25: The one about finding your tribe
Today you're joining us on a road trip while discussing the importance of finding and building your business tribe. We're chatting about why going solo doesn't mean going it alone. We break down how having a solid network is basically business oxygen. Forget that toxic competition bullshit - we're all about lifting each other up, sharing the real deal, and creating connections that actually matter. You'll hear how we've survived (and thrived) by having each other's backs, and why our The Women in Business Community is going to be the most badass support system you could imagine.
Number of fucks given in this episode: 7
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
Christine: Welcome to the Fuck Around and Find Out podcast. On the road. Woohoo! Road trip version. Uh, we're Chris, Em and Rah and we're three women in business as you know, shooting the shit on everything. Everything. And playing spotto as we go. Yes. So we thought we might um, have a bit of a chat about, you know, finding your tribe and finding your business buddy, finding your place.
Finding your support network. Really?
Rah: Especially because well, a, there's a tribe in this car. Oh yeah. Yeah. And we've just finished a weekend up in Newcastle with some other tribe members that we found along the way. And
Christine: feeling seriously inspired more than we normally are
Rah: to go get some stuff cracking.
Come up with all the big plans for the next five, how many, like nine months? Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. Easily.
Emily: So yeah. But no matter what you do in business. No matter what industry you're in, it's always worth having someone you can bounce off, someone you can collaborate with, someone you can just soundboard with, run ideas past, people that are literally your tribe, which is kind of how we found each other.
Yeah. At will.
Christine: 100%. Yeah. God yes. You know, given the fact that, you know, so many people are going to be either virtual, remote, or solo in their business, um, you know, you can't constantly. I constantly talk to the Director of Wellbeing, um, all the time. Especially when
Rah: Hurley doesn't answer back a lot of the time.
Well, that's right. He's a dog of few words. Yes, absolutely. I didn't fart, that was just the road bumps. Just to be clear on that. Just in case that doesn't get removed in the editing process. I know, this is absolutely fantastic. Says the woman that does the editing process. Says the woman who's usually the one farting.
Yeah. Yes. Oh, too cool. Do I cut this video?
Emily: You look at us as a tribe and just to get us back on track. Okay. Here's, you know, since we've met Rah, the amount of stuff that we brainstorm with you is just phenomenal. Really? Oh God. Yeah.
Rah: Seriously. I mean, cause it's easy for me to say that, you know, I've got these benefits with you guys because I'm a one woman.
Emily: But it adds validity to what we think and I mean, Chris and I do have the natural ability to bounce off each other, but we are so pretty aligned, pretty much very aligned on everything anyway, that it kind of, it's nice to have that third party validation.
Christine: Yeah. And it is, and I think sometimes like, you know, we've always said, or you know, Emily says it, but I'm thinking it or vice versa.
Yeah. But just the fact that I, I really believe the three of us are thinking it and one of us or two of us voices. Um, and it's just totally, you know, it just is reaffirming that we, we are in sync. We are our tribe and, um, we're on the right track and, and every, every woman in business needs that. A hundred percent.
No matter
Emily: what industry as well. Like if you're a hairdresser, there's other hairdressers out there who, uh, let's be clear, not to competition are people you could collaborate with and learn from. It doesn't always have to be a competition and I think that's the biggest part of it. It's a part that we've all found that we're all pretty passionate about.
It definitely puts me on my soapbox. It's not about being, it's not a competition. No, no. We're all here to do our own thing. We're all individual and unique in our own way. So there's no need to be threatened by other people's presence. You work with them. There's power in numbers. You can achieve so much more when you've got a fabulous fucking tribe behind you.
Yep. It's about lifting each other up and empowering each other and just being there for the highs and the lows. Yep. It's the truest friendship. It's the friendship element of it as well, because it is more than, you know, business. It's friendship. It's, it's family. It's people becoming your family.
Christine: And I think too, because you, as a business owner, and we know how fucking hard being a business owner is, and you've really never worked so hard in your goddamn life.
So you, you know, you, you're working in sync and with other and supporting other people who get it. Yeah. And that's really important.
Emily: Yeah. And like, you know, one of our guest stars who you've all heard speak this year already was the beautiful Marilyn from, um, Guilty Trio Cakes. Yeah. Marilyn taught me how to make cakes.
Marilyn inspired me to start my own cake business. Yeah. And not once, not once was she threatened. She's so fucking good she doesn't need to be. Also, like, I'd never be that good anyway. But she was so encouraging and motivational and so happy to keep educating and all of the things because she is a, you know, You know, that's the truest form of, of collaborating and supporting one another.
Yeah. And
Rah: that's what I loved about that conversation with Marilyn, because you could just say it like not always visible on an audio platform, but just, she really does not think or worry that she is
Emily: reading the competition because she has her own beautifully unique style. She's immensely talented in what she does.
And if someone doesn't want to go with her, they don't go with her. Yeah. It's the same business. Same With us at Juniper Road and you with Rah Rah Gardner, if people aren't right, customers, clients, whatever for us, they're not right for us. Yep. You, we each find where people are ripe for. It's the same thing that applies with accountants, with lawyers, with, you know, anyone in the business services, anyone that's, you know, hairdressers, cake makers, nail artists, chiropractors, physiotherapists, candle stick makers.
Yay. Everything. You know, it's not about a competition. No. And the, the biggest example I think for us. is that Chris and I have always been big on collaborating and working together and meeting the absolutely lovely Rah in the back of my car right now. Yes. Um, and joining together with Rah, like seriously, looking at what we've been able to accomplish this year alone, the year's not even fucking over yet, is astronomical, like, we've been
Christine: taking And the podcast isn't even six months old.
Emily: No. And the
Christine: stuff that's grown from it. Oh, absolutely. But if we kept to ourselves, if Emma and I never joined up forces, if we never joined I've never met you in a networking group, Rah. If we didn't come together, the like mindedness that we share, if we didn't come together and bounce off ideas and talk and problem solve and, and, and dream and educate, we wouldn't be here in this car doing this recording.
Oh my God!
Emily: And that
external validation from someone else. Yeah. It's just, there's so much strength in it. Oh, but also you come up with more ideas, bigger ideas.
Christine: Yeah, you do. And that's your, it's like internal market research. It is. Oh, hell yeah. And even like, um, you know, we've had Lisa from Mitchell Co Hair, um, on the podcast and she's joined forces, um, with Bron from the Nail Salon and they've put together, they found the little community group and they're working with.
The council to do positive things for the shopping center that they, their businesses are in because it's a real value add to the community and it's a value add to their sustainability in business. And, you know, this is community because you've got
Emily: these two businesses that complement each other. Yes.
But they so easily, Oh, you need that done. Oh, go see Brian. Like the referral ability to refer and have people refer to you is, there is nothing that is the best way to grow a business. It's literally who, you know, so importance of having that community and finding those people is, is paramount. You can't, you can't put a price tag on it.
No, you can't. You know, and we've had that, we've all three of us have had that experiences in our businesses this year, especially. And it's also a lot of the reason why we launched our beautiful business community and women in business community for that exact reason to absolutely not be competitive with anyone ever.
But to lift everyone up the best we can, support other women in business, give them a place to be able to find their like minded tribes, get some education going with webinars. We've got our amazing conferences and we've got a secret, secret masterclass series we're working on right now as well to be able to help educate and lift and you know, all those things, um, for this beautiful community that we've got.
Not the beautiful driver that we just had to swerve around ourselves. No, well done. Good driving. Thanks Mike. Um, yeah. So we've got all of this going with our community and that's exactly what we wanted to do. We wanted to have something that's really, really about the community. Yeah. Yeah. And let us help.
Let us give you a platform to do what you do best and show others and find people that you can connect with and grow
Rah: and
Emily: have this happy little, happy little elves, rainbow, unicorn,
Rah: fairy plane. Yeah. Cause the thing that I find talking to my clients, it's the majority of our solo in their business or very small.
Yeah. And so often they come to me for one thing, to help them out, but then discovering the conversations with them, that they've come across all of these roadblocks for different ideas that they want to implement for the business, but because they haven't had the right tribe, they thought that they had a dumb business idea and they were going to shut it down.
And I'm like, ah, no, you've just had the wrong people around you and you've been connected to the wrong people. Professionals. Yeah. And I've put big air quotes around that. Oh my god. Yeah. 'cause they get ghosted, they get promised the world and then get given substandard service or they get told it's not a possible concept.
I'm like, well no, here's the, here's the solution. Let me show you the framework that I have in my head for what you can do with it and make a profitable. And they're like, holy shit. Yeah, exactly. And it's like that's what happens when you find the right people. And it sounds like I'm turning my own horn, which I am.
No, but it should be. But it's at times, you know, that's what happens when you find the right people.
Emily: But it just boosts you a lot. And the important key piece part is get rid of the fucking connivance. Oh yeah. Like it's something that actually irks me to death because I've always looked at businesses and I've always looked at, even in the corporate space, being like, you're killing yourself because you're deciding to be threatened by this.
Yeah. As opposed to identifying that this actually could be a humongous asset to you. Yep. It's all about that relationship building, the networking, it's, it's about who you know, how you connected to them and what you can do with them. With each other. Yeah. Not for each other. Don't fleece people for stuff.
Yeah. It's got to be a two way street. Yeah. And the power of that is just next
Christine: level. It's huge. And you know, that thing about, you know, put aside the competitiveness. If you, if you can join forces with someone in the same business as you, I personally think that that's really good advocacy for the industry that you are in and education piece.
Maybe it is an industry that needs an overhaul, a little bit of extra work to make something right. And. You know, you can come together. Um, but yeah, there's plenty, plenty of people out there to share the load. You know, we've, you know, if we go back, like, you know, there's plenty of cake makers, right. But there's some awesome like Marilyn and you know,
Rah: quite Marilyn, you know, that's right.
But they meet your budget, you know, people who are learning from Marilyn. They may well grow to be as good as her. Yeah. And then you've got,
Christine: you know, hairdressers. We all, you know, we, there's three of us. And we have three different hair, um, hair stylists. There's plenty to go around. They're not competing against each other.
I was trying
Rah: to find a place for coffee and breakfast this morning. Oh my god, yes. Went to one place and realised, oh no, they don't have, they've run out of eggs or whatever the issue was. And then, so we just went to the next one. And they're competitors. Yeah. But, you know, they can still exist in the same shopping
Emily: district.
Yeah. You know, there are things that people will come to us and go, ask, oh I'd like, do you do this service? Oh no we don't, but let me refer you to them. You just have people that do that and it doesn't mean that we're, we're still got the business with them. You know, we had a discussion and they still remember you as the person who referred you for that.
That's right. They come back and ask for more. Like we had a call the other day, a discovery call for a potential new client, wanted a XYZ service. I legitimately ended up talking her out of it. And um, in talking her out of it, I was just being transparent and honest. It wasn't about, I'm not going to say yes to something that I know she won't be able to manage yet.
Or I know is not going to work for her business to get money. I'm not going to say yes to something that is not in my skillset or in the skillset of my team. Committing to things that you are not able to do or not able to provide is also a huge thing you shouldn't be doing. Yeah. But you know, we had this wonderfully transparent conversation with her, completely changed her mindset, gave her some tips and suggestions, didn't end up with any client work, but without a shadow of a doubt, she will be back.
Oh my God. Yeah. She was so grateful. And yeah, that's what we
Christine: thought. She'll be back.
Rah: And it's amazing. A friend of mine has teenage daughters and we all know how much fun that is when you have to get them to get new bras and new hat. It's just a shit show. And this friend is a big fan of going to get them properly sized and fitted and everything.
And you, through, um, you know, school, school mates and the parents, that the local DJs was the place to go to get fitted properly. Go in, get all fitted. Woman was great. And she said, look, we don't have this particular one in this size. Size for you. But then she would said, look, if you actually go to, I was about to say, grace Brothers shows you how old I am, may
If you go to Maya, I know they also stock this particular brand. Yes. Check if they've got the stock or go to a different DJ's or just buy it from the Burley website or you know, whichever brand it was. Not specifically
Emily: only go to DJs.
Christine: Yeah, no. Yeah. So it's, it's more about the customer satisfaction and service Exactly.
Than it is for keeping all the money
Rah: in the same store. And I said to her, 'cause I took this as market research, I said, so. So, next time you need to take one of these girls bra shopping again, God help you. Are you going to go, where will you go? And she said, I'm 100 percent going back to that DJ's. Yep.
Yep. She's not going to go to the place where she knows that they've got the same brand. No. But they don't offer the same service. Yeah. No,
Emily: no. It's same thing I would get from my cake shop. Like I would always go and buy my cake supplies from Pretty Sweet Supplies, shout out to those guys, fucking fabulous, in Castle Hill.
And got such a good relationship with Henry, who store and um, Simon, who's the sales guy who's on all the time, Simon literally knows me so well now that he can almost predict my behavior. And like their prices are competitive, but Simon will straight up, I'll walk in and be like, do you have XYZ? He'll be like, no, completely out of stock.
Go check cake decorating central on the other, like just five minutes away. He's like, sorry, I'm getting it back. But he has not even a single qualm being like, go check somewhere else. He knows I'll come back because he's got such a personalized service. And if I need something. They've often been out of turn things around for me relatively quickly.
They've made the effort to help me so many times that I will forevermore go there because they're my people and you know that we wanted to create this beautiful network of, of that kind of strength. Let everyone reach out. But it's also the same thing if, if you're in your own business and you're struggling, you need help or you need advice or you need, I just don't know where to go.
I don't know how to grow my business. I need some clients, whatever it might be. You know, So we call that out in the community too, because there will be people that will help you. Yep. When you find a group of women who really are keen and adamant about supporting other women, the strength behind that is paramount.
It
Rah: is just phenomenal. And the benefit as well of having different tribes, so it's a bit like how you've got different groups of mates. Yeah! So you've got your mates from school, mates from uni, school mums, people that you meet through networking, you know. I find I've got my, you know, from different networks that I've been part of, and I've I'm a little So, um, I have some really cool accountability buddies and things like that, but I can go to different groups because I want a different type of skill set.
Yes. Different perspectives. Yeah. Yeah. Thank
Emily: you.
Rah: The coffee clearly hasn't worked today. Different people have
Emily: different levels of experience. They do. Yeah, and just their different,
Rah: yeah, their different mindsets, you know. So if I want someone who, you know, I'm looking for, like this happened last week, a friend of mine said they were looking for a specific type of person.
And I was like, well, I don't know. But I know which network is the best one to ask that question and went to them. And then, you know, previous times I've been looking for things and I've gone, actually my accountability group that I made on a Monday are the best people to ask about that and get the feedback because they've got that, we've got the history.
We've been, you know, working together for a few months and you can get trusted feedback on that. So, you know, having, having your pockets as well, different pockets that you can reach into can be really powerful. It is so, so important. Yeah. Which again, And that is why we've created the ever fabulous women in business community.
So the main takeaway we want you to do is join our community, join our community. Yeah. Yeah. Let us help you. Let us uplift you. Let us connect you with people. So if you search for women in business and your nearest capital city, so we've set up all the capital cities for Australia and yeah, pick the nearest one and you know, join.
Yeah. Promote yourself, put your services out there, your offers. You've got a website. face to face training and yeah, share it. And if you're looking for something specific
Emily: or absolutely. And if you're not sure where to find us through Facebook or you can't find us, go to www. thewomeninbusiness. com. au and you'll find all of your things there.
Um, and we can go from there. Um, and yeah, you can find it. Well, I've got it all listed there. We've got all listed there. We've got all the community groups. We've got a calendar of events running as well. Yep. There's a lot of things we've got in the plan that are coming up shortly too, to help educate and uplift businesses.
So keep an eye out for that.
Rah: There's exciting times coming. Yep. And the, my big advice that I always give to people who haven't found their tribe is just get yourself out there. Yeah. And your tribe can be people on Instagram, on LinkedIn, and even the virtual people, like you have your parasocial relationships with the people that you listen to on a podcast, which, oh my God, I've just tweaked.
I'm sort of talking about what we do, but by having, you know, those people that you listen to on podcasts as well, they form part of your tribe, even if, you know, we might, you might be talking back to us and even though we can't hear you, you know, it's still, it's It's all about keeping your brain firing on as many cylinders as you can manage on any given day.
And you know, then when you're ready, go to a network, join, you know, follow the people that you adore on Instagram and engage with their content. Message them, tell them, tell them how much stuff resonated with you. Especially, I mean, do that with us. We love that stuff. We love those stories. We love hearing.
We share the screenshots and then we start high fiving each other on our Slack channel. Yeah,
Emily: like share that stuff with us too because we just love it. And, you know, if you're not sure where to look or anything, send us a message. If you, if you've got a question, send us a message. If you, you know, need a bit of advice, send us a message.
Like we're, we're very approachable human beings. We are as chaotic in real life as we may sound on this podcast. Possibly more. And in, and in real life. Oh my God. Yes.
Christine: Trying not to crash a car while driving. Well, that's because the other cars
Rah: are being a bit crazy today. Yeah. Yes. But let's be clear, we are driving safely.
There's no touching of phones while driving. No, absolutely not. That's true. We've got a Subaru. Yeah. 5 cyl, air and cat, safety rating. Yes, that's right. Airbags everywhere. We've been on the road the entire time. That's right.
Christine: No laws being broken.
Rah: But we are very excited to notice that we're pulling into a servo very shortly so we can get another caffeine hit.
Yes. So I think that might be time for us to wrap it up ladies.
Christine: Thanks for joining us today. Yes.
Rah: Anything that we mentioned, we'll put the links in the show notes if you'd like. If you haven't, like, subscribe, tell your friends, follow the community, tell us, yeah, come and join our tribe. Everyone's welcome.
The end. Ta
da!
