Today’s guest is South African mountaineer Cathy O’Dowd, the first woman to climb Mount Everest from both sides. 

Her many Himalayan expeditions have provided her with extensive experience with individuals and teams, facing stress, risk, and overwhelming challenge. 

Pre-COVID, she shared insights with corporate audiences all over the world through story-driven expedition case studies. 

Post-COVID, she has had to shift her business online like many of us and is grateful that she lives in Andorra in the Pyrenees Mountains, where she can hike every day and run her business from her phone on the side of a mountain. 

In this candid interview, Cathy shares some of her silver linings from the pandemic, what led her to become a mountain climber, and some of the tragic circumstances of her first Everest expedition.

Tuning in, you’ll find out why she believes in teamwork over the competition, opportunities over achievements, and lifestyle over the business. 

All this and more in today’s episode, so don’t miss it!

Here’s a peek at what else we discuss: 

This week’s Joy:  The discovery of joy brought by walking just two kilometers outside the house and watching flowers bloom which she overlooked before because she was busy on the bigger picture.

This week’s Hustle:  Setting up a whole home office that is fully accessible from her phone. She loves the fact that she can go to the mountains and still closely monitor her emails and clients using her phone.

In our business, we're big fans of financial literacy and accountability. Knowing your numbers is an essential aspect of building a successful business and inherent responsibility for any entrepreneur. 

What you focus on grows, so pay attention to your money.

We use Bench for our bookkeeping. It's simple, elegant, and saves us so many hours that would otherwise be spent neck-deep in receipts on the other side of a spreadsheet.

Each month our transactions are automatically imported into Bench and we get on-demand financial reports. We even enjoy opening up our profit and loss statement to review each month. When tax time comes around, we are up to date and ready to go. And this is what Financial Empowerment feels like.

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