with my boobs over time. And then they’ve gone Oh, that’s a lovely necklace you’re wearing Oh, yeah,

Andy  1:09:46  

They’ve got a lot to say, I’ve gotta say that, 

Louise  1:09:50  

You’re not looking at it though, are you? Don’t pick it up and touch it, jerk. 

Andy  1:09:53  

Ah. Ergh!

Louise  1:09:53  

That’s specific. So there’s been a lot of discounting because of that kind of stuff as well. You know, if there’s a male presenting person and a female presenting person in a room. I do think that the default for a lot of people tends to be the man’s in charge. Another way I saw that manifest actually one of my early management jobs, the man who was hiring told me that I was qualified for the job, but he wanted to make sure that I wasn’t a pioneer. He literally said the phrase, “I don’t want a pioneer. I just want someone to do the job.” 

Andy  1:10:24  

Wow.

Louise  1:10:24  

“And not make this about gender.”

Andy  1:10:26  

Don’t bring your ambition into this. Whatever you do, we’re not looking for ambitious people. 

Louise  1:10:33  

Actually come to think of it that same boss asked me about whether my headaches that I was getting were anything to do with being a woman 

Andy  1:10:42  

Noooo!

Louise  1:10:43  

My mentrual cycle. And I 

Andy  1:10:46  

Noooooo!

Louise  1:10:46  

And I, you know what, why I was getting headaches? Because I fucking needed glasses!

Andy  1:10:54  

For your lady eyes.

Louise  1:10:59  

My precious lady eyes! I think he actually said something like, you seem to be getting a lot of headaches lately. I don’t know if it’s to do with your menstrual cycle, or not. But you seem to be having a lot of trouble handling things at the moment. And I just said, I don’t know. But I am going to get my eyes tested. Because I read that maybe that might have something to do with it. And I did and I fucking needed glasses.

Andy  1:11:26  

Wouldn’t it have been easier for him, and for everybody, to open the conversation with “Louise, I noticed you haven’t been well, lately. You’re having a lot of headaches. Are you okay? Is there something going on? Have you… have you… 

Louise  1:11:41  

Yeah, 

Andy  1:11:42  

But you know, we’ve, we’ve been talking a lot about this in the context of the workplace, right. So I have seen it play out in the simplest of ways as well. And it is a prime example of how society is geared towards thinking of men as the ones in charge. 

Louise  1:11:59  

Yeah, 

Andy  1:11:59  

I took a call one day from a very angry customer, because all of the mail that was actually being directed to them for the product they purchased was addressed to the husband. And I just had to sit there and listen to what she was saying. And let her say everything that was correct, because the salesperson had made the assumption. “You’re the missus, you’re the second contact. We’ll put his name here. There you go, so it’s him and you” and blah, blah, blah. And she was actually the one in control of all of the household budgets. She was the one who was earning the money because her partner was actually you know, a stay at home parent. The assumption was that oh, well, he’s the man of the house. So he’s the one that goes on the document first. No, no, no, that’s not correct.

Louise  1:12:47  

Don’t get me started on Mr. Versus Mrs. Because,  here’s a Louise rant coming on. Every time I have to select a salutation in one of those boxes. I pick Ms. Because I think that both Miss. And Mrs. are offensive because they both suggest ownership by a man or not ownership by a man when there’s only one choice to refer to a man and that’s Mr. Whether he’s single, or he’s married, or whatever.

Andy  1:13:15  

And also, I want to say hashtag not all women because I have got friends who don’t use the Ms version. And that’s their choice

Louise  1:13:22  

Is there another choice in it a Mx? Can I use a Mx? Or is that… 

Andy  1:13:26  

I think Mx…you know I think Mx is availableto use now 

Louise  1:13:28  

I would rather not use it at all I’d rather use Doctor but apparently I don’t have one of those.

Andy  1:13:32  

Well give yourself time, honey, give yourself time.

Louise  1:13:35  

What are the other options? What can I use as a salutation? 

Andy  1:13:39  

No, I do think Mx is starting to pop up because people are now saying that they don’t identify as one gender or the other why can’t they just leave the salutation off altogether and just call me Andrew or Andy or call you Louise and let that be what the addressed mail is, you know I mean we’re talking about formalities in written language that goes back centuries of Dear Mr. Bla, Bla Bla Bla Bla Bla, very formal. Hi Louise, look, we’re reaching out because blaba blaba blah. You’re taking my money. Call me by my first name.

Louise  1:14:11  

Okay, so now I definitely think we’ve turned this episode into Louise and Andy rant about times that they’ve been discriminated against because of their age and gender.

Andy  1:14:21  

We did say it wasn’t all about business. 

Louise  1:14:26  

No, it’s… I don’t know if we got into the mental health of it all, except that it does affect 

Andy  1:14:29  

Well, 

Louise  1:14:30  

It does affect you. If you believe these things when you keep getting told these messages over and over again. 

Andy  1:14:37  

And here’s the point. If if, you know it hasn’t been abundantly clear from what we’ve been saying throughout this episode is that whoever you are, you’re valuable. Yeah, it doesn’t come down to your gender or your religion or whatever else. People want to make a polar opposite for. You as an individual are valuable. So this boss of yours that says we don’t want a pioneer don’t go thinking that you’re gonna go trailblazing I’m kind of thinking that they wouldn’t have got on very well with Jacinta. Jacinta has been a pioneer amongst middle aged white men.

Louise  1:15:11  

I think you were pioneering a lot of things. And you were one of the few voices sort of speaking up at that, like, it’s very easy for us now to all talk about, you know, the need for equality, gender equality, but you were doing it when nobody else was really saying it, or I think it would have been hard to so how do you how do you become that voice amongst the board of, you know, middle aged white men? Who 

Jacinta Carboon  1:15:34  

Yeah, 

Louise  1:15:34  

How do you stand up and find a common ground with people whose I mean, I almost want to say, are privileged enough to benefit from not having equality?

Jacinta Carboon  1:15:44  

Yeah, well, there is a bit of that, too. And that’s, that’s real. Yeah, look, it’s been a long journey, I had my own life experiences that motivated me to do what I’ve done. So you know, from being a single mum, and also seeing my mum, and the way that she lived her life and, and experiences that just didn’t sit right with me. So I had this inner drive to do something, I didn’t really know what was really going on, or how to articulate it, or how to bring it to life. Over time, there were bits and pieces that built into that jigsaw, it sort of came to life, you know, it goes back to understanding that we’re all human beings, and we all have needs finding a way that you can tap into that interest of the person, you know, there’s white men who and actually understanding they don’t understand, like, they may not necessarily understand because so you’ve got to remember that they’re not everything in this as in anything in life, you know, not everybody sees the thing, something the way you see it. And it’s actually how can you take them on that journey, that they’re going to be feeling safe and comfortable with that as well. And bringing bringing it to life. But there was one person that I worked with it at NAB, a man who was amazing but he didn’t really understand what I was on about for quite a while, I just kept finding ways that I can actually bring this conversation of this presentation into what he was doing and, and how it was actually going to have an impact. And the more he heard it, the more he understood. And then one day, he just said to me, I get it. I didn’t get this. So like I said, because you had to, I have to take you on a journey for you to see it. Otherwise, you just dismiss it. So that’s a hard slog, but it’s actually worth it, you know, you just got to do it. And it’s your own self doubt, it’s not easy. But another thing that as an example, to bring it to the people, you’ve just got to remember that they don’t necessarily see the reality, and they don’t really understand it. But if you can find a way to make it personal as well, a top two, you know, with the gender pay gap, and women not being put into having the opportunity to step up in their careers, because they get to a certain point and it’s all just too hard, and lots of reasons like when they step out of work for their career, you know, there’s about a career for life changing reasons to look after children or elderly, etc. But when you talk, when you know, I had this manager said, “You need to find a way to actually help these men understand that it actually is relevant to them”. And then I did this talk one day, and I talked about the pay gap and the fact that you know, a young woman today who has a university degree who will end up potentially in as, as it stands, you know, earning like, you know, a million dollars less than what a young boy of the same age would in, over the course of their career, just feeling simply because of the opportunity that she won’t have or her own self doubt, etc. And when they stand up in many say asked many say, you know, who has a son? Yes. Who has a daughter? Yes. Who is sending them to a good school and wants them to have a good career? Okay, well, how do you feel about the fact that your daughter is not going to have this opportunity, your daughter is going to be getting paid 25% less than your son just because he’s she’s a female? How do you feel like, how do you feel about that? That’s your sister, your mother your aunt, you know? And then And then “Oh, you mean? Oh right. So women that I know?” Yes. You know, like, it’s sort of, it’s finding a way that actually makes it personal to help people understand because you, you know, you might know something that, just because you know it, you have to find a way to be able to share that, that they will take it on board. And as I said, it can be a long journey, but it’s certainly worth it

Louise  1:19:25  

Do you have a magic question? We’ll get you to the crux of finding that common ground with them. Is there something that if you had to be in a room with somebody with a different opinion to find a common ground in the shortest possible time?

Jacinta Carboon  1:19:38  

Oh, gee, that’s a good question. That’s giving them, fiding a way that you can do something that’s not going to make them feel embarrassed or an idiot. So like, you know, from you, whatever, you know, take that as an example, that they’re completely wrong, but finding a way to allow them to, the old saying, you know, save face, but be able to agree with you and still feel quite okay, then there’s no point in making somebody feel like they’re an idiot or that because they’re just going to get their back up anyway. So finding a way that you can actually get them to see it, or even open up the door a little bit to it, and still, you know, stay on the path of their own self confidence and, etc. Is it that I don’t know, there’s actually a magic question. It’s just a way of doing that,

Andy  1:20:24  

How can we make sure that the people that we’re actually working with and working towards these goals with are doing more than just paying it lip service?

Jacinta Carboon  1:20:31  

People are being more and more called out on that, over time, you know, talking about diversity targets, and all this sort of thing. And it’s actually about, you know, talking, getting  people to say “well, what actually, what impact has this had on your business?” and making them look into it and talk about it as a, from a business perspective, not just to show me the stats, like you’ve got now got 30% more women in senior positions, but what does that actually mean to your business? Tell us about some of those people. Tell me about one person that you’ve have given an opportunity, and where are they now? And what’s changed? And what’s, you know, so they actually have to articulate that. So that that makes them, that’s something that’s not an easy thing to do. But really, you know, what’s the point in someone standing out there and telling you about the new happenings, the statistics around things, it’s actually making it real, make it a what is this meant for the team, etc? What does it meant for the people that work there finding ways to get people to actually talk about the what the impact is, as opposed to very generic high level, bits of information,

Andy  1:21:31  

It seems, the more we connect these stories back to individuals and people, almost the statistics take care of themselves out think that, you know, if we actually work from a place where we’re looking to include people legitimately and to actually value them and serve them properly, well, then surely it must actually tip the balance, then 

Jacinta Carboon  1:21:50  

Yeah, well, eventually, you know, it’s just, it’s just going to take the time, but there’s just so much opportunity. There’s so much talent that’s being missed that so many business opportunities that are being missed, there’s so, much societal issues that aren’t being dealt with properly, because, you know, it’s all win. It’s all a win win, if we actually do this, it’s actually everybody wins. Everybody benefits, you know, men and women. It’s not, you know, so it’s just, it’s almost like, this is mad, why aren’t people already doing this? You know, that’s what I used to sit there and think about “what? why is nobody paying attention?” And then I realised I have to get the message in a way that they could take it on board.

Louise  1:22:30  

So why aren’t we paying attention to the female economy, Andy? 

Andy  1:22:34  

It’s very good question. You know, the facts and the figures back it up. Just as we’re learning from Alex, that people who become entrepreneurs later in life are more successful. It just seems like people don’t want to listen to researched data anymore, that they don’t have any faith in it. It all gets politicised. And the facts get lost. So, you know, you’re 40 I’m 50. And we’re starting this business late in life, you know, in a lot of people’s opinions, 

Louise  1:22:57  

As middle-aged entrepreneurs

Andy  1:22:59  

That’s right. Mid-preneurs, maybe we can coin that 

Louise  1:23:02  

Mid-preneurs, yeah, 

Andy  1:23:03  

Mid-term prreneurs. No, it sounds like we’re both pregnant. Okay, so where are we looking for the support that we need to make sure that we can be the success we want to be because it does take a support network for you to feel confident sometimes as much as we say, we just want to rely on ourselves. And you know, toxic positivity will say, Oh, well, you know, just soldier on and you know, best and all that kind of stuff. Sometimes we want someone to validate us,

Louise  1:23:27  

Yeah, do you know, I told someone very close to me, at the start of our journey that we were starting a business based around podcasting, and they laughed, that was hurtful. If the people close to us don’t believe in our ideas, or believe in our ability to manifest our ideas, then that really hurts. And that’s actually an emotional block to get over for us even needing their opinion at all.

Andy  1:23:50  

Yeah, well, we’ve both had the experience of realising that people close to us aren’t listening to what we’re making. But you know what? They don’t need to because it’s, we’re not making it for them. We’re making this programme out of, you know, a real sincere desire and hope that we’ll actually get some good information out there and somebody can find it useful. That’s the bottom line. You know, we’re not here to bag anybody out. And we’re using our own experiences, because that’s what we have and what we’ve learned from. But that’s where it stops. As far as that goes, you know, it’s not about being bitter or being resentful for people not supporting us. But we do need to get ourselves to a point where we find those networks that do support us. And, you know, we’ve been talking about assumptions and generalisations, and there are assumptions out there that older people can’t learn later in life. And we start to limit ourselves as a result of that. And we limit other people as well, 

Louise  1:24:50  

But it’s not true. We can learn at any age. We are old dogs that can learn new tricks.

Andy  1:24:55  

Speak for yourself sweetheart. I’m a young Chihuahua.

Louise  1:25:00  

And I’m an old cat. I mean, we can learn new tricks as we age. Look what we’ve done in the last year, Andy, we’ve both upped our skills in website development.

Andy  1:25:10  

Yeah. And you’ve actually gone and done a lot of learning and development in graphic design. Everything that you see graphic wise, related to this podcast has been made by Louise Poole.

Louise  1:25:22  

Yes. And I have taught you then how to go in and edit things and update the quotes and bits and pieces like that using other software, which is a skill that you didn’t have before. And you’ve learned how to manage all the distribution of the podcasts that we do I, I’m just the pretty voice. I haven’t done any of that.

Andy  1:25:41  

That’s right, Ms. Doote. We’ll make sure you get to air first time every time. But yeah, I mean, these are skills we didn’t have 12 months ago. And you know, we share the skills with each other as we learned, because we’re small business operators now. And it’s great to have a bunch of new skills individually, but it’s also about we’re not in competition with each other, we’re actually in partnership. So you know, we’ve learnt things like SEO, we’ve learned social media scheduling, we’ve, you know, upped our skills in the more technical side of being able to clean up audio and the production skills. Yeah. So you know, there’s a lot that we’ve actually done, aside from setting up a business and all the structures that go underneath that so that when we do get to the point where we can employ someone, we can then easily transfer that knowledge and those skills across to them.

Louise  1:26:28  

And now we’re starting to explore elearning platforms as well to run some new programmes that we’ve developed. So older and middle aged dogs can learn new tricks 

Andy  1:26:41  

Through the hoop! Off you go. What do you think, is the biggest predictor of success when somebody goes into it,

Alex Maritz  1:26:45  

that’s just being probably aware of that mindset. As I said, entrepreneurship is a mindset, it is a way of life, and we’re not all the same. It’s that balance. Because you know, the health wise as a senior entrepreneurship, you can burn yourself out a lot easier than the younger counterpart. And again, you can’t afford to go and have a nervous breakdown, because that’s probably you’re gone, you can’t take another three, four years to come right and then, you know, step up again, as easily as the younger counterpart. So that is probably just being aware of that mindset. And where you actually want to take that venture to, because that will depend on the amount of effort you have to put in the amount of resource you want to put in. Although we found that two thirds of our senior entrepreneurs that we surveyed were in this for lifestyle and active ageing type of thing, only a third of them were in it to make the big bucks. Whereas two thirds of the younger people were in it for the money to drive the Ferraris. And to do all that, where the older cohort was more about the lifestyle. There’s a new field of research coming in now from social innovation. And they’re saying senior entrepreneurs are the new drivers of social innovation. And when I talk about social innovation, I’m talking more about eliminating social isolation, and becoming more of a community, because I wasn’t really that aware of it. But it seemed that a lot of these people that are pre retirement and retirement are actually rather socially isolated. A lot of the networks that they had, and this is what they said, Were usually through their work. And that seems then to go one side, we found that a lot of these people were saying a lot of the social networks from the kids and the schooling and so on. And they lose those social networks as well, to eliminate that social isolation is a very important thing for senior entrepreneurs. But you know, that entrepreneurial orientation and that mindset, that entrepreneurship, you know, working for yourself often sounds easy. And you say, Well, I don’t want to work for a boss. And the first thing when I say to people, well, you don’t want to work for bosses. That’s why you want to become entrepreneurs, self employed? And I said, Yeah, and I can manage my own time. And and I say you do realise when you become an entrepreneur, you actually have more bosses. And they say well don’t be be ridiculous, I’m in charge of my destiny. Yeah, but the banks are your boss, your suppliers are your boss, everyone else, your customers become your bosses, you get more bosses and more responsibilities. Yeah, there’s no one to make your tea. You even have to buy your own tea and make it, your own coffee machine.

Louise  1:29:10  

Are there any specific examples of questions you could give us to help people get that process started in their mind about how they can identify those other transferable build skills?

Alex Maritz  1:29:20  

The overriding thing here that that we’ve got from a senior entrepreneurs is, do you wish to enhance your lifestyle and active ageing? Those are the two prominent things that come out of this. You know, I mentioned the thing about social isolation and minimising that. And the active ageing thing is not only good from a mental perspective or health perspective, from a psychological perspective as well, which is very, very important. You know, one thing that’s critical at the moment is the economic motives, and that is of supplementing income. And that’s why we have a term called hybrid entrepreneurship, where people often go into entrepreneurship activities, whilst they’re In the employ of the business, and then doing this as a, let’s say, a sideline thing. So they’re learning the ropes. And we find that that’s a very good thing. It’s actually transitioning into self employment. Years ago an employer would have, we will have said to you, “oh, that means you’re not dedicated to my business.” Well, yeah, if you want loyalty buy a dog, employees need to enhance themselves to be better people. And that’s the important thing as well. So largely about lifestyle and active ageing is what comes out of our research, and well being, again, the mindset. And that’s when I say those behavioural things, such as entrepreneurial orientation, learning those skills, how to become creative, how to become opportunistic, and we provide models for people to go through. So “I’ve got this lovely idea. I’m sure it’ll work.” And I always say to people, don’t forget a million and one other people have that same idea as you. It exists somewhere in the world, but you may be able to come up with that idea. And just delivering it in a different way, or in a unique way. And I always say this to our senior entrepreneurs, usually you wouldn’t go to be this big global business, it would be a niche business, where you target often a community, or surrounding or a certain geographical area for what you do. And from that, you can develop things. So to start small, keep yourself busy, we have had it, the reason a large number of cases where some of these entrepreneurs that have attended these workshops, go out and start on their own. So you know, they’ve got a spare room at home, and they work from the study, and then they come into their thing where they’re gonna work from home anymore, then they have to go and rent some office space and employ some people and they get into this uncomfortable level to say, “Hey, hang on is this lifestyle? It looks like I’m now back into business and all that I’m not sure. Listen, you know, I only want to work two days a week, this is getting too big for me now.” But sometimes that’s a nice problem to have. Because you can scale down, it’s harder to scale down than to scale up.

Andy  1:31:56  

Alex, you teach entrepreneurship. So how old would be the oldest person you’ve taught?

Alex Maritz  1:32:02  

86 year old PhD. In entrepreneurship. Yeah. So the question you asked me is teaching old dogs new tricks? We’ll see. The other adage is old corks, new wine or something like that? Can a leopard change spots? They most certainly can, you know, yes, there are underlying characteristics and all that. But all these things, we’re in such a fluid and such a lifestyle and disrupted world, that you’ve actually got no choice but you have to change. You know, before people didn’t have multiple careers. Now, you don’t often meet a mature age person that hasn’t had three or four different careers, different kinds of jobs, in and out of jobs. You don’t get jobs for life, not even in the big corporate companies. You can’t go work for Telstra or Woollies and think, “Well, that’s my job forever,” or Qantas. It’s actually the opposite. So it’s not a thing that can these people change into something different, you often, it’s by necessity, you don’t have much option. And it’s a way that you can go and acquire these new skills. But I’ll make it very clear, don’t always just believe you have those skills, because I was successful in corporate for 30 years, means I’m going to be successful in my own business.You’re talking chalk and cheese, and often relates to the difference that a lot of people from the financial profession compare accounting and finance. They’re two totally different disciplines. The ones about bookkeeping, the other one’s about forecasting financial strategies for big loans, let’s just say totally different things, different skill sets. And that’s exactly between entrepreneurship and small business, they are totally, totally different skills.

Andy  1:33:37  

So we’ve been talking a lot about different ways people can be discriminated against in the workplace. But also, it’s something that is sometimes just underlying behaviour without people being conscious of it. And people need to be conscious of it. Ageism is a prime example how people are denied opportunities because of their age. And when we set out to make Reframe Of Mind, we wanted to be certain that we were amplifying all voices that we weren’t just going in and going for the low hanging fruit, you know, the easy ones that you always see, or, or whatever, we actually wanted to make sure that we had a really good balance of people in there, and we put our own quotas, essentially, sort of thing for that reason. And, you know, we didn’t do that so that we could say, “Look how good we are.” This is something that people should be doing anyway, if you want an expert on a subject, then that expert could be a woman that expert could be from any other name this group you know, it’s we don’t want congratulations for doing it, because it’s something that just should be happening.

Louise  1:34:42  

I do want to point out that most of the voices from scientists that you’ll hear in Reframe Of Mind are women. 

Andy  1:34:48  

Hashtag not all women

Louise  1:34:49  

Hashtag not all women. You know, we don’t deserve a pat on the back for that because again, it’s something that should be done but in terms of equity and equality. true equality means that any podcaster or media programme that was looking to make something like what we’ve made, would look towards also selecting from female scientists for their expertise in true equality. But because we don’t have true equality, equity means that we need to give people a head start.

Andy  1:35:16  

And you know, we are just a tiny drop in a big splash of the media landscape. The work that we’re doing to try and amplify these voices a bit more, is just a small contribution to it. So it would be lovely to see more of that happening. In general.

Louise  1:35:30  

You won’t believe how easy it is to find a cis white man to talk on a podcast. By the way, if you ever want to start a podcast, you just you just fling a rock out there. And you’ll hit about 10 cis white men that are happy to have a talk to you. But you do have to work harder for more marginalised voices, but they are worth the effort for the stories that they can tell

Andy  1:35:49  

totally, I think some of that is that with those groups that we found harder to get, sometimes I thought maybe they get overlooked or get bypassed, because they’d come back with questions. Let’s just say we use the excuse of media being time critical, and we can’t be answering too many questions. “You want to be on or off?” But I’m going to call bullshit on that. Because really, if somebody is coming back with some questions, that means they need to clarify something. And it means they’re taking an interest in what you’re pitching to them, or they need some more information, you know, these cis white men that come along to these programmes and say, yeah, yeah, I’ll have a chat. Yep. Sign me up. Excellent.

Louise  1:36:25  

Without even knowing what they’ve signed up for 

Andy  1:36:27  

Yeah, you know, they’ve been approached, obviously, because, you know, the programme maker thinks they have value to add the conversation. But I’m betting that those programme makers give up on asking some of the women or some of the people from other diverse backgrounds, because they want to have a bit more of a conversation about the intention of the programme first,

Louise  1:36:46  

You know, the best person for the job, I don’t think it’s always the surface explanation of that there’s, you have to look at what levels of privilege have helped them elevate their skills. We want equity, we want equality. And I think the road to equality means that voices that have been suppressed need to be amplified in what looks like an uneven way.

Andy  1:37:03  

Yeah, I mean, I mentioned earlier in the programme about my white privilege, I know that I’ve been privileged in a lot of ways because of how I present and how I look, you know, there are other ways I could argue that I’ve been disadvantaged because my sexuality or whatever, I can find any number of things. But the bottom line is that I’m a white male, and now a middle aged white male. And I’ve had a lot of opportunities thrown at me, that I’ve probably not taken up because of my own self esteem. And that’s related to other things. But there have been a lot more opportunities thrown at me than would have been thrown at my female colleagues.

Louise  1:37:38  

Andy, are you Alpha Douche? 

Andy  1:37:41  

No, I think I’m a Woke Wayne.

Louise  1:37:44  

Coming soon in another skit. 

Andy  1:37:49  

Hey dudes, yeah!

Louise  1:37:49  

So first, I want to say like, I know I have privilege I have, especially white privilege. I have ableist privilege, I have straight passing privilege. And then on the other hand, I’ve been discriminated against for things like gender for things like my body there has been fatphobia, that kind of stuff. But I call myself a feminist publicly, an intersectional feminist, actually, because we can’t have equity for one without equity for all and I’ve had a lot of people over time actually asked me why I call myself a feminist because they say I’m not a feminist. They’re not a feminist. And I say why would you say you’re not a feminist? You’re, you talk like a feminist you believe in equality? And they say, but feminists are people who want to see women put ahead of men. Wel, no,

Andy  1:38:36  

no, no, no, no, it took me a long time to be able to call myself a feminist because I think I am a feminist. And I think probably some of the early people that I actually said that to laughed at me, you know “Here’s Woke Wayne, he’s a feminist”,

Louise  1:38:50  

Men can be feminists. In fact, we need more male feminists. 

Andy  1:38:53  

Yeah, yeah, we do. 

Louise  1:38:54  

Being a feminist means that you’re for equality for everyone.

Andy  1:38:58  

And also, I’m going to add to that as the male feminists that if a quota is the way that we get to that then bring on the quotas.

Louise  1:39:06  

The other thing that I’ve had people say with the feminist stuff is “but a feminist is someone who you know, doesn’t endorse trans rights.” 

Andy  1:39:14  

Where does that come from? 

Louise  1:39:16  

You know where that comes from? That comes from JK Rowling. That’s where that comes from. Because people like her call themselves a feminist, but what they really are is a TERF, a trans exclusionary radical feminist, who suggest that only people who are assigned female at birth can be women, and that’s not correct at all. So a true intersectional feminist which I’m so more than happy to call myself is equality for all that includes what gender you identify as, as being valid.

Andy  1:39:44  

I think what it all boils down to is don’t treat other people like an asshole. Really,

Louise  1:39:54  

I mean, it was it was a it was a long walk for us to come to that. But yeah, don’t treat other people like an asshole is, that’s that’s the meaning of the podcast, right? 

Andy  1:40:06  

Yeah. Back to the forest, which is senior preneurs and us starting our business.

Louise  1:40:13  

Okay, okay, maybe you know how when Google launched this slogan was “Don’t be evil”? Maybe ours should have been. “We’re not assholes. We’re trying not to be assholes, we promise”

Andy  1:40:25  

We’ll fly that flag. It’ll be the hill we die on.

Louise  1:40:28  

And if we say something stupid, please correct us. Because we didn’t mean to be an asshole. We’re just ignorant.

Andy  1:40:34  

Yeah. And I think also, you know, a lot of people say, Oh, I can’t say this, because they’ll get offended. Well, you know, the other side of that is if you do offend somebody, own it, and then learn from it. 

Louise  1:40:45  

Yeah, entrepreneurs, which I guess, I guess we are entrepreneurs, we can create opportunities for people, we can create opportunities for everyone who needs a seat at the table, in this case for women, because it’ll pay off for us according to Jacinta Carboon. A point you mentioned earlier was on representation, what would you like to see? Who would you like to see represented more now, and who would you have liked to have seen when you were younger as a role model, or maybe not even a role model, I don’t think that’s the right term for it. But just actually having voices out there that you can look up to and normalise things, 

Jacinta Carboon  1:41:23  

I’m really inspired by young women out there achieving and being successful in their careers. So that’s fantastic. But I also think that you need, we need more women who have gone through the journey that have the experience, and are wise and confident about where they’re at, and, you know, talking more and having more influence on where things go, I’d like to see more of that, because they have so much to offer. You know, like I remember talking to groups of, different groups of women, and you’ll find young women who are very, very successful in their very earliest part of their career. And they’ve got what you’re talking about this glass ceiling, and when you’re talking about pay equity, and this doesn’t make any sense, like what? You know, I’ve seen, and then that’s okay, they have their first might have their first child, and then things that come back to work, then they have the second child, that all changes, everything changes, they go, “Oh, this is what you’re talking about, oh, I’m not kept in the loop at work, I don’t know, I’m missing out on that opportunity. I didn’t get that promotion, because I might have a child one day,” you know then they start to see it, and you can’t actually, it’s very hard to help people understand that without them actually experiencing or, or see closer experience with it. So yeah, there’s a bit of that, I would like to see that you know, more women in influence and actually being taught when in you know, even in the newspapers, you look for most of the newspapers, you see the titles of men, this man talking about that. But you know, you don’t see that many women talking about things, or it is getting better, and are getting much better than what they used to be. And when I get inspired, I see, I’ve read a lot of business papers, and you see a woman CEO, and you know, they’re talking about how she’s running a business and whatever, it’s fantastic. That to me is inspirational, that’s what’s going to help these young girls go “I can do that, you know, I can be successful. But this is this is me, this is where I want to be”. So it’s such a it’s just giving that voice to, out there, in a space where that’s going to be heard. Other people want to hear it.

Andy  1:43:17  

I really want to also just explore this concept of taking advantage of the women’s economy. What do you think is the thing that’s going to help us to reshape economy into doing this, 

Jacinta Carboon  1:43:28  

The female economy is enormous businesses aren’t paying attention to it, because that’s not what they’ve done in the past and have been okay, you know, we’ve got along okay. It could substantially improve if they actually paid attention to what women are looking for, and how women take information on board. Like it’s just enormous. And because women are starting to make very much our own like in that I think in the US women out-earn some of their partners. It’s like, and it’s going up and it’s in Australia’s getting to that point as well. It’s just the amount of money and influence women and decision making that women have influence over is enormous. It’s about actually businesses taking stock and understanding that if they actually do understand this, it couldn’t be that they’re all looking for new products and new services and new ways to make money. If they actually paid attention to one of the most obvious things there, you know, they could do it. So it’s about actually understanding what is it that women want, and how we’re going to deliver that. And that is a good thing, because you actually, women will be getting what they want. So you know, at some, it’s a win win all round. It’s actually just taking the time to understand what is, if I was a woman, how would I look at this? And what does it mean for me? And how would I use it? And how would I actually buy it and how could actually be, how could you catch my attention to actually see it in the first place like thinking about putting themselves in the shoes of women and understanding how they not just generically. then there are women of different ages, you know, whoever their target market is and understanding how they look at it and how they will use that service and how to deliver it and how to make it work and how to develop those realationships. It’s a bit of work. But actually the benefits potentially could be enormous for everybody 

Louise  1:45:07  

And notjust putting it in pink. 

Jacinta Carboon  1:45:08  

That’s right. 

Louise  1:45:10  

I mean, I love that pink. But I don’t need my things to be pink,

Jacinta Carboon  1:45:14  

and honestly I’ve done a lot of research and a lot of companies have tried that… their little pink product or a little pink computer or whatever. That’s just ridiculous. Like, it’s just that’s insulting. It’s just stupid.

Andy  1:45:27  

It sounds like you’re saying that one of the best ways for us to be able to address this is to actually get women in those decision making positions. 

Jacinta Carboon  1:45:35  

Absolutely

Andy  1:45:35  

Saying “this is what we need”. 

Jacinta Carboon  1:45:37  

Yep. That is a no brainer.

Louise  1:45:39  

It’sreally obvious when you say it out loud, right? Why aren’t we doing this?

Jacinta Carboon  1:45:43  

Well, that’s the thing I don’t understand. Like, that’s what I do understand. People just call it more they’re doing but anyway, you know, like on the Tokyo Stock Market about this is like more than 10 years ago, they evaluated some organisation over a 10 year period, and of the companies that went up, don’t quote me on the statistics on this, just to get a bit of an idea, there’s certainly a number of companies that actually focused on women and women’s delivering services products for women over that 10 year period of time, they went up, both organisations went up by 96%, the rest, whereas the rest of the stock market went up by about 13%. So it’s just like, it’s just like, “Hello? Heellooo is everyone listening?” Like, it just makes perfect sense. And it’s all good, because it’s actually “you deliver what I want? Well, fantastic. I don’t care if you’re making money out of me, I’ll have to pay for this stuff. Anyway. Give me something that I want, great” That’s, you know, that just make sense. We’ll keep pushing on with that message at some stage someone will hear. Now there are people listening to it, there’s some people doing very well,

Louise  1:46:43  

Changes coming. Changes is here, but it’s growing and I like that

Andy  1:46:48  

It is growing

Jacinta Carboon  1:46:48  

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Louise  1:46:51  

I truly hope that change is coming Andy. I really, really do.

Andy  1:46:55  

I mean, if we’ve got anything to do with it, we hope that we do make a positive impact in the business that we’re making. But you know, it’s easy when you’re doing this sort of thing, because we’re doing things that don’t seem to be wildly popular choices and…

Louise  1:47:09  

A great business model for us!

Andy  1:47:12  

Absolutely. The little voices pop into your head, don’t they like so you know, “are you just being Woke Wayne? Are you just doing this for the kudos, are you just trying to get brownie points. Ore are you doing this for reals?”

Louise  1:47:23  

Yeah, if you tell people that you focus on having women scientists in your podcast, are they just gonna think you your showboating 

Andy  1:47:29  

Showboating?

Louise  1:47:30  

 Showboating. Is that not? Is that a term?

Andy  1:47:32  

I don’t know, it sounds a bit like motorboating. Do you mean grandstanding?

Louise  1:47:37  

Show ponying is that, is showboating not a term?

Andy  1:47:41  

I’ve not heard the term showboating? That’s a bit like my markers in the sand.

Louise  1:47:51  

Are you showboating if you say you’re focused on amplifying the voices of women scientists or  you know, are you just a douche canoe?

Andy  1:48:00  

Yeah. You know, there’s a name for that and it’s not one we’ve made up.

Louise  1:48:05  

It’s not show ponying

Andy  1:48:07  

Not show ponying. Not dressage. Imposter syndrome.

Louise  1:48:12  

And in the next episode, we’re going to talk to an imposter syndrome expert and occasional imposter syndrome sufferer, Suzanne Mercier,

Suzanne Mercier  1:48:20  

I didn’t feel comfortable with what I’d written down. I didn’t own it. I logically knew it was true, but I didn’t feel it in my heart.

Andy  1:48:28  

We’d like to thank today’s guests for sharing their personal stories and insights and for more information on any of the subjects, guests or references used in this episode. Please see our show notes or ReframeO Mind.com.au

Louise  1:48:40  

Reframe Of Mind is a Welcome Change Media Production.