The Women In Business Radio Show

What do your finances and your pelvic floor have in common? More than you'd think.

In this episode of the Women in Business Radio Show, Sian Murphy and co-host Michele YianniAttard are joined by two brilliant guests: Rebecca Robertson, independent financial adviser and founder of Evolution Financial Planning, and Françoise de Smet, women's health practitioner and founder of Hypocore.
The conversation starts in very different territories but lands somewhere surprisingly connected: the things women quietly ignore until they become a crisis. Whether that's money they're not looking at, symptoms they've been told are "just normal," or professionals they've trusted without checking the credentials.
Rebecca talks about what it really means to get independent financial advice, why who pays your adviser matters more than you think, and how body doubling could help you tackle the tasks you keep avoiding. Françoise introduces Hypopressives, a breath and posture-based practice that supports pelvic floor health without requiring you to know where your pelvic floor actually is.

Honest, funny, and hopefully useful. Hit subscribe so you never miss an episode.
★ Support this podcast ★

Creators and Guests

Host
Michele Yianni-Attard
Host
Sian Murphy
Guest
Francoise de Smet
Françoise de Smet is a women's health practitioner and founder of Hypocore, with over 26 years of experience in fitness and wellbeing. Originally trained as a personal trainer, her work evolved after seeing how many women were struggling with symptoms they had been told were simply normal. She now specialises in Hypopressives, a gentle breath and posture-based practice that supports core and pelvic floor health, helping women move, breathe, and live with greater ease and confidence. As a mother of four, she brings both professional expertise and real-life understanding to everything she does. Find her at hypocore.co.uk or on Instagram at @speakingfrank.
Guest
Rebecca Robertson
Rebecca Robertson is an independent financial adviser, wealth creation strategist, and founder of Evolution Financial Planning. With more than two decades in the industry, she set up her firm in 2011 with a clear purpose: to help women and families make informed, confident financial decisions at every stage of life. Rebecca works with clients on everything from pensions and retirement planning to mortgages, protection, and inheritance tax planning. She is also the host of the Accelerating Your Wealth podcast and author of 10 Ways to Accelerate Your Wealth. Find her at rebeccarobertson.co.uk or evolutionfinancialplanning.co.uk.

What is The Women In Business Radio Show?

Tune in for fun, inspiration and unfiltered discussions as host Sian Murphy interviews down-to-earth businesswomen sharing ideas, tactics and stories.

Regular features include recommended books, tools, lessons learned and top tips for business.

Sian:

Hello, and welcome to the Women in Business Radio Show. I'm Sian Murphy. And

Michele:

I'm Michele YianniAttard.

Sian:

My cohost and our guests in

Rebecca:

the studio today are Rebecca Robertson and Francoise de Smith.

Sian:

Just tell us a little bit about what you all do. Michele, I I sort of know what you do, but people listening in may not. So just tell us what

Michele:

you Okay. So I'm a director of Savvy Skills, which is accredited partner for the IAB, which is the Institute of Accountant and Bookkeepers. Very lovely business. I know it is.

Sian:

It's very lovely business. I've great I've business heard the other director's a little loopy, never mind. Possibly.

Michele:

And Future Insight Consultancy or Future Insight Group?

Sian:

Accountants,

Michele:

bookkeepers. Accountants, bookkeepers, everything Rebecca. Related to that

Rebecca:

I'm an independent financial adviser, and I'm a director principal of my own IFA firm. So we have a team of mortgage advisers, wheel writers protection, and financial advisers doing pensions, etcetera. But me myself, I have a real passion for my own podcast and my book.

Sian:

And your bookies. Accelerating your wealth, 10

Rebecca:

ways to accelerate your wealth. And then my podcast is accelerating your wealth. So it's all around Our premise is really about supporting women with financial decisions and encouraging them through times of difficulty or times of change to really make some really informed financial decisions. Francoise?

Francoise:

I'm the fanny fairy, so very different kettle of fish sitting on the other end of

Rebecca:

the table. Would you say the word fish?

Sian:

I'm going to explain how, and people who listen to this regularly will wonder how on earth there's any thread anyway because there normally isn't, but how we're actually going to tie this together. Mhmm. But sorry, Francois, tell us what you do.

Francoise:

I teach something very specific called hyperpressives. My background is health and wellness, and I've been a personal trainer since the age of 19. I'm the ripe old age of 45 now. So that's quite a long time working in the fitness industry. And I came across hyperpressives coming up to four years ago and it blew my mind because it's helping women with something that is pretty taboo to talk about.

Francoise:

However, very effective and yeah, essentially fixing fannies.

Sian:

Okay. We will. Need hear this. Sounds great.

Sian:

Can I say we're going to be going into that in more depth later?

Sian:

Who knows? So the other thing I need to say

Sian:

about Rebecca and Francoise is they are both VIP exhibitors at the Women in Business Big Show. The Women in Business Big Show is, it's around about sort of the long field area. It is definitely on the August 6, however, and it brings together not just women actually, it brings together men as well, it brings together business people, brings together people who may be making jewelry on their kitchen table together with people who have really large established businesses because we all need each other.

Francoise:

Mhmm.

Sian:

That's what it's about. If you want to know how you can come along as a visitor, that's free. There will be some information going out on our social media stuff. Also, you can just go and visit the womeninbusinessbigshow.com. And of course, Michele is one of our lovely sponsors and has been really since we started it up, which is how Michele and I met.

Sian:

We did. So how are we going to draw all of this together? Well, I'd like to pretend that there was some thought in this, that everybody arrived here because there is a theme and that's not the case at all. I normally just people people come on when they're coming on especially when they're VIP exhibitors. And then I will look for something that's a common denominator theme that we can use to pull it together.

Sian:

Either that or we just talk at random about everything. However, we do actually have a common three theme here. And it's that money, wealth, finance, and your family, women's problems, wombs, periods, men wetting yourself, all of that sort of thing are two things. They can be quite difficult to talk about.

Sian:

Mhmm.

Sian:

And there can be a taboo about them. Not only as a society, so not only a societal taboo, but a taboo in so much as sometimes a fear, a reluctance to deal with stuff. You know, we don't like looking at our money, you know, sometimes you'll hear about families who have an embargo on discussing money around the dinner table. I've never sat down to a family meal and discussed female incontinence in my vagina. I don't know about you, it's not something that regularly crops up over the shepherd's pie.

Sian:

So even if we don't talk about it in open, we would we'd also tend very often not to talk about it ourselves and not to do anything about it. Both of those topics are the sorts of things that as far as we're concerned, very often get just left. They get neglected. We don't deal with them proactively until such time as we go bankrupt, something a relationship collapses, which means that there are mortgage and finance issues that need to be resolved or until we actually start wetting ourselves or there's some sort of prolapse. So basically until something really quite critical happens that brings things to the fore and forces us to deal with it.

Sian:

It's a sort of thing that I think a combination of of maybe fear, not enough time, not enough of a sense of emergency that can wait until tomorrow, they get left. And that very often isn't the time to be dealing with it. So we're gonna deal with this in sort of three ways today. We're gonna look at the finance issue and why we do sometimes neglect finance and what we can do about it. And that's also in our businesses, you know, very often we come across and this isn't just women, this isn't a women thing, where people don't look at what their business is doing.

Sian:

They don't know what their key numbers are. They don't know, you know, they may know what their turnover is, but they don't know what their profit is. They don't know other, you know, sort of key key indicators around their business. And health doesn't get looked at, it doesn't get addressed, it doesn't get dealt with, the workouts don't happen until such time as guess what, something drops off or falls down or collapses. As well as those individual issues, and what you can do about it.

Sian:

So that's sort of three areas. So what do you reckon? Who should

Michele:

we start with, Michele? I think. Let's start with Francois.

Sian:

So Francois, you've given us a little bit of an idea about how you got in how you got into this. Is there anything because we do like little bit of personal stuff.

Michele:

Yeah. We

Sian:

do. Is is there anything sort of personal in your journey that led you to deal with that? Or was it that you were dealing with women and you were seeing this problem coming up?

Francoise:

I found out about hyperpressors totally by accident, but it does like we seem seem to see in the universe, just put things in front of us that make total sense. And it's so lucky that it happened. I was building a fitness app and somebody asked me if hyperpressis was gonna be in it. And I was like, I've never heard of that. So I don't think so.

Francoise:

I went down the rabbit hole finding out what hyperpressives was. Totally blown away by the fact that health professionals and fitness professionals are not taught this as a foundation. And after one day of going down and and figuring out what it was, I was like, I have to do this. And it has changed my life. I'm a mom of four.

Francoise:

They were all born by c sections, so I always thought, well, I won't have any issues because, you

Michele:

know,

Francoise:

c sections, although that brings a whole different area of issues, and the awareness that it brought to my life, my health, my fitness journey, which is very important to me, is just incredible. And after having started to talk openly about it, it's amazing how many women are struggling yet silently because it's not a common thing that we talk about.

Sian:

Yeah. Can I just can I just get a little bit more information about hyperpressives? Because we're talking about women sort of like wetting themselves and we're talking about hyperpressives. Firstly, what are hyperpressives? And do is it if I say exclusively, but is it mainly this problem of wetting ourselves that that it helps with or does it have a broader sort of impact?

Francoise:

Great question. Most people find high compressors are typically women when they are they've tried everything else and that seems to be something that pops up. It's not spoken about enough. And our traditional remedies for pelvic floor issues tend to have not worked for them. It is for it is for men and women.

Francoise:

It's a it's an exercise. I prefer to see it as a flow because it's much slower than what I see as exercise. There's no big heavy sweating, need to have a shower, need exercise equipment and a sports bra. It's a more of a mindful practice that incorporates a specific way of breathing and the way we are holding ourselves in different postures. What it does is it calms the nervous system and it gets the pelvic floor to respond in a functional way as opposed to try and train the pelvic floor specifically.

Francoise:

So where it's been around since 1980, it's not a new fad. It's been around for a very long time, but what maybe it wasn't sexy enough. Who knows that it didn't get that big forefront thing like Pilates do and traditional core work does. But it's effective in far more it's far more effective than your traditional works. Traditional work would be about strengthening your core or strengthening your pelvic floor.

Francoise:

We all know what Pilates or Kegels is or think we know.

Sian:

Well, I'm I'm not sure. So what what are Kegels?

Francoise:

So Kegels is when you're trying to activate your pelvic floor. Now there's really a problem with that because some women maybe want,

Sian:

where is my pelvic floor?

Michele:

Yeah. Am I doing it right?

Sian:

I can't. I I've I've often had that in Pilates where somebody say, well, pull your tummy muscles up towards your navel. How exactly do you do that?

Sian:

Exactly, exactly. Certainly when you don't have any tummy muscles, but how, what

Sian:

does that feel like? How do you do that?

Francoise:

Well, it goes even deeper than that because that's trying to activate your transverse abdominal muscles, your pelvic floor is even harder. So I used to think I was quite good at teaching women to work from their pelvic floor, engage, tighten and then move in a squat or push up or whatnot.

Sian:

So this is Kegels where you're where you try and stop the flow of having a wee?

Francoise:

Basically, yes. Although I would never recommend anybody You to do should actually really

Sian:

have It

Sian:

used to be quite a common thing, wasn't it? That you that I I remember being taught that, that if you want to protect your pelvic floor or, you know, not have your bladder letting you down, that you would try and stop the flow of urine. Yeah. And you do that a few times, and then you're

Francoise:

aware of the strength. You can actually cause a UTI.

Sian:

So, yeah, I wouldn't recommend doing that

Michele:

stuff. I

Francoise:

used to say, feeling your pelvic floor is first imagine you need to pass wind and you're holding it in. Everyone's tried that before. Like, can't let it pass out now. So think of you need to pass when you're holding it in. That's activating the back end of your pelvic floor.

Francoise:

And then you need a wee and you're holding it in. So it's like an internal zip from the back to the front, and then you pull your navel to your belly button. So like a big zip from the back to the front, you should see Sian's face. She's like, what? My brain can't compute.

Sian:

Exactly that. So So so it's not that you're not holding it, not stopping yourself having a weight. It's just that you're doing it with something else.

Francoise:

You don't want to be yeah. You're just doing it sitting in the chair right now trying to lift the pelvic floor up, and

Sian:

that visualization often helps people. But that's not what I teach, so let's shelve that because it doesn't work.

Sian:

Yeah. Exactly. That's just

Michele:

so you're doing more. 100% it doesn't work. I'm not gonna do it anyway.

Sian:

I can just move on quick. Exactly.

Francoise:

Yep. That's not hyperpressive. So that would be a Kegel example Got you. Of trying to activate So those we're not good doing

Sian:

that at all. No. Because most of us are like, where the heck

Francoise:

are my pelvic floor muscles?

Sian:

I'm a professional and I

Francoise:

still struggle with that whole visualization and knowing where the muscles are. I can feel your bias any of that a lot of people struggle with.

Sian:

Mhmm.

Francoise:

That's not hyperpressives. Hyperpressives is getting you to breathe in a much better way because we're again, we're doing it all day long, but we're actually doing it very ineffectively.

Sian:

Mhmm.

Francoise:

We're all sitting humped over over our phone, over our computer in the car. You wanna have that elongation as sitting up nice and tall, but relaxing your shoulders. And then you're breathing into your rib cage. You're trying to have an expanse in the when through your rib cage when you're breathing, which very few of us do have.

Sian:

Mhmm.

Francoise:

And certainly when you're overwhelmed, stressed, worrying about money Yeah. We're holding everything. Women are really good. We we tend to hold hold

Sian:

breath up in the top of our chest up by our neck and our shoulders are hunched up. Yep. And we're we're shallow breathing. And if you've got any level

Francoise:

of pelvic floor dysfunction or a prolapse, you're actually trying to grip and hold everything in and then we're we're curving over even more. What we're doing in hyperpressives is we're managing pressure in our intra abdominal area. So in your tummy area, we've got an element of pressure that we're trying to manage all the time because we've got all our internal organs. When you take a breath in, your diaphragm's pressing down, so it's increasing the pressure. There's so much going on.

Francoise:

So when you're all of this doesn't necessarily need to make sense when you're doing hyperpressives because what I'm taking on is a journey of breathing with teaching points of just trying to relax and visualize things where you're taking all the attention away from the pelvic floor. Are you saying it's quite easy to do that you follow instruction and you don't necessarily have to feel anything internally. Yes. It will work out where

Sian:

you're feeling.

Rebecca:

She's been

Francoise:

on the program for a week now, so be interesting to see whether or not it's easy It is. To follow.

Michele:

It is easy follow. The videos are amazing.

Sian:

So you don't have to you don't have to worry about if you're activating this particular muscle and what that should feel like No. It didn't feel like

Michele:

it was just about learning how to breathe properly. We don't breathe properly. And learning how to breathe properly, I was like, after the session, I felt like something had lifted off my shoulders. So I felt much more at ease, much more relaxed, if that makes sense. But breathing properly and expressing how I breathe.

Michele:

Because how you express yourself on the video is about how to breathe but loudly, so I do it downstairs in my den. So I'm breathing

Sian:

You've become a mouth Could you give us an example? Understand why. Know, it's like

Francoise:

So essentially, I'll that.

Michele:

Yeah. It's it's really, yeah, explain that about I love the breathing flow and it makes you feel we don't breathe. I like you, I hold before, I hold so much tension in my shoulders, in the back of my neck. So it feels like when you wake up in the morning and you're stiff, that's how your body feels stiff. And that's because you're not breathing properly through the night, and I know that.

Michele:

But once I've done in this technique and learning to breathe and sit in and stand in, I feel much more comfortable and it feels like in fact, it's improved if there are any singers out there, seriously. If there are any singers like I've even said to Macy, she needs to do this.

Sian:

So Macy is Michele's daughter Yeah. Who is a singer.

Michele:

She is. She does singing at the weekend. It really helps with the, you know, I was putting air into the middle, you know, down here and in the whole of my lungs and my lungs were expanding.

Sian:

So what you're saying is that there's not a lot of brainpower involved

Rebecca:

No, absolutely.

Sian:

Because I think I think that's always been a barrier for me certainly is that I don't know, I really don't know what muscles I'm activating. I don't have I don't have the time or the energy. I couldn't be bothered. So this just makes it a lot easier.

Rebecca:

Absolutely. So you're

Sian:

doing stuff without but you do need to focus on your breath. Some people find that uncomfortable. Yep. I used to, but I have sort of I've got over that.

Francoise:

Very different type of breathing though. It's not a breath work session where you're getting some sort of release. I've been to different kind of breath therapy sessions. It's not that. It it's about diaphragmatic lateral breathing.

Francoise:

Yeah. Expanding through your breath. You're breathing in through your nose which really immediately calms down your nervous system and works your vagus nerve. And then you're breathing out through your mouth is what we encourage you to do when you begin. As you you get more advanced, you can breathe out through your nose.

Francoise:

So nasal breathing is really good for you. But the reason you're encouraged to breathe out through your mouth when you initially start is because we hold so much tension. That's right.

Michele:

Exactly. That's what I was saying.

Sian:

I've got a long list of showing that now. I'm not gonna be harumphing down the microphone in a minute. No, but that's not gonna be good.

Michele:

Yeah, you would technically we wouldn't do the sex, I wouldn't do it right now. No. But when you're at home, I wouldn't do it in my bedroom either if my husband's still sleeping because you do make a noise to do it, so

Sian:

Oh, please make her do No.

Sian:

No. I This helps, I don't make a noise when

Sian:

I'm doing my breakfast. I was As

Sian:

soon as I go downstairs and start doing heavy that.

Sian:

Breathing while I'm sleeping, while I'm trying to sleep, when I'm on my own. You're gonna get another me pillow. Or I'm concentrating.

Sian:

And there's somebody going

Francoise:

Yeah. That's not what

Sian:

it sounds like. Yeah. They've got

Sian:

a cold or something. I try and be try and be nice. I know. I try and be sympathetic, but I'm afraid I have to ask to leave They have to leave the room.

Francoise:

Yeah. Get triggered by noises as well, Sian.

Sian:

Yeah. Yeah. That's it. Yeah.

Michele:

So that's exactly why I go down go downstairs to do to do this form of exercise with the breathing. I'm just trying to master the breathing because it's only been a week, but I

Francoise:

Very early days.

Michele:

But I've already seen around, like you say, in my neck and my shoulders a difference.

Sian:

I think so I think what you're saying here is that the breathing side of it sort of has has two impacts. One is on our nervous system, and I know that for instance, the American American marines use, I think box breathing to remain calm when they're entering into stress situations

Rebecca:

Mhmm.

Sian:

So that they can still make good decisions. So we're hitting the nervous system regulation, as well as doing things to our bits and pieces downstairs. I can't think of another one here. Where we're starting to sort of tighten up the tone and resolve some it's a

Francoise:

tone where our pelvic floor Mhmm. Some of the stuff that Michele's described is she's hold we know she's a very busy lady, she's got a lot on her plate juggling many balls. And our pelvic floors

Sian:

We're coming to ball staffs.

Sian:

Come into the studio.

Sian:

So I I don't know.

Francoise:

So where was I? So essentially, our pelvic floor is having to hold a lot together for us. Yep. And it shouldn't have to it it keeps having to work harder. And what I identify with a lot of women is that their pelvic floors are not necessarily weak, they're just overactive and working all the time.

Sian:

So I don't know if you know the answer to this, but is this something that is a symptom of our modern sedentary life? Or or is it something that's always been an issue for us? Because it seems like a massive design flaw. It that we it

Sian:

a flaw?

Sian:

Yeah. Is is it that we have stopped breathing properly? How is this

Francoise:

Yes. Well, we were all very dysfunctional in our posture

Sian:

for I one can't help thinking, know, as as cavemen, cavewomen, or as we were sort of evolving, this

Francoise:

is this is like it's They were sitting breathing better

Sian:

than us.

Francoise:

Doesn't fit. There were something much of challenge. A lot more downtime. We weren't working and stimulated as much as we are now. Right?

Sian:

So we

Francoise:

are worried about everything. We're doing 50,000,000 things at once.

Sian:

So our We also So it's worth holding our breath in.

Francoise:

Yeah. And and we're we're sitting a lot, but it it doesn't just affect sedentary people.

Sian:

Got you. Okay.

Francoise:

Professional sportsmen have a high incidence of incontinence because their core is actually too strong. Cause it's about the pressure management. If your pressure is really if you you're creating a lot of pressure internally, you're pushing down onto the floor. I carry my chicken around because

Sian:

it's But actually we we it's there's this revolting chicken. Alright. But I was gonna ask about

Sian:

this chicken. We're gonna take a picture of it, but it's so good to

Sian:

what see I thought it

Michele:

was comfort.

Sian:

Yeah. Not a good I'm using only comfort.

Sian:

No, dude, because we're we're at

Sian:

the moment, we're not on video. Yes. Yeah. But nobody can see this. Trust me, it's not attractive.

Sian:

It's a

Sian:

yellow rubber chicken. I have no idea.

Francoise:

It's squish them and the bottom end. Well, funny enough it was in when I went down the rabbit hole and somebody asked me about hyperpressives, I was like, no idea. And it was in one of the videos, and the very next day is while I booked the course straight away, I went into a toy shop, and it was the very first thing I saw. So it's something you find in a toy shop,

Sian:

you squid it and the boxer.

Sian:

It's disgusting, this thing.

Francoise:

It pushes your essentially, that would be a prolapse.

Sian:

Right? I no idea why that would be in a toy shop.

Sian:

Okay, we're gonna take a

Sian:

picture of that and where that is gonna go with us.

Francoise:

A great example of pressure management, so if you've got really tight diaphragm and you're hunched over, can you see what's happening down to the pelvic floor? Yeah. Essentially, it's pushing out.

Michele:

Push pressure pressure on on it.

Sian:

If you've

Francoise:

got if you're a professional sports person and you've got really strong rectus abdominal muscles, really strong back muscles, and everything's being squeezed in and tightened, you can see what's going to happen to the Okay. Pelvic

Sian:

That's that really is So you can see if you're

Francoise:

if you're hunched over That's

Sian:

quite a discolor.

Francoise:

That's quite a lift something heavy

Rebecca:

That's it.

Francoise:

Right. Doing a plank, doing a crunch, the pelvic floor really does have a lot of pressure pressed against it.

Sian:

Doing lots of exercises, doing lots of this core Professional sportsman is very high incidence. Not necessarily, everything's fantastic, there are still things that you need to look at.

Rebecca:

Right. Can I ask a question? Yes. So in that case, if you've got sort of women going into menopause and perimenopause who aren't necessarily exercising and they are stressed out, Why does it get worse when you're going into menopause?

Francoise:

Really good question. Some loose statistics. Up to the age of 30, one in three women identify that they've got a pelvic floor dysfunction. That goes up to two in four women up to the age of 40. Past the age of 40, that's three in four women.

Rebecca:

There's four of us here today.

Francoise:

There we go. So easily three of us in the room who have got some level of issue.

Sian:

Okay. Minimal point. Question is, I don't think I have a pelvic floor issue. I don't pee myself. I I can in fact, I'm like a camel.

Sian:

I can go all day. How did how did you know? So I don't think I should we we could have a bit of a hands up here. I don't believe I have a problem. I have a problem.

Rebecca:

I have a problem.

Francoise:

Yeah. And mine mine is usually due to when I'm being when I'm stressed or after a workout I've

Sian:

got stronger muscles Let or those

Sian:

let me me let me

Sian:

just indulge me just for a moment. Okay. Problem. You more No. More No.

Sian:

I'm just hang on. I'm not I'm not looking smug at all.

Sian:

Okay?

Sian:

I don't I bet you are. No. Alright, I am. I don't exercise, really. I don't exercise.

Sian:

I eat and drink sort of pretty much what I wanna eat and drink. I do walk. I do walk. I have what a lot of people consider to be

Francoise:

a Sian, high stress do you have lower back pain and issues?

Sian:

No. No back pain? No. I used to, actually. I used to have a lot of problem down with back pain, but structural.

Sian:

Not not a not a pain pain, you know, like a diffuse pain structural. So I have sort of what I might call slip disc issues, that sort of thing, but I don't anymore. I do, however, do some I wanna say stretching. I'm hypermobile, so I have to be careful. But I do try and keep mobile in my back area.

Sian:

So, no, I don't have pain there.

Rebecca:

Okay. I don't know who's given birth and or vaginally or But c section.

Francoise:

Again, so women are still having issues because that that's a preconception again is that, oh, I've had children so I'm gonna have issues. A lot of women who haven't had children still have issues. And so answering Sian's question, we or or observation was more than a question because yet

Sian:

not everyone is struggling. No. It was how do you know? How do know? I don't, you know, I don't do things that I should do.

Sian:

And so therefore, I'm wondering if I I I can't imagine that women are just sort of sat there one day and then suddenly there's

Francoise:

a gush. No, there isn't. Yeah. And that's the thing. I didn't realize I was incontinent.

Francoise:

Oops. Sorry. I'm literally eating excitement, eating the microphone. I didn't realize I was incontinent. And it was it was that little dribble after I thought I'd emptied my bladder and I wasn't paying attention to it.

Francoise:

I'm like,

Sian:

oh, crap, nigga's away. I just had a wee.

Francoise:

What on earth? Right. Exactly.

Sian:

That that sort of what I mean, other little things that

Michele:

That we ignore.

Sian:

That we ignore because we don't think about them, we don't think they're a major issue. We're not gushing water down the You're having to wear

Michele:

a pad

Rebecca:

just to get through

Francoise:

your day. No, it's sexual discomfort. It's not not feeling anything when you're having intercourse. It's feeling of heaviness or dragging Yeah. Really erratic periods, all sorts of things.

Rebecca:

Yeah, mine mine's been more stressed. So before I got on a horse that I knew was gonna be an asshole, I'd have a little bit of wee come out because it's like, oh my god, shit. What could happen? Because you just don't, you know, have accidents, your body starts to react. There's nothing I can do about it.

Rebecca:

I can have an empty bladder and my body will just react. Yeah. And that's how it started for me. Yeah. Okay.

Rebecca:

And then when became, I'd recognised I was actually perimenopausal, went on HRT and whilst I was waiting for the HRT or I was just before having HRT, at one point I couldn't leave the house. I went through a long period of time where I wasn't able to leave the house because I didn't know if I was going to have an accident. And I talk really, I mean I'm a fit person, I'm not I'm within my weight, I have no back issues but I have had an episiotomy which is where you're helped with the baby coming out, and I have had a c section, and now I'm on HRT, I I'm would say I'm absolutely fine, but I am a lot better. If I'm going through a really stressful period, I have to be very careful how much I drink and when I stop drinking, so I have some water in front of me now.

Sian:

Mhmm.

Rebecca:

At some point I will stop drinking because the car journey home is something I have to constantly be aware of.

Sian:

Okay. So I actually try and drink as much as not as much as I can, but I try and get a good Yeah. And I can't take HRT, I can't have any hormone replacement therapy at all. But what what where I think I feel like this is heading for me is that it doesn't really matter whether I think I've got any symptoms or not, as far as that's concerned. I think the the breath work itself is I think there's a lot of benefit to be had from that.

Sian:

So I do try and do that. I do try and become aware of my breathing when I'm shallow breathing. And so as far as I can see, having some structure around breath work, it's like double bubble.

Sian:

Mhmm.

Sian:

You're going to be helping yourself calm down. You're going to be helping yourself regulate your nervous system. And if at the same time that you're doing that, you can also start to strengthen your pelvic floor and strengthen. I wouldn't think it just stops there. I wouldn't think you you do a bit of breathing and it goes down and goes, I'm gonna do the pelvic floor bit.

Sian:

I'm just I'm not gonna help anything else. I'm just doing that. Yeah.

Francoise:

It's a full body Yes.

Michele:

It is a body.

Francoise:

And I do wanna loop background and answer your question in terms of perimenopausal stage when and why it affects women once we've entered that stage of life is our pelvic floor is made a lot of connective tissue, fascia. And fascia is heavily affected in our hormone change. We lose the elastin and the collagen

Sian:

Mhmm.

Francoise:

And we lose the the functionality of our pelvic floor. Hence, why we notice far more going on. So as you balance your hormones, yes, that would have helped, but it's still the pelvic floor can really do with the whole nervous system regulation. It can do a lot from it gets massive benefit from being switched on or being switched off if you're very hypertonic.

Sian:

Mhmm.

Francoise:

A lot of women tend to think they've got weak pelvic floor because they're experiencing symptoms, but it's not about being weak. It's about being overactive. And when you're in periods, when it has stressed you that much because to have to be stuck indoors is horrendous. What a massive overload of overthinking, worrying, what's going

Sian:

on with I my was gonna say especially when you're running a business, business, actually doesn't really matter, does it? It doesn't matter whether you're running a business

Francoise:

you're running a family going

Sian:

leave for a job, it doesn't matter what you're doing. If you can't leave the house because you're not sure if you're gonna wet yourself, that stress. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely.

Sian:

Francois, how do people if you haven't got your contact details absolutely handy right now, we can come back to you. But how can people get hold of you? Because I think this program is available wherever you are. They don't have to sit down with you, do they?

Francoise:

No, they don't. But one of the leading things I like to high highlight is where this is a topic which is very uncomfortable to talk about. I I have no discomfort talking about. I've heard all sorts of things. And sometimes it's hard to go to your professional, the professionals to go and ask.

Francoise:

I don't know about you, but I don't wanna go and speak to my GP about most things, let alone what's going on with my Yeah. With my bits. So just come and have a talk. That's the first thing is if you're like, oh, I'm not sure. It takes on average a woman up to seven years to ask for help when she's noticed she's got a problem.

Francoise:

So just talk about let's make it more something that we talk about like menopause Mhmm. So women are more comfortable to talk about it. My website is it's called hypocore.co.uk. So nice and easy. Hypoasinlowwithano,core.co.uk.

Francoise:

There's a consultation link on there that you can click and have a conversation. It can be online. Yeah. I I highly encourage that as women, we should be talking about this far more because it's very taboo. And our moms and grand moms were not talking about this.

Francoise:

And they were struggling with some severe issues.

Michele:

It's just not spoken about understandably. Absolutely.

Sian:

Thank you, Francois. Thank you. And we're not going anywhere. We're all still in the studio and we're heading over now to Rebecca and we're going to be talking about the finance side of things. So as we said before, very similar issue, which is it can be a little bit taboo.

Sian:

It can also come around fear. And so perhaps an element of burying our head in the sand, very similar very similar to the issues that we've already been speaking about. So I think what I would like to do initially is get an overview of the sorts of areas that we perhaps should be looking at on a regular basis. What do you deal with? When say if I came to you today and said, hi, can you help me with my finances?

Sian:

What would you would you do? What would you run me through?

Rebecca:

So the first thing, excuse me, the first thing is looking at who you are, where you're at in your life cycle, and what's coming for you next and really understanding what your objectives and your needs are because it's not a cookie, we talked about cookie cutter approaches in business, it's the same as a financial advisor, you should really understand that individual. So people that are about to have buy their first home, have a baby, get married, get divorced, widowed, building a business, they all have different needs and different objectives. And so it's really understanding where you're at and where where you wanna be regardless of within that sort of scale. So it's not a one sort of fits all kind of approach. Some people need to focus more on their savings and their debts.

Rebecca:

Other people are need to focus on their budgeting and how they're spending. Other people have you know, they're they're in a wealthy position, and they're looking things are looking quite good with their finances, but they've got old habits, that need adjusting. It might be that they need to relook at all their finances and readjust, know, it might be, looking at their insurances, what they've got in place, does that meet their objectives in terms of clearing the mortgage or if anything was to happen to them or to their partner. It might be looking at pensions, what's in place, what's that going to achieve for you, is your objective to retire at 57, sixty, sixty five, 70, how do what you currently have in place work for you, what are the gaps, so if there is a gap there how can you fill it, Do you have an inheritance tax issue in terms of you've got you're in a wealthy position, but it might mean actually you've got one client at the moment is gonna have a million pound tax bill. So there's a numerous numerous things, it's really about understanding your picture of where you're at and where

Sian:

you want to be fundamentally. So I think, no perhaps I shouldn't think at all, perhaps I should just ask you a question. Why do you believe and now there's an assumption in this question and the assumption is that people don't look at it. So why do you believe that people don't look at it? And is it also people who feel like they don't have enough money or it's too late to do something about it?

Sian:

So they they haven't got enough money, they haven't sorted out a pension, they don't own their house, they haven't done this, they haven't done that. It's now too late in the day. It's all been horrible for

Sian:

a Sorry. Short.

Sian:

But but it so who who are these people who don't look at stuff?

Rebecca:

Literally all of the above. All the things you mentioned are true. None of them are not relevant. I think it comes back to your upbringing and how money was talked about around the table. You talked earlier on about, you know, what the conversations are like.

Rebecca:

Mhmm. And those conversations like, so I encourage my clients and I talk on my podcast about the conversations we have with our kids. So for example, my daughter, I've set up a ISA for her, I've put in £10 a month into that ISA. And I'm explain each month, I'm sitting down with her explaining how that investment works, how what that money will be worth in twenty, thirty, forty years time. Because they don't teach it at school, they're not gonna learn it with the with even their employer will give them auto enrolment, a standard pension, and it's this thing that comes out of your payslip.

Rebecca:

And no one really understands, even people in their twenties, if those conversations haven't been had, then there it so we can't really blame it all on shame and lack of expectation and it is a societal issue. And then you add the layer on top of that, which is around you know, that very British, we don't talk about money, because it's taboo in terms of you know, showing off or being extravagant. And people are more focused on you know, the latest car model or the best holiday and we went to this place and where did you go? And they're sort of more interested in that sort of Instagram kind of look of how their finances might be perceived, keeping up with the Joneses than what they are and actually what their spreadsheets and how things add up. And for women particularly, which is who I specialise in helping, is if statistically more women are going into retirement in poverty.

Rebecca:

If you add the fact that they're being divorced before, even more so.

Sian:

What are you classing as poverty? Are you classing as poverty, I suppose if you haven't worked I I don't know a lot about pensions to be honest. Mhmm. But if you haven't worked at all throughout your working life, so let's just say you have been a stay at home mom, then a stay at home wife, and now you're retiring, do you get a pension in The UK?

Rebecca:

So if you haven't worked at all, then you haven't paid any of your national insurances at all, then no, you wouldn't even get a basic state pension.

Sian:

So you would then be relying on state benefits? If if you're eligible. Yes. So if you don't have an income?

Rebecca:

Yeah, most women at that stage will probably be relying on their partner which is obviously everything

Sian:

But if I have there

Sian:

isn't one.

Rebecca:

Then there isn't one then yeah, but I'm not even talking about that level of poverty, there are women in that position. Often they'd end up having to work at some stage because they they need to earn money, and often they're having to work longer. So rather than retiring at, you know, 62, 63, you've got clients who are retiring at more having to work into their seventies. But even when they are working, women are walking away with smaller pensions over a $100 less than men because we've had gap summing employment, we've taken more care

Sian:

of our lives.

Rebecca:

Then we add divorce into the flavor as well, that sort of obviously affects things.

Sian:

So there are certain things about being a woman in society, whether we like it or not, that potentially if we're not careful and it's not pointed out, because it's really obvious when you point it out you go well actually women very often will have breaks in their employment record because they're having babies, or they'll have breaks in their employment record because they're caring for a sick child or a sick adult or whatever. It's really obvious once it's pointed out, but you don't think about it. I don't I didn't have that sort of break, I don't think about it. But if I had have done, I don't think it would have occurred to me that it would affect my final pension. You know, I'm at that age and I'm really not thinking about, I'm not thinking forward until I'm when I'm 65 and I'm in the here and now twenty thirty thirty five.

Sian:

That's that's right. I'm so wrapped up in baby this that It's

Rebecca:

a problem for later. It's not a problem for now.

Sian:

Yeah. But you don't, you know, when you're in the middle of that caring for everything and everybody apart from yourself Mhmm. You don't really stop and go, hang on a minute, what's gonna happen in in forty years time if I take this break now? Often it's that's

Rebecca:

when women act is when they see their parents like their mom Mhmm. And they see other family members struggling, but then they say, oh shit, I better do something for this for myself. Or when the the rose tinted glasses are lifted, or where they realise hang on a minute, my kids are gone off, what about me? And that sort of emptiness kind of syndrome. Or they've been through a divorce and unfortunately they've realised they've walked away with nothing and they the penny drops.

Rebecca:

Yeah. And this is why I'm very much an advocate for being financially independent regardless of your relationship status.

Sian:

Yeah.

Sian:

Do you think it's more complicated if you're running a business?

Rebecca:

100% and that was one of the points especially

Sian:

I didn't actually know the answer to that

Sian:

and it sounds like I've

Sian:

sat here and

Sian:

we've sort of you know

Sian:

worked it all out beforehand.

Rebecca:

100% because you know, most businesses that are run by women particularly, often they're sole traders, they're not necessarily established limited companies with baby staff for example. Absolutely. Often they're focusing on maybe the money that's coming in is for things like paying for school shoes and school trips the extra bits and pieces, all the time but I see that an awful lot, especially when the businesses first start, it's like a lifestyle to support the general being of the family and maybe stereotyping the breadwinner male would be paying the mortgage for example, and the female will be then paying for the upgrading the car and the better holidays. So then they've got a lot of noise, they've got a lot of things going on, there's lots of demand from children with one thing after the other. And what happens is is that their own personal investments, own personal pensions are very much put aside, and the statistics around self employed business owners in general, male or female, is horrendous.

Rebecca:

They are not investing, they're not putting into pensions. And it's only once you have a limited company and you have a good accountant that says at some point in the process you need to reduce your corporation tax, you can do that by putting money into a pension, then they will be actually making the transition. But otherwise it's it's that yeah, there's a big gap, massive millions of pounds gap of people not investing in pensions.

Sian:

Yeah. So is there a time when it's too late to actually do something about it?

Rebecca:

It's never really too late, I don't like to be the advocate of doom and gloom. I'd rather sort of go on the side of you know, there's always time. However we are living longer, but the cost of living is only ever increasing, it's not going backwards, it's never going to go back even if inflation's at a relatively okay point at this stage. But you know, rent is only increasing, mortgages, houses are getting more expensive. So the need to continue to grow and to earn more is that much more pressure for people.

Rebecca:

So what what you know, I'm saying like, I don't know, I'm forty forty five in twenty years' time. What I'm earning now won't give me the same power in twenty years' time. And so actually, I think that's where a lot of women personally from a business perspective is they're focusing on their values, they're focusing on what lights them up, they're focusing on what brings them joy and all the nice sometimes shiny objects and they're not necessarily looking at what core activities are making them money. Yeah. And So this is in a way, this is a bit of

Sian:

a sort of a dual role, isn't it? Because we look to our accountants to help us with the with the business finances side of things. But very often, we don't use our accountants to their full extent. We use them to make sure that the submissions happen to HMRC Yep. And that, you know, and and the the legalities are covered and phew, that's had done for another year.

Sian:

I can forget about it for a bit. And I think what you're saying here is that you and an accountant maybe actually need to be working together. You're going, actually, you don't have, you know, you're 65, you haven't got enough money coming in.

Sian:

That's

Sian:

true. What are we gonna do about that? Hang on a minute. Let's engage your accountant. Let's really have a look at your business, what's working, what's not working.

Sian:

Because sometimes it looks like something's bringing you in a lot of money, but it's not. That's not actually what's working. The the thing that's making the most profit is something else over over in the corner that you Exactly. You hadn't

Rebecca:

We can be quite delusional Yeah. Because we don't sometimes wanna face that, and sometimes we have to stop. And I'm talking from experience. Sometimes we have to stop, you know, the shiny objects and just knuckle down and do the shit that works. And once I stopped doing all the things that other people online were doing, and once I stopped telling doing all the things that experts were, inverted commas, telling me to do, and I actually focused on hang on a minute, what was what's actually Mhmm.

Rebecca:

Generating But

Sian:

I think I think it's your accountant that actually shows you that, isn't it?

Rebecca:

It depends on your accountant. I can't I can't talk for all

Sian:

accountants. No. No. But it it it I'm saying it should be your accountant. If if your accountant isn't doing that, or you don't have somebody within your team Exactly.

Sian:

Yeah. That is able to fill that role, whether that be your accountant or your bookkeeper, it could be your own financial management system, it could be that you're using something and you've got Xero or FreshBooks or whatever programmed properly.

Rebecca:

Oh, 100 So that you

Sian:

can see actually what is making the money here. Because I know that sometimes for me, I'll see things coming in in a big lump. That's nice. Lovely. That's what's making the money, but it's not.

Sian:

No, be the other stuff that's like in the corner that's coming in small amounts of under 10 pounds, that's actually has the most profit associated with it and that's where you should be growing.

Rebecca:

You should be trying to do

Sian:

more of that. I mean, know there's a big More

Rebecca:

more advisory stuff. I know

Sian:

that there's a big marketing thing in here and how many customers are there. But it's about knowing actually what's bringing in the most profit for the least amount of effort maybe. Yeah. Yeah. And I think what we tend to do is focus on those bigger things that are coming in and focus more on those.

Sian:

When an actual fact, the profit margin on them may be very small. Are

Michele:

you? Yeah. I was gonna say, I do agree. As you know, I'm an accountant myself. The first thing I like to do, they call me miss Snoopy, because I like to know everything about my client.

Michele:

She's very, very dozy. Yeah, very, very dozy, but very snoopy. Yeah. And basically, if I know that a client is going through a divorce, what have they got in place financially? I will send them to advisors like yourself about pensions, life insurance, things like that, especially if they're gonna take over the house through the divorce procedure.

Michele:

I also talk to clients if they've got children. I said, what have you got in place? So I talk about power of attorneys, wills. There are accountants, which makes me a little bit upset that don't talk about that. They're just there for doing the accounts, finalizing the accounts and leaving you to it.

Sian:

But even on that level, there were two different types of accountants.

Michele:

There is two different type of accountants.

Sian:

There accountants where they submit everything and bobshittedly we're done. There's a tick box, HMRC is happy, the VAT people are happy, all the payrolls done or whatever, and and finished. Yeah. And then there are other accountants that will actually spend time and are able to have suppose it's more management accounts, isn't it? Are able to say to you, actually, this product, it looks fantastic, but it ain't it's it's actually costing you money.

Sian:

Exactly. Every time one of those walks out the door, every time you sell, don't know, this is an example, a printed journal, it costs you this amount of money. Is that worth it? Is it bringing a client in in a different way or is it actually a product that you're just selling Yep. And hoping to make money.

Sian:

And if you don't tie those bits and pieces up, you think you're making money, you think there's a product that's working and there's not. So I think what you're saying is we look at the finances, what do you need to bring in to be stable? Yep. You're in business.

Sian:

Mhmm.

Sian:

How is that actually gonna happen? How are you going to what products are you gonna use? What services are working? What stuff's making the most profit? What can you, I don't know, pull the lever on?

Sian:

I like to think of things sometimes in levers. Can you pull that lever and make more of that money? And it's your accountant that is really gonna help you with that side of things. It's just like a team, isn't it?

Michele:

It is a team.

Rebecca:

It's definitely about having the right people in in your remit, and it's but it's really confusing just to pull on this, like, roles kind of for for whether regardless if it's business owner or not. But just using you've just used accountants as an example. Solicitors are another thing. If you talk about trusts, so trust is a big broad subject, not trust as in I trust you,

Francoise:

but there

Rebecca:

you can put life policies into trust, will writing for example, you can put property into trust through a will. And there's a lot of jargon in financial services. And then you go and see a financial advisor who won't give you planning advice, they just want to talk about products, want to talk about pensions, they don't want to talk about your overall circumstances. And in their fact finding mission, they should ask the question do you have a will? But they don't or they just put yes or no because they're not really that interested.

Rebecca:

Then you're going to see somebody else who is a financial planner, but actually they're not able to talk about products, they're not actually licensed as a practitioner for products. You could be a financial planner is actually a non regulatory term, so you could have no qualifications, not be FCA regulated and call yourself a financial planner. So that, well. Yeah, you could be a money coach, you could say you're a money coach and again the same, it's the same as a financial planner, it's a non regulatory term.

Sian:

The fact

Sian:

is there are so many of those around out there and I think you're absolutely right, we need to really look at what we're getting. Because a money coach could be your mindset is all wrong. Yeah.

Rebecca:

It could be.

Sian:

You need

Sian:

you don't want money really because money is evil everybody who's had money, everybody who has money is bad. So there are people that supposedly Some of them

Rebecca:

are a little bit more professional

Sian:

than that. Are they? Okay.

Sian:

But there are people that will deal with that, but they may not have the substance. And I'm not saying that doesn't exist, I may be being a bit cynical there, but I have seen a lot of people talking really quite a lot of rubbish and playing on people's Vulnerability. It's not so much vulnerability, but assumption that there's something wrong with them. There's something that happened in their childhood somewhere along the lines, something wrong with their mindset. Mhmm.

Sian:

That means that they have this skew towards money. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, just saying it's not the whole story. No.

Sian:

Definitely not.

Sian:

And that there are other things. So there are people that help you deal with your money mindset and your money issues that exist only in your head. Mhmm. And then there are people that maybe help you in a more practical sense of how are you going to organize your money, how do you set it out, how do you run spreadsheets, how do

Sian:

you know,

Rebecca:

accountability is quite a good example

Sian:

of that. You know, they're not actually given any advance. But then there's you Yeah. Who may who may I suspect sort of do all of that all Yeah. But can actually then signpost you to trusted products.

Sian:

Yes. To say, okay, if you you have a pot of money over here, can't imagine that myself, but never mind. You have a pot That's a mindset issue.

Sian:

Yeah. Did you miss it? That's it. Hang on. We don't feel good about that.

Sian:

Honey, perhaps we could book in. Yes, it

Sian:

was like

Sian:

a session. For ten years of So,

Sian:

there's you know, you have a pot. Yeah. I I'm not that destitute. But you have a pot of money and they can say, okay, well, this could be doing a lot better over there. And it's not just go away and see, you know, if I'm finding it somewhere to to invest with this.

Sian:

You can advise them and recommend a product, and there is a liability around that.

Rebecca:

That and that's the difference. So if you for example, I'll give you an example. I'm being FCA regulated in this different environment for about

Sian:

Just 20 explain what FCA is, please.

Rebecca:

Oh, it's a financial conduct authority.

Sian:

Thank you.

Rebecca:

So if you think about influencers online, although they're now called finfluencers, they are only now we're talking ten years of being online to saying things, selling things online. Now the FCA is starting to pull them up on it.

Francoise:

Good.

Sian:

What sort of things? Selling

Rebecca:

So, like, I'll come and join this Bitcoin course.

Sian:

So Got you. Yeah. Right. Okay.

Rebecca:

You should buy this, you know, FedEx, general FedEx trading, forex trading kind of accounts. Sort Yeah. Of like basically doing financial products online. They're sort of like we will talk about a certain online person Right. And they're selling things.

Rebecca:

Okay.

Sian:

So they're not just sending you off to an ISA for instance or a pension plan. They're actually offering training training training programs to teach say me how to become a forex trader. Exactly.

Rebecca:

Yeah. Right. Lots of different

Sian:

examples And of

Rebecca:

also they might even be as little as, you know, they're recommending a product and they're not disclosing from a financial promotions perspective anything that is deemed to be around money and giving financial advice or talking around financial products. You there's a huge amount of regulation of what you can and can't say. And the fact that they haven't disclosed the fact that they're getting remuneration even is a massive issue. So there's only now that that's starting to come out. So when it comes to the FCA, whereas for me, I literally, if a client said to me in dissatisfaction, like just showed a slight dissatisfaction, then that has to go to my separate compliance department.

Rebecca:

And if I gave the worst advice ever, and they upheld it, and the person then went to the ombudsman, they could be compensated. So literally everything I say, everything I do is when you're in an FCA regulated environment, is looked upon. And will say over I've had my business sixteen years, I've been in the industry twenty six years, I only last year had my first complaint. And it wasn't upheld. And that was due to a provider providing the wrong paperwork, it wasn't even was an admin.

Rebecca:

It was an admin issue, I didn't actually doing it. That's a lot of money. This year I've done 28 reviews, I've got over a 100 clients, I currently made about £730,000 for those 28 clients I've reviewed thus far. So when we're in these regulated environments, it's pretty serious stuff and I get really wound up that I'm having to look after these kind of clients in a certain way and then anybody like literally Mark could decide in the other room, right I'm gonna become a financial planner and go online and say whatever they like. Absolutely.

Sian:

I suppose it's like becoming a business coach Yeah. A business adviser.

Rebecca:

And you've never had a business.

Sian:

Yes. I mean how many times do we see this? And sometimes they're actually sitting, settled around sort of local government and government, where we're being advised by people who were teaching social media.

Michele:

Yeah. Or business studies even.

Sian:

Yeah, and business studies. Never do their

Michele:

business in

Sian:

their life. They've never ever run a business.

Rebecca:

Yep. Or even worked in a business, I can understand if they weren't like running their own personal business, but at least working in a business that's sort of a board level upstart starting position Exactly. At least.

Sian:

Yeah, absolutely. The the the example of the social media training for instance, offered by all sorts of companies, but let's say local government, and I'd I'd it's not with any local government that I've worked with, so it's not, you know, I I work with with people. It's not about them, it's just stuff that I've seen happening where I've gone delved a little deeper, where they have the person who teaches social media through a company or through the council. They manage the company's social media or the council social media. And now they are teaching social media to businesses.

Sian:

Yep. I'm here to tell you, this is not the same experience. No. When you are managing a company's social media account and you get a criticism or somebody being horrible or trolling on that account, it is completely and utterly different to when it happens to you as a person Mhmm. When it happens to you as a person on your social media account.

Sian:

Well, but even if it's your if you're a

Rebecca:

company or it's your personal brand

Sian:

Yes. Either. Yeah. When it's you, it is very when it's your business or your personal brand, it is very very different, or I don't care who you are, you need to have felt that, you need to have felt that in your gut, you need to have received a complaint from a customer or lost some money or know what that feels like be able to teach business.

Michele:

Exactly and I agree with that, a 100%.

Sian:

You know, until you've that, you're not qualified to be a business coach.

Rebecca:

Exactly,

Michele:

a lot of industries still need to be regulated. I think more regulation, our industries are regulated and they're regulated for a reason, we're dealing with people's finance.

Rebecca:

Yeah and it's I think that I guess going back to like having the right people around you, it's about like you don't know what you don't know. So it's only when you've made those mistakes and I'm, you know, I'm sixteen years in business and you know, we can still make mistakes, right? Yep. Mhmm. But it's knowing what questions to ask and who to ask because just because your friend has used this one accountant once before for the last year Yeah.

Rebecca:

Doesn't mean it's the right accountant for you and your business. They might be used to services business, you might be a product business. That accountant might just do a tax return and a six monthly review. That might not be what you need. It's about asking, okay, what and I think as women, when it comes to money Mhmm.

Rebecca:

We don't think about ourselves in every kind of context, whether that's looking at you what team do I need? Who do I need around me? What resources do I need?

Michele:

Yeah.

Rebecca:

And it's also then like, what do I need for my future? What does that finance look like? We just we don't a lot of time we don't have time to stop actually ask these questions.

Sian:

That's true. I've got something that I sort of want to talk about, I'm just not sure whether this is the right place to do it. Go on.

Sian:

Yeah. No,

Sian:

I think it may be off track. Okay, I wanna come back to us as women being able to making sure that we look after ourselves and how we pick the professionals that are looking after us. But also, I want to talk to all of you about a a circumstance that I has happened to me and I am now two years the other side of it, where I had an accountant that came through a recommendation. They, as far as I was concerned, they were doing a really good job. There was a little incident towards the end of our relationship where a deadline for submitting VAT was was missed in some some way.

Sian:

But anyway, it all looked good, it all looked super duper, everything was happening as it should be. There was a little bit of a niggle, which is why I sort of changed accountants, and I actually moved to Michele. And now turns out that a couple of years ago, they're now able to look at really quite a substantial VAT rebate for me because of mistakes that were made. Yeah. And other things that have actually come up where I I and my business were actually quite vulnerable because of things that were being done and not being done, which I that's why I employ an accountant.

Sian:

Mhmm. Okay? So unless it's and you know, unless we have these efforts sort of decreasing accountants. I have my main accountant, and I have another accountant that checks my main accountant, and I have another accountant that that checks my accountant. Yeah.

Sian:

Just crazy. Just crazy. That's checking my main account. I took all your profit, God.

Sian:

Yeah. Exactly. So I've

Sian:

got 15 accountants and no business. Mhmm. How do we, if we look in the context of of your business Yeah. And also also Francoise in the context of of hiring a health professional if you like, how do we know that we're getting a good job here? What do we do?

Sian:

So I think if you're looking for

Rebecca:

a financial adviser, it's one big question is do you need someone to be on your doorstep being able to come to your house? Do you want them around the corner you could go and knock on their door? Are you happy to speak to them online? So we're primarily online, although I do have an office in London and in Kent, but 99% there is online. So that's the first initial thing.

Rebecca:

Because again, just because the guy that your mum and dad used for the last twenty years and he's like Bernard who's like 60

Sian:

Yeah. Doesn't mean

Rebecca:

it's the right

Sian:

thing for you.

Sian:

It's not the right Bernard for you. Yeah. Possibly. That's the first red flag. Is it all Bernard?

Sian:

Nothing against Bernard's. I I should actually know this, like, off the top of my head, but I think

Sian:

my husband's middle name is Bernard.

Sian:

Oh, my word.

Sian:

I can't remember. Am I getting

Sian:

am I getting them confused? I don't know. Don't know Mark's middle name, I don't know him that well.

Sian:

Oh, you did. I think it might

Sian:

be. Oh, dear. Okay. No offense to

Rebecca:

Mark and Sian Any Any Bernie. So it's about looking at okay, well how does this person work? Mhmm.

Sian:

It does get a little

Rebecca:

bit complicated after that because he might, for example, they might be tied to a particular company, so they might only So be on a team, not independent if you're doing annual reviews and you're paying for that annual review, are they actually going to recommend they move away from the portfolio that they recommended, which they're tied to and then lose their client? No. If it's independent they would, they'd say that actually this is not working we need to move it which is what you're

Sian:

paying for. So there's that element. Can I just it really annoys me when people interrupt me, but I can't help it? What is the benefit to a financial adviser for being tied to a particular provider? Cause to me it seems like, why wouldn't you just be independent?

Sian:

And then you can pick and choose based on the client. Why would you wanna be shackled to one person? One more one organisation?

Rebecca:

It's it's a harder business to run. If you're independent?

Sian:

Yeah. I suppose you you have a lot more juggling to do, don't you? Yeah. You have to make a lot more potentially, I'm gonna call it dangerous decisions.

Rebecca:

If you came to me and you had a pension with an LNG, if I'm not independent I've got to find a way to put that into my portfolio to justify it. That that's Whereas if I'm independent I could actually say no let's stay with L and G but it's changed the fund.

Sian:

Mhmm.

Rebecca:

So you're impartial, more impartial. So it's harder for a tied person in that respect because they've got I'm not saying all tied people would try and shoehorn people into their products, but in today they're not gonna get paid unless they're

Sian:

Unless they unless they do. Mhmm.

Francoise:

How does little Jane Smith with her little sole trader business even get their head around how would you identify that in a they say I'm

Sian:

an independent financial But you

Francoise:

wouldn't even know? To ask.

Sian:

Like I You do now.

Sian:

You need

Sian:

to listen

Sian:

to the point where you're saying your joke. Okay.

Rebecca:

And that's why I talk about this stuff all the time, and I have I talk about on my podcast and I have shows just specifically that goes into this kind of thing into a lot of detail. So not necessarily would interest Sian in detail at this point. But to answer your question, I personally the only benefit is to the business that they're tired because it's easier to train and it's easier to have regulatory control.

Sian:

I would think as a financial advisor, you have if there is one route, you've got a route of training coming through, hey, we've updated this product, here we go, here's what you need to do with it, and you can be, oh yes, right, okay. So it makes it a lot simpler in the getting things right section. Although you may have to be either incredibly honest and turn business away or do a little bit of, what should we call it, creative juggling to fit them into the products that you have.

Rebecca:

I mean, it's quite controversial what I'm gonna say. If anyone's a financial adviser listening, they're not gonna like it, but there's a reason why you don't like it. And that's because it's triggering for where you're coming from. I'm not gonna apologise for that. I work really hard to be independent and have the knowledge and learning that I've got.

Sian:

Mhmm.

Rebecca:

And I've had to, you know, continue to fight for it. But basically, at the end of the day, if you're gonna shoehorn a client into a product so you can get paid and you're not able to give impartial advice, then you need to move to a different environment if you're not happy with it. Mhmm. When it comes to fee charging what happens is is quite often they charge on implementation. So they're saying, okay, I've just done all this work for you, I've spent hours sitting with you, I've done a whole financial review, done all the reports, done all the work, given you all this advice, you should do this, this, this, this and this, and if you implement it and here's my fee.

Rebecca:

That's not impartial because you're basically only getting paid if they proceed with the work. So for example, myself, and I can't speak for other firms, but there are other firms that do this, we charge on advice. So I'll do all their work. It's not about implementing it. I don't charge an implementation fee.

Rebecca:

It's on the advice because I'm giving impartial advice. Mhmm. So if should stay with LNG, then you stay with LNG. Or if you need to move somewhere else, that's actually maybe we've got a pension with Standard Life and actually it's not going to set up a new pension over here with Aviva, we're going to put it all with Standard Life because they've got a really charge small charging structure and you're like fit.

Sian:

And it fits you.

Rebecca:

And it fits you, we can just change the underlining fund to meet your risk profile. And so they're paying for that advice, they've been paying for that impartial. So a lot of advisers and I was one of them about eight years ago, where we would pay for the advice and that I just didn't, I couldn't sleep at night, it didn't sit well with me.

Francoise:

No, that's true.

Sian:

Yes, because you're balancing, aren't you? You're just, you're balancing actually earning earning some money, I mean we're businesses, we have to earn money Absolutely. With with doing what's right. We do the same thing with websites, we primarily work work with WordPress. But if somebody if somebody doesn't need WordPress, we'll send them somewhere else.

Sian:

Mhmm. But also, you can have a consultation. It doesn't matter what you do at the end. It doesn't it who cares? You're you're paying for the consultation, for the expertise and the advice.

Sian:

I find that works because I couldn't exactly, it's it's very much the same thing. I couldn't say, yeah, get yourself a lovely big WordPress website when I know that's not what you need, that you'd actually be better off on Shopify.

Rebecca:

Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And and even if that website was the best thing, if you've done that consultation for free, essentially

Sian:

People don't know, do they? Then It's a bit, oh, yeah. But they

Rebecca:

do trying to pitch to this product. Yeah. So Yeah. Yeah. And this comes back to asking the right questions and knowing what questions to ask and doing a little bit of due diligence.

Rebecca:

Mhmm. And that's really hard when you've been rec even when you've been recommended someone. So for example, like myself, I've got I've got vouched for which is a sort of directory based where you can get leads as a financial adviser, I don't. I pay for it so clients leave reviews and I've got reviews on there from eight nine years ago, ongoing clients I've had for like ten years leaving reviews on there and that's the kind of thing that you want to be looking for, that history of long term reviews and recommendations. Absolutely.

Rebecca:

And otherwise it's just looking under the bonnet in terms of how that advisor works, how they're remunerated. And I do have clients now because we've tracked GBT with AI, you're able to go in and like ask so many questions so people are actually coming to me with many more clarity, like much clearer in their questions. It's just that initial thought, that initial click where you've let go of that scarcity or that those questions around or is that for me, I shouldn't bother, it's too late. Once you've got over that and you start to unpick it, there you know, it's a bit of a momentum and just got to do things bit by bit, try not to get too overwhelmed. Yeah.

Sian:

So to sort of bring it down to what people need to look at, I think I wish I'd never got recommendations, and I wish I knew that recommendations are really not worth a hell of a lot actually. And in fact, they can make you complacent.

Michele:

Yeah. That's

Sian:

true. Because of the people I've ever been to where I've been sort of had a recommendation, I feel a bit like I've taken my eye off the ball to be honest. So with the with the financial stuff, are they FCA regulated? So is there any sort of and this really applies wherever you are, I think in the world. Do they have any sort of recognized affiliation?

Sian:

Are they governed? Do they do they have an official body that they answer to is the first thing. The second thing, are are they truly independent? Mhmm. Or are they are they trying to force your circumstances into a product that they're selling?

Sian:

Yep. And secondly, how do they thirdly, how do they offer you advice? Yep. Is it all free or do you have to to pay for it? Mhmm.

Sian:

I think that's sort of a pretty good starting point for working out what's happening. When you're on the way, so that you don't end up in the situation that I ended up with with my accountant, my previous accountant, where I didn't I didn't know what I didn't know, and that's it. What can people look for when they have, if you like, taken out an investment, taken taken advice of an independent organisation?

Rebecca:

I think for me it's all throughout the whole process and particularly in what that example you've just given, what we tend to do is we sort of abscond our responsibilities. We sort of pass it on to our partner, we pass it on to our accountant, we pass it on to our financial adviser, we sort of like, well I haven't got to worry about that now, that's their job. And it's like you're taking the responsibility and you're basically passing it on to somebody else.

Sian:

Mhmm.

Rebecca:

And whether you're you you might like your accountant, but that doesn't mean that they're not going through a bad time or their business model has changed or they've dropped off some clients or they've got too busy or they've they've grown or they've lost a member of their team so they're more stretched. Those are ongoing relationships so it's about does that still work for me on an ongoing basis? So it's you know if you're not getting the same level of service or your financial advisor is not calling you back or you're meant to have an annual review and it's been over a year, you could be paying for a service certainly from a financial advisor perspective, you could be paying for a service and under FCA regulation they have to do a certain level of work for you to justify for you to be paid.

Sian:

So I think same for and with account I I suppose the same for everybody sat around the table. You know, the fanny fairy Yeah. Or dealing with financial stuff, you know, as in investments, our household finance, if you like, and our business finance. It's what can I expect moving forwards? What should I expect to have from you?

Sian:

What what's that gonna look like? Are you gonna ring me up once a week, once a month, once a year? Should should you be doing that? And is is that happening or not? Are you gonna send me through a report?

Sian:

Is there gonna be some sort of measurement?

Sian:

Mhmm.

Sian:

What's your service level standard? If I ring you up and say, hey, I'm a bit worried about this. Do you get back to me in two days, two weeks, two months, or is there no service standard at all? So find out what what you should expect to be happening, and is that happening? And if it isn't, so for instance, in this particular accountant, I had three catch up meetings cancelled whilst I was on the way.

Sian:

Yeah. Red flag. Yeah, red flag, definitely.

Sian:

Yes. Three.

Sian:

Three. I think they may

Rebecca:

have taken the mickey a little bit there.

Sian:

Yeah. And I let them get away with this. They were friends, I knew them, they were recommending

Rebecca:

And donations I totally get that, but I've got my accountant is my friend as well. Mhmm. So I understand. But I hold her to account. Yes.

Rebecca:

So that's what you need

Michele:

to hold your accountant

Francoise:

to What's an your

Michele:

100%. So seriously. Find out

Sian:

what the should be.

Michele:

Exactly.

Sian:

When I say relationship, don't mean you're going out for dinner once a week, but what is the relationship here? Yeah. What is the communication? What should you be getting through? Mhmm.

Sian:

And I guess this is, you know, we're under a structure of finance, but it's same with what you do, Francoise, isn't it?

Francoise:

Absolutely. And there is, we we'd spoke you guys spoke a lot about what's on social media and how much is available out there on platforms that are Mhmm. Really not very regulated. Although it's things do. Sianni, I agree with you that if somebody's recommended it, it doesn't necessarily mean it's right fit for you.

Francoise:

Mhmm. But there's a there's a lot of kudos to be recommended because Yeah. That is part of your your trustworthiness if although not everybody fits everyone else. Absolutely. I've got a product that is an online product which is actually under sold.

Francoise:

It's a lot of work when put into into it, but it is an online product where my clients have to be accountable for themselves. You have your money. Your health is your responsibility. It's your responsibility to show up for yourself every single day. Doesn't mean that I've put a product forward and you've paid for it, that it's gonna fix you because you've gotta be accountable to show up and do it.

Sian:

I think if we look at it in the point of view of business people as well, having that sort of setting that structure works both ways, doesn't it?

Michele:

It does.

Sian:

Because it means that for instance, you don't have people messaging you at one o'clock in the morning expecting you to sort out their pension issue. And Francoise, you don't have people ringing you out going, it doesn't feel any tighter. I'm not

Sian:

do Do that?

Sian:

Do they

Sian:

sound like that?

Sian:

I've been on.

Sian:

I've just I've just tried it out.

Rebecca:

Yeah. I love Sean's little wording. Yeah. It's our tune voices.

Sian:

It's good. So it works both ways, doesn't Absolutely.

Francoise:

But the trouble is is that it's the people who haven't done it and haven't reached out and gone this isn't working for me. Mhmm. Because you can't think about that anyway.

Michele:

But I agree with you.

Francoise:

If I've reached out to any service that I'm paying for, be it an accountant or a financial advisor or a fitness professional, if I haven't turned around and gone, I don't understand this. Please explain it to me. Exactly. Or I need some additional support. When that support is not there, that's when you've got to have a real good look at where does there accountability

Sian:

Yeah. But it also needs to be in the context of what's being paid for. So for instance, you know, you're saying that the the non independent people, it's all free, free, free, free, free, and then they get paid when when you buy, if you like, a product. So you're probably less likely to go back to them or they're they're probably less likely to be happy to give you more stuff for free. In your case, Francoise, if it's an online product, which you're saying is under sold, we'll we'll have a chat about that.

Sian:

Mhmm. But if you're not charging it or or if that's what people are paying for, that's what they're paying for. They're not paying for a one to one Mhmm. Service, are they? They need to understand that, don't they?

Sian:

Otherwise, it there's a boundary that gets stepped over

Sian:

Mhmm.

Sian:

And you can no longer sustain that as a business.

Rebecca:

Can I ask you a question? Yeah. So we like, what you've just described, Francoise, is is, you know, that questioning people, you know, going back to someone and saying, why is this not happening? Can we can we check? I wanna check-in.

Rebecca:

Why is it? This is not acceptable. Or even might be as light as, I thought we were doing this and this hasn't happened. And you just described three times. What made you not go, hang on a minute, this is not right.

Rebecca:

What made you, like, accept that?

Sian:

What do you mean with the example for the accountant? Yeah. Okay. Probably not I'm gonna say not monitoring, but being really busy being really busy. And I've written down something here about really nice people.

Sian:

Yeah.

Rebecca:

That's it.

Sian:

Okay. I I think we are I don't know that we're more vulnerable as women. I have no idea. I don't like to keep putting everything into the box of business women being a bit more being a bit daft. I think generally, if somebody's really nice and they're apologetic and it happens, you know, one time and you go, oh, okay.

Sian:

Alright. And this has happened. I'm always very careful. I I never say, oh, so and so has happened or I'm not very well or or the dog's sick or whatever. I don't say anything if something has to change.

Sian:

But if they have that sort of thing, if you're, oh, okay. Alright. Well, the child's not very alright. Okay. I'm sure there was somebody else in their office could do it, but okay.

Sian:

And if they're really nice, it's quite difficult. And then you reach the point where you sort of you've let too much slip. But also, we're really busy, aren't we? I think it's a little bit along the lines of why we don't deal with this stuff up front and proactively. Why aren't we going, hey, it's finance day.

Sian:

Hey, it's pelvic floor day. I need to go to the gym. It's time I took some time out. I need to have a day off. Mhmm.

Sian:

I need to sit down. We tend not to do it. And I think it's one thing after a really nice person, they haven't got you angry.

Sian:

Mhmm.

Sian:

They've triggered not necessarily deliberately, but they've triggered your empathy button. You've gone, oh, goodness me. Oh, okay. And that sort of thing, and then you just let it slip and it takes a big thing. It takes a big thing before you finally go, okay,

Francoise:

That's think

Sian:

enough. I think not only is that enough is enough, but I think there's something else going on here. And not this isn't just a problem of of cancelled meetings and a report not arriving. I think there might be something else happening here that is not okay, and is actually quite serious.

Rebecca:

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. But you're quite an forward thinking, say what you mean kind of person.

Sian:

Yeah. I'm also very busy, and I'm not a very good planner.

Sian:

Okay.

Sian:

I'm a good reactor. Yeah. Okay? I think there are some people that are really good reactors. Something goes wrong with something, I'll deal with it.

Sian:

Yeah. But as a planner, I plan I'm I build as I plan. I'm not very good at sitting down and going, okay, we'll implement this, we'll implement this, we'll implement that. I'm actually quite reactive. And so you have something in the diary, something happens that puts that off.

Sian:

Okay. Alright. That didn't happen. I'll go and do something else. But you actually need to then sit down, don't you?

Sian:

Ex exactly the same as with the doing your exercises, going and seeing somebody and planning that out. Going and seeing your financial adviser, getting a grip of it saying, actually this can no longer wait until tomorrow. Mhmm. And I think there are certain people who deal with emergencies very well, but deal with the underlying drudgery very badly. And that for me is underlying drudgery in admin.

Francoise:

Yeah. And which is why we pay for professionals to support us.

Rebecca:

Yes. Absolutely.

Francoise:

Yes. But then as women Yeah. Do we struggle to really dig deep, ask the right questions, and be confrontational? These are my needs or my needs are not being met. Why is that happening?

Francoise:

And

Sian:

I I think there were two there were two thing there were two things at play. One and one and and I think it's about as I think there were two things at play. I think one of them is about being a business person and getting a grip of that and not letting it slip because it's just admin. And you select to that. And and taking the time to sit down and think, what's happened this week?

Rebecca:

Well, it's not why you started the business, is it? It's not what lights

Sian:

you up. No. Didn't know. I didn't I didn't start a business because I wanted to do some admin and deal with accountants. I just did not.

Sian:

But I think it's about sitting down at the end of the week or the beginning of the week, and we're in it whenever it is you manage to do that and go, what's happened this week that I need to think about? What haven't I done that I meant to do? Exactly. What what has happened? Oh, hang on a minute.

Sian:

That's the second time that appointment was cancelled and that's the second time now.

Rebecca:

For me, like, because I'm quite busy, kids and business and all the rest of it. And since I've become perimenopausal, diagnosed dyslexic Mhmm. And I have ADHD tendencies. I've not That's how we found out. Yes.

Rebecca:

Found Most of us.

Sian:

I've done nothing. Yeah. I don't even need to see you at all. I can see you Exactly,

Michele:

we can see it for

Sian:

It's sad. Long She's like, by the way I've got ADHD. And I went really? I'm not. I already knew that.

Rebecca:

So when I became perimenopausal, if people don't know this, those tendencies become more obvious and they'll So struggle with them I had to go for a period of readjusting everything I did because I wasn't coping, like I couldn't leave the house as I was describing. So I had to cut back my day, I had to make sure I had a lunch break in.

Sian:

Mhmm.

Rebecca:

And this was really, really, really alienating for me. Like, this was the weirdest thing for me to do. When you're flat out and you're somebody that is used to being flat out, got something to prove to yourself, to everybody else, you've got a lot going on, stuff to do, you can just handle it all. You can just do it all. Mhmm.

Sian:

Did you do that sort of sitting down and planning, you know, of going, okay, I'm cutting this back and that back, because you had to.

Rebecca:

Because you had to.

Sian:

No. I mean, physically, mentally

Rebecca:

Mhmm.

Sian:

Was not a way forward. Mhmm. Yeah. Literally. Emergency.

Sian:

Yeah. Yeah. Either this

Rebecca:

or I shut my business, like it was one or the other.

Sian:

I can't get up off the sofa, I'm gonna have

Rebecca:

to do By way.

Michele:

Yeah. Exactly.

Rebecca:

Exactly. So after this is like eight, two years ago now, so things are a lot better, but I still have brain farts as I call them. They're just not quite on the ball as I used to be, I can't quite my desk is covered in post it notes literally because every thought I'm like, goes up on my wall and I have to take the post it notes down

Sian:

I'm implementing another system tomorrow tell

Sian:

you I'll tell you if it works, I'm quite confident about this one.

Rebecca:

I can imagine it's like your hundredth this week

Sian:

or something.

Sian:

It'll be fine.

Rebecca:

But again, was sort

Sian:

of kind of the point is finding the

Rebecca:

system that works for you. So for example, for me, if it's not like you described, if it's not in my diary, it's not gonna happen. So everything has a task in my diary. So I have meetings once a month with my commissions adviser, who does all my commissions for my team

Sian:

Mhmm.

Rebecca:

And it's in the diary. And even if we sit there and talk about the weather

Sian:

It happens.

Rebecca:

It happens. And so it's working out how you operate, how your brain work operates and putting systems in place Yeah. To enable that. And if that means at like, I'm not saying abdicate, I'm not saying remove responsibility, But if it means having someone else to help you and support

Sian:

you No.

Sian:

That's accountability. Accountability. Tell you what, I recognition I think is the is the greatest thing for me and also not having an ego. I do not care who does it. I don't care if somebody does it better than me.

Sian:

I want somebody to do it better than me because that means I don't have to do it. But I don't run my own team meeting. My operations manager runs my team meeting Because if it's left to me to do, it won't

Rebecca:

happen. Yeah. Absolutely.

Sian:

It just will not happen. Mhmm. And so I have somebody else who runs the team meeting. It happens at 10:00 on Friday morning. It doesn't matter what I'm doing.

Sian:

It doesn't matter where I am. It doesn't matter that I'm poodling around somewhere going or in the middle of

Sian:

a radio show going, oh, I'm just supposed to be

Sian:

running a team meeting. She does it. And that also means that they can talk about me.

Michele:

Exactly.

Sian:

But they can talk about me behind my back. I want them to do that, I want them to say what hasn't happened and what they need and what they're missing.

Michele:

Exactly.

Sian:

But I think there are, I think there's real theme here, isn't there? About we're not doing stuff that we need to do. Mhmm. Okay. I've got some stuff written down, which people who know me will know this is actually quite scary.

Sian:

So You have

Rebecca:

notes. Wow.

Sian:

I have notes. I have I have notes. They're just a little bit of a framework. So why don't we why don't we do this stuff? Shame and silence.

Sian:

I'm talking about everything here. We don't look at our business accounts. We don't look at our personal finance. We don't look at our our pelvic floors. Shame and silence.

Sian:

We don't talk about our pelvic floors, we don't talk about wetting ourselves, we don't talk about money. Because when it we're not used to doing it, there's a shame around it. Yeah. And it's something that has been traditionally silenced if

Rebecca:

Absolutely. You like

Sian:

around the dinner table, around the general conversation or

Rebecca:

thing. It's not it's not sexy, you know, talking to my husband about incontinence, you know, about Yeah. Sexy It's

Francoise:

talking about what's going on in the bank either.

Rebecca:

No. Like, he's yeah. Exactly. Like, talking about tenor ladies and, you know, baiting in my head like

Sian:

Well he's gonna notice them, I recently do remember you.

Sian:

You tried them, I just hide them. Do you

Michele:

know what's so funny, I get my husband to buy them for me.

Sian:

Do you really? I do.

Michele:

I think I I'm sure my husband was a woman in the past life, I tell you.

Sian:

So shame and silence, there's also the I'll deal with it later problem, isn't it? Yeah. It's not a crisis, we're not able to plan it, actually seriously dull. I mean it really is boring, all of this stuff is really boring.

Rebecca:

Yeah, when I had a baby, the second baby, which he's now nine in September, that made me so efficient because I had to be, I had no choice, the hours in the day were gone. Absolutely.

Sian:

So we we'll deal with it later until such time as we have a crisis. Mhmm. I think the other thing is is that sometimes we don't, you know, what is the improvement here? What is so so if we deal with all of these things, it makes us strong and resilient, isn't it? If we if we're comfortable with our finances, if we can look at our finances, if we can open a letter from the bank without going,

Sian:

oh my god, there's a letter from the bank.

Sian:

If we can visit our accountant and be confident that it's going to be a pleasant and interesting conversation

Sian:

Mhmm.

Sian:

Instead of a conversation about we need to have a conversation. You've got a bigger tax

Sian:

bill Yeah. You need

Sian:

those thoughts.

Rebecca:

Yes. That's always the

Sian:

way. Yeah. So if you can visit your accountant or visit your financial adviser with excitement and anticipation Exactly. Improvements that you can make and where you're going instead of dread about what's going on. If you can talk to your sort of health adviser about how strong you feel and how you can improve on that strength, life suddenly gets better.

Michele:

It does.

Sian:

But how does that actually feel like? What does feeling strong feel like? Well, I'm gonna go against the

Francoise:

whole strong bit because we're all strong

Sian:

no. There's a difference between being strong and feeling strong. There should

Francoise:

be an element of of calm with that and trusting that you've got that strength.

Sian:

Mhmm.

Sian:

And that you Yes. It's calm, isn't it?

Francoise:

Yes. The calm and the strength. It's not about having to show up and looks so if we're talking physically, we look at somebody who looks physically strong, full of muscles

Sian:

No. It was it was more

Francoise:

about feel Yes. I that that person Yeah. Is experiencing Yeah. Okay. Feels strong and is calm and is doing all the right things, which is not necessarily the truth.

Francoise:

Just like Rebecca highlighted, if they've got the nice car, they're going on a nice holidays, doesn't necessarily mean that they're financially stable and they understand what's going on. It's it's about the calm that you have within you that you're making all the practical decisions and acting upon them daily and consistently that gives you the long term strength. Yep. That you you're not laying in bed at night going,

Sian:

oh my goodness, I just paid for a $10 holiday on a credit card or I am I've I've been for a run. I'm really strong.

Francoise:

I can run 10 k's, but actually in five years time, you're at you've knackered out your pelvic floor. It's about knowing that you've got all the systems in place, that you're looking after yourself

Sian:

Mhmm.

Francoise:

In a well in a holistic way and everything is in place.

Sian:

So yeah. So it okay. It's a

Francoise:

That would be the truth.

Sian:

It's about a system to move forward, isn't it?

Sian:

Mhmm.

Rebecca:

Yeah. What what clients tell me once I've, you know, they can be quite scared when they first come to me. I had a client yesterday who's got a very good job working for local government in London. She travels quite far into work. She has a very good salary.

Rebecca:

Her pension at 68 will be over half £1,000,000 lump sum and income more than that, so we're talking very high level kind of corporate, no not government job, but she doesn't want

Sian:

to do it, she doesn't want to

Rebecca:

do it anymore and she's got so many questions about do I overpower the mortgage? Do I carry on with this job? Do I get a job closer to home? And this is what tends to happen is, you know, it doesn't matter if you're talking someone who's got a lot of money or struggling with money, it doesn't really matter about the actual balances, it's the thoughts that's going through people's heads and there's a lot of questions and a lot of noise and by the end of it we're able to pick it apart to a point where they can start to make, and I said this right at the beginning, informed decisions. By one new time, by the time you make those informed decisions that are right for you, you're then able to move forward with your life much more calmly.

Rebecca:

You're not worrying about should I buy that new car? You're not having guilt over that holiday that you've booked. You're not having to worry about how am I going to provide for my kids and their university. You're not thinking about what's going to happen with all the inheritance money that I've built years to provide. You're not worrying about if you can retire early or if you are going to retire are you going to be in poverty.

Rebecca:

All those noise and all those questions sort of get answered. Sometimes not always for the better, sometimes there are gaps, there are things to look for which is the scary part, that's why people avoid it. Yeah. But actually once that's done Mhmm. And there's a plan in place and you know what the gaps are, you're able to move forward with such calm and conviction that you're able to just make move forward with life that much more calmly and make better decisions moving Yeah, exactly.

Rebecca:

Feel empowered, I mean the word empowered is almost overly used.

Sian:

I don't like that word, but sometimes it's the word, isn't it?

Rebecca:

Sometimes it is the right word.

Sian:

Yeah. Michele, what do you think in terms of business finance that that feeling strong is? So that, you know, when people come and see you and go, oh, it's really good. I'm going to have a conversation with my accountant, not I'm going to have a conversation with Okay. My

Michele:

it's, I usually have reviews, we were talking about reviews. I have reviews with my clients every three months. When a client comes on board, I wanna check everything. I wanna make sure they're going down the right path, I've given as much advice as I can and that they're on the right systems. It's more than just being the accountant, it's also being an advisor.

Michele:

And that's the difference. Accountants are accountants and accountants that are advisors. So to feel strong, you need to know your numbers. Say this every time, you need to know your numbers. Every business runs with numbers.

Michele:

If you haven't got your numbers in your business and you don't understand your numbers, how are you running a business? That's where you've gotta be strong. You gotta go month, every month, especially if you're a director of a limited company, can I take a dividend now? You know, if I made a profit enough to take it and what's my balance sheet looking like for my shareholders loan? And things like cash flow forecast, people forget about that cause they go, oh, I've got money in the bank.

Michele:

It's great. Look at that money in the bank. Oh, I'm gonna use but hang on a moment, that might be restricted funds. And restricted funds means that it's already earmarked to how many supplies you've got to pay out or bills on direct debit or employees, you know, anyone like that. It needs you can't take that money until you strictly know that at the end of the month, these are my figures, right?

Michele:

And here's my cash flow, I've got that balance, that's what I can take. And then a lot of people are not doing that and that's the way to be strong, is not just having an accountant, but actually yourself doing your own finances and being financially sound.

Sian:

Right. I think we need to start sort of tying this all together. So I do have some some little questions that we're going to ask at the end, but I just want to sort of go round and let's have a a sort of a word about really where this takes us and what we need to do and how we can get that strength. Is anybody is anybody gonna go first?

Francoise:

Talk is the word I would like us to to have because we're talking in our own heads and going round and roundabouts. But actually, it's by having these conversations that we've had right here

Sian:

Mhmm.

Francoise:

That highlights that we don't have all the information we need to answer the questions we have in our own head and finding somebody or people that you can talk to about things. Preferably somebody who

Sian:

knows what they're talking about.

Francoise:

Yes. But even by having the conversations or listening to these sorts of conversations Mhmm.

Sian:

Helps you to get together.

Francoise:

Get out there. We should be it's it's taboo and we don't talk about our families. And if we talk about our finances.

Sian:

And if we talked about our families and their finances, can we have another if? Yes. Or even if we it would start to this is another word I hate, normalising. Would become a normal thing to actually it would just be a normal part of discussion.

Francoise:

Absolutely. Because then you're we're talking about things you help to find the answers.

Sian:

So the freedom to talk about stuff.

Rebecca:

I'd say educate. So learn, you know, read books on the subject, listen to podcasts and just start learning and having an understanding around all these subjects because that then gives you the ability to ask the questions and also talk about what's going on. So if you're ready to talk about it, you know, go and check out do you do you Francoise, do you have a book or a podcast or do you have anything like that?

Francoise:

I've done a few podcasts. So there are some podcasts that we're discussing hyper abrasives and Yeah.

Rebecca:

Do you put some information out on your profile?

Francoise:

Not enough. Again, it's another role to play. Right? Don't what you say

Sian:

get to.

Sian:

Don't start searching. Not doing that.

Rebecca:

Did it like a news like a weekly newsletter or a monthly newsletter or anything?

Sian:

Home now. Yeah. No. It's On my list too. Everything hangs.

Sian:

It's supposed to I think I'm I think for me, the education thing is actually about language. It's about understanding the language. I think it's difficult to have a conversation if you don't understand the words. Mhmm.

Rebecca:

Yeah. I think there's there's a lot of jargon in finance finances. So you can you know, when you said oppress oppressives, it would High

Francoise:

hypo oppressives.

Rebecca:

High I was like, I don't know what that is. I'm literally waiting for the Right. The drop of what is that.

Francoise:

So with a lot of the stuff you've said.

Sian:

You know, you we we can we all have it within our power to listen to the words that are being said and put them into chat GPT and Claudine. Actually, what does this mean? Yeah. What is the root of this word? Yeah.

Sian:

Where does it come from? I think language and education. I think a lot of I don't we don't teach finance in schools, do we? No. It's it's a bit why don't we?

Sian:

Why don't we? I don't. But we don't we don't teach finance in schools, we don't really teach health necessarily in schools. It's all obscure, isn't it? Sort of, we you teach about periods and sex.

Sian:

Yeah. But I'm not sure that we actually teach anything of any value that's any deeper. You've got a word?

Michele:

I think you should be accountable for your finances.

Sian:

Accountable for those.

Michele:

I think yeah, definitely. I mean, yes you've got service providers, but also you're the business owner. It's your business.

Rebecca:

One tip I give and I did get this from somebody else who's a finance journalist expert, part of money saving website and that was I used to say you know have a date with your partner for your personal finances but what she came up with is also if you want that accountability and you haven't whether it's a business buddy, if you're not a business person you've got your personal finances and that's like once a month every other week sit down with a business buddy or sit down with one of your best friends and say right we're gonna sit here for an hour and we're gonna get something done. Don't care what you're doing, you're gonna sit there and I'm gonna sit here and we're gonna sit there and do it. What are you gonna do? Right. You're gonna get that done.

Rebecca:

Okay. This is what I'm gonna do. Mhmm. And you sit then you get

Sian:

it So you're body doubling.

Rebecca:

Yes. Exactly.

Sian:

You're not working together necessarily, but you are both working on something that you don't want to work on.

Michele:

Exactly. Yes.

Sian:

But you know that is really really effective. Is a good Body doubling is so effective. There will there are websites around that you can subscribe to. Not a lot of money. I mean, you can go on on like Mondays, and you can body double on Mondays, and you're all there on the screen doing your own work.

Sian:

And it's really weird, but having those other working on whatever they don't wanna work on either, seems to work.

Michele:

It's really good idea. Yep.

Sian:

I think following on from what everybody said, I'm not sure if this is relevant to you, but it might well be. I I think it's it's knowledge, it's about having in-depth knowledge about your own stuff, knowing I your

Rebecca:

do think knowledge does come into

Sian:

it because I feel real Yeah. In as in but real knowledge, as in knowledge numbers. Yeah. Actually knowing what do I need to know Mhmm. And where am I now?

Sian:

And that can be one of the scariest things to actually sit down and, you know, sort of debt, write

Sian:

it down. Yeah.

Sian:

You know, this is everything I owe. This is everything I have. And actually look at that sort of that net figure. And the same with the, you know, with with the accounts. Actually, what's my turnover?

Sian:

What's my profit? What's this? What's this? You know, understanding what what numbers do I need to know and actually knowing those numbers Mhmm. And putting your big girl pants on and sorting it out, actually.

Sian:

Mhmm. And I think you can't do anything until you do that because doing that gives you clarity.

Francoise:

Yep. So again, taking that accountability and and Yep. Knowing what's going on in your business, but the same goes when it comes with your health. How often are we so busy doing things that we're not paying attention to what our bodies are telling us? Exactly.

Francoise:

It doesn't have to

Rebecca:

be hard. Exactly. It

Francoise:

doesn't have to take over just like understanding your finances doesn't have to be hard or taking over. Exactly. Understanding what what am I actually experiencing in this body and how can I make this experience easier or comfortable or better?

Sian:

Yeah. And actually listening to the I suppose paying attention

Sian:

Mhmm.

Sian:

To the feelings Mhmm. Perhaps the physical feelings. Mhmm. In a way, it's a little bit like tuning into your gut instinct when when you start working with somebody or somebody works in walks into a room that you're gonna be working with or or a client for instance. Somebody who's gonna be a client and your head's going, actually, okay, well, this would be quite good to be a client and this how much I get paid.

Sian:

And your stomach's like doing doing little flipping things going, don't work with them. It'll be trouble. Yeah. And we try and sort of, I don't anymore, but we sort of try and pretend it's not happening, everything's fine, no, there's nothing wrong, it's all okay. And we try and override it and do something to divert ourselves.

Francoise:

And then a few years down the lane, yeah.

Sian:

Yeah. We've got

Francoise:

a massive problem. Yeah. Exactly.

Sian:

So so pay attention to what Exactly. Your body is telling Right. I think we'll do just a little bit more because I'd like to sort of know where you are and where you're coming from. So what's your top tip for being in business?

Francoise:

Oh, top tip for being in business. Putting me on the spot.

Sian:

I am. Yes. Be of service. Your top tip for being in business?

Rebecca:

Not everyone is an expert who says they're an expert. Check.

Michele:

Yeah. I like that actually. I'm gonna go with what you say. Check everyone's qualifications before they touch your

Sian:

I never do.

Michele:

Accounts. Yeah. No one does. Check.

Francoise:

I've never actually Have

Sian:

you got one or you gonna go with that?

Michele:

Yeah. That's what I'm gonna go with. Check that your IFA is FCA regulated, check your bookkeepers and your accountants are regulated by an accounting body. There's 13 of them there in the country, so they need to be regulated. And the industry is going to accounting industry is going over to the FCA anyway, in a couple of years.

Sian:

Good luck. My tip, which is sort of in context of this, because I have lots of tips for being in business. But my tip in the context of this is to understand what sort of planner you are. Mhmm. Some people are really good at setting goals and having little steps that lead to those goals and that's brilliant for them.

Sian:

I'm not like that, a lot of people aren't like that. Architects are like that. Architects, they create a plan and then they off You

Francoise:

have to, otherwise everything

Sian:

falls down.

Rebecca:

Exactly. The house will fall down.

Sian:

Yeah. But you'd be halfway through, you know, building the Burj Khalifa or something and go, oh. I tell you what, can we just pop it like a couple of feet to the next? Exactly. Because it'd

Sian:

look much better like that.

Sian:

And there are people when they're planning a room, they draw it all out and then they get the furniture. I I get the furniture start shoving it in corners and moving it all around. I can't sit and plan it on a piece of paper. Yeah. And I build as I plan.

Sian:

Mhmm. So it's no good be setting a goal that says, hey, I'm gonna check-in with my health. I'm gonna check-in with my finances. I need to find another way of making that happen, to find out what sort of planner you are. That's a really good tip.

Sian:

So what do you know now? No, actually, no, we're not going to start with you, Francois, we're gonna start with you, Rebecca, because we did that last What do you know now, thinking about your business journey, what do you know now that you wish you'd have known when you started out?

Rebecca:

That I was operating from a place of lack in myself, and I was pleasing everybody else around me. I was operating in terms of the team that I was taking on, the advisers that were taking on, how I was marketing myself, how I was spending my time, my efforts, everything basically in a roundabout way to please everybody else. And I wasn't looking at what my needs were typical female approach to things, I was sort of just trying to please everybody and actually pleasing nobody. And it meant that

Sian:

So true. Like, got a vision of a sat in an office with a load of grumpy people. Yeah,

Rebecca:

pretty much. Yeah, pretty much. Are a lot of advisers I was working with at the time under my brand, they just started demanding more and more and more and you know, I just wasn't willing to keep giving them a pound of flesh effectively. Once I started working on my personal development, started sort of understanding who I was, what I was about, what my passion and my drive came from, what I wanted to achieve personally, I stopped you know, for example I stopped doing loads of awards, I stopped doing TEDx talks, I stopped writing books, I stopped doing all these multitude of things that everyone says is a great idea.

Sian:

That's everybody says you have to do.

Rebecca:

Because everyone says you have

Sian:

to But do

Rebecca:

I was doing it not to prove to other people, but I was trying to prove to myself that I was capable. And once I sort of sat back and went, oh, actually I'm like eight or nine years in now, I'm actually more than capable. And I'd done that work on myself personally, I wasn't really as attuned to wanting to please everybody else, I was maturing if you like in my business journey. But the answer to the question is, is I wish I'd have learned that quicker, I wish I'd developed my personal understanding who I was as a person personally and basically, like, looking at my own sort of personal trauma and how I was operating Mhmm. Has a reflect on how we show up in business.

Sian:

What do you know now that you wish you'd have known when you saw

Michele:

No one told me when I first started my company there's gonna be ups, highs and lows. So I've learned so much. So you like you were saying about personal development, you learn so much from yourself. Your business, you know, if someone says to you their business is going out and even kill everything is perfect, they're lying. Yeah, because that's not running a business.

Michele:

Running a business, you're gonna have the highs, you're gonna have the lows and unfortunately that's just the way it is, it's life, it's humans, it's that sort of thing. So I didn't learn that because I thought, oh, in Camden I'm gonna do this all smoothly. Doesn't work like that. Like you say with team members, learning about yourself, what you want to do, how you want to achieve it. And you do get highs and lows because people don't tell you that sometimes company goes into administration.

Michele:

So you lose a lot of money or liquidation. You don't think of, you know, those things you learn. You're learning every day in your business and that's the way it should be.

Sian:

Cause we're going around the table, I'll do what what do I know now that I wish I'd have known when I started out? Is that your Whether you are, in inverted commas, a proper business isn't necessarily measured in how much you are turning over. Mhmm. If in order to be a business, at some point you have to bring money in. But it wasn't how much of that that you're bringing in.

Sian:

And if you're not turning over a million pounds, you know, a year or you haven't got this profit level yet, That's not what makes a business. What makes you a business is if you have systems, if you have processes, if you are able to delegate, even if you don't have anybody to delegate to, if you have a strategy and if you know your numbers, that's what makes you a business.

Sian:

Mhmm.

Sian:

Not not the actual number, it's knowing the numbers. That's what I wish I'd have known.

Francoise:

I'm the same, Sianni. If 20 year old me had had that foundation training on understanding whether I worked for somebody else or worked for myself and had a business, what is our output versus the input and what are we actually left with at the end of the day after giving so much of our time, expertise or learning and how it all weighs up in the way that we we have. At the end of the day, we're all going back to bed and sitting with what have we produced through the day and was it worth it? And the numbers piece of it, we're not taught it in school. We're not taught it from an early foundation.

Francoise:

I've not been teaching my kids because I don't have that understanding. I wasn't raised that way either.

Sian:

Mhmm.

Francoise:

And again, comes back to conversations of we're not talking about the right things. What are we spending our time talking about or watching and scrolling through and being sidled with because it's it's it's not actually helping with what we're trying to do in this very moment. And yeah, the numbers is a big big thing for me.

Sian:

Just knowing just knowing what makes a business. Yeah. And knowing what makes a business mainly is is knowing your numbers.

Rebecca:

It sounds like there's lots of theme around expectations today from this conversation, what we expect of ourselves

Sian:

Mhmm.

Rebecca:

What others expect of us, and what our perception of what other people expect we should be doing. So there's a lot of yeah, expectations, lots of pressure and layers of noise really.

Michele:

Yeah, 100%.

Sian:

I think we need to end it there, don't you? I think we've I think we've covered nearly everything. I hope you enjoy listening to this. You know, the the guests we've had in the studio today, my cohost are really, you know, they really know what they're doing and they really bring things to help not only women, but businesses. So thank you as always for being my cohost on the Women in Business Radio Show.

Sian:

So Thank much.

Sian:

Thank you.

Sian:

Thank you to Rebecca. Thank you to Francoise for coming in. I know that we're going to be seeing you as VIP visit VIP exhibitors at the Women in Business big show. What I would like to do is make sure that we've covered for people listening in who maybe aren't coming to the show. How people can get hold of you if they would like some more information and to work with you.

Sian:

I think we've done you, Francoise, haven't we? But let's do Rebecca and then we'll finish off with you. We'll do you again, Francoise, that people have it here. How can people contact you?

Rebecca:

So you can go to rebecca robertson dot co dot u k, which is where you'll find links to my book, and you'll see links to my podcast, which you can get on iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube. So you can pick your poison, so to speak. We do an episode every Friday, and there's about at the moment, there's, like, a 140 episodes. There's a lot there to listen to. If you're looking more on the regulated side of things and advice or financial planning side of things, then it will also redirect you.

Rebecca:

But the other website is evolution financial planning. And on there, if you go to resources, there's a financial well-being assessment. So you can fill fill that out, and it will but it's like yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. So it's not too tax taxing, and it will give you an assessment or evaluation of where you are financially in terms of your well-being with your finances.

Francoise:

My website is hypocore, hypocore,.co.uk. On there, you will find a fair bit of information, but most importantly, the opportunity to book a consultation, which you will have to pay for because you are accountable to your own health. Exactly. But it is redeemable if you decided to work with me moving forward. Yeah, just just talk about things.

Sian:

Okay. Mhmm. Michele's details you can get because they're all over everything that we do for the Women in Business Radio show as are mine. Thank you very much everybody for listening. We will see you all in the next episode, an organized woman would know who's on next.

Sian:

No idea. No idea. But we will see you all again soon. Thank you very much for listening. One more thing I'd like to ask you, I'd like to ask a favor.

Sian:

We are on Audible, we're on Spotify, we are on Spreaker. Please, if you happen to listen to us and you like what you've heard, could you just like press a little like button somewhere? That would be really good. Please. And keep an eye on us because we're gonna be on YouTube properly in the next month or so.

Sian:

Yeah. So do press a like, subscribe, do something if you've enjoyed

Francoise:

Share it.

Sian:

Just join in. Help us grow. Thank you very much.

Sian:

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Thanks for having us.

Sian:

Sometimes we come in laughing, we go out laughing. Bye, Bye.