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What the hell just happened 2020? Queenstown Life blogger Jane Guy interviews women around the world to ask them what's the future? What's happening now? Who the hell are we?
Kia ora Kotol. Welcome. Queenstown live podcast. Great start. This is the first one of it's been two years.
Speaker 1:It's been two long years, and I'm very excited for my very first guest, Natalie Ferguson. I welcome Hari Mai.
Speaker 2:Hi. I'm I actually saw in your Instagram the other day that it looks like two years since you posted up a podcast, and I was like, oh, no.
Speaker 1:No. No pressure.
Speaker 2:No pressure. Am I the guinea pig? Nah.
Speaker 1:No pressure. Now I was reading your LinkedIn profile, which I love, and I wanna I wanna read a little bit about you. So co founder and chief chief experience officer at Hatch. That was that was what you were. And now co founder of Power Suit which we'll get into.
Speaker 1:But I love I'm going to read this statement because that part of it I was like I don't know what this means. Expert navigating complex innovation challenges and connecting the dots between customer business and regulatory requirements, UX products, growth specialists and my human centred and data driven approach to decision making as a proven track record of delivering results. And I instantly went, well, I want some of those results.
Speaker 2:I feel like I used a little bit more punctuation than what it might seem. I love it. I hate LinkedIn. I've never I've never used it as a like, I was my cofounder, Kristen, laughed at me when I made some updates because I still had, like, canoe polo team at New Victoria University.
Speaker 1:So I
Speaker 2:gave it a bit of an overhaul, but it's so hard to sum yourself up in a couple of It's like, it's terrible.
Speaker 1:It really is. And I I love the difference between what people write on LinkedIn and then what they write on, like, their Instagram profile. They're like it's like Batman. You know? There's two totally different night and days to it, but I just love it.
Speaker 1:So how are you? I usually start this podcast by asking how are you and then how are you? Because those those two statements mean completely different things.
Speaker 2:Yes. And I'm actually I only have answered the second one because I don't feel like anyone has time or interest anymore in the surface level stuff. I'm not really interested in having the I'm fine when I'm not fine. I actually I'm probably a fifty fifty combination of exceptionally great and kind of the other half being a little bit unnerved, maybe is the right word. So, firstly, we've been I I left Hatch probably about eight months ago, and that was a huge emotional rollercoaster leaving.
Speaker 2:You're leaving your baby behind. You're leaving these incredible people behind. But we'd been acquired, so we were no longer the leadership, really. So it was time to move on to a new challenge. So it was really hard to say goodbye.
Speaker 2:But what I found, because we were leading leading towards something, everyone keeps commenting on it. Chris and I glowing. We're just so excited and so happy and it it it's it's a really incredible high. But then the flip side is we've thrown ourselves into starting again from scratch. And what that means is we've just come back from two days in Auckland.
Speaker 2:I live in Wellington. That we are split across far far too many things again. We've got we're about to launch our own podcast. We've got a newsletter we send out every week. We're working for a couple of really interesting companies to help them with innovation.
Speaker 2:We're trying to figure out MVP product. We're running workshops. And I'm I'm doing a speech talk at UXNZ in a couple of weeks. And the context shifting just leaves you to feeling sort of out to sea a little bit. You just there's no clarity.
Speaker 2:We're in a total state of uncertainty unknowns, which is where we thrive. But there is a there is a burden with that, and and you're sort of your whole brain space is taken up with jumping between things. And so I've just noticed even last weekend over Waitangi weekend, I just couldn't relax. Like, I I just had too many things in my brain, and I'm trying really hard to not do that this time around. So, it's a real discipline that
Speaker 1:I am not good at yet. So what tell me because we'll we'll go into what power suit is completely through this podcast. But when you say I'm trying to, what does that actually mean for you? You can tell that I'm a coach. Right?
Speaker 1:I'm like, what does that actually mean? It's like when people say, I'm gonna do that thing. I'm like, are you? How? How are you gonna do that thing?
Speaker 1:So what do you do to try and bring yourself back to a place of what what's working for for Natalie? What's working for me?
Speaker 2:I think I'm a huge believer in the things that make you exceptional are also your worst flaws. And I think for me, I have an intense and always have had an intense level of ownership over everything I've done, And I'm also capable of working incredible hours with incredible focus without needing needing in quotation marks a pause. But those things become traits that you rely on too much. And so what I'm trying to do, the things I'm trying to do is have a very clear delineation between work time and nonwork time. And I'm not really fixated on what days it is, but last weekend, I failed because rather than going, I'm gonna sit down for four hours and do this and smash it out and then move on and actually relax.
Speaker 2:I let it drift over the whole weekend. So it's really creating those clear delineations, especially when you're working from home and you're working on a bunch of different things. The second thing which was a really big life lesson over Hatch was to the difference between having oversight and the ability to inspire and motivate exceptional people to deliver at their top, at their best, and moving away from doing it myself, which I had done a lot more of in the past. So, really starting to challenge myself on, is this the right thing for you to do, Or is it something that we should outsource to someone else? And that can be anything from getting someone to clean your house Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which I actually really enjoy doing, so I don't do that, through to are we the right people to do our own website, or should we be outsourcing that? Yep. So that's probably the main biggies. Oh, and then I suppose the third one that I've actually been really motivated by one of the companies I'm working with is being so ruthless in prioritization. What is your immediate goal?
Speaker 2:If it doesn't add to that, if it's not if it's gonna create a whole new part of a job for a day, cut it. It's so and that's one of the things people I don't think realize so much when you're starting something new is the amount of stuff to do. There's always 5,000,000 things and all of them are really great things. So it's much harder to prioritize them. So those are the three tricks I'm trying to put in place, somewhat successfully and somewhat unsuccessfully.
Speaker 1:Yeah. No. And, know, it's always a work in progress. And I I also think that, you know, the biggest tip that I used to say, and I still say to people and I do myself is put your self care in first, but actually block it out in your calendar. So I have blocks of pink that's like, literally don't book me for anything.
Speaker 1:And it makes me look at it and go, this but it's first. So it comes before anything else. It comes before my kid, you know? It's like, you can wait. Fine.
Speaker 2:Wait, because I don't practice what I preach. Like I preach that when it comes to finances. Pay yourself first. Make sure you've got your money set aside to protect yourself. But when it comes to time I'm absolutely dismal at doing it.
Speaker 2:So I I actually I love that because one of my goals for last year which I still haven't started, is to block out an hour a day to go out for a walk. I don't care if I'm feeling lazy and I just wanna doodle. I don't care if it's just go lie in the field across the road from my house. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And actually do it, and I still haven't. So I think I'm gonna break it down to a smaller step and make it fifteen minutes and walk around my block.
Speaker 1:Just the perp because we always people generally tend to go too big.
Speaker 2:Yes. When I talk to marathon every week.
Speaker 1:Yeah. They're like, I'm gonna smash out my whole website tonight. And you're like, really? Why don't you do thirty minutes tonight and then thirty minutes tomorrow night and then maybe sixty minutes on Thursday? And they're like, oh, can I do that?
Speaker 1:And I'm like, yeah. But I think it's the blocking out. So on a Sunday night, I sit down every single Sunday and look at the week and block out the time first, and then it's in, and then look at what's going on around that. So, yeah, it's an action
Speaker 2:I'm gonna take away. In progress.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And don't beat yourself up. Like, don't go go all go to do it again, but then go, if I actually want something to be different, what do I need to do personally to make it work for me? Because some things won't work for everybody. They won't.
Speaker 1:No. Tell about power suit because I am I saw you, like, it pop up and I was like, what is this? I want some of
Speaker 2:that. Yes. Explain to me what it I
Speaker 1:mean,
Speaker 2:in some ways, are we solving our own problem? Probably not. We're solving a combination of our problem and half the world's problem. We came out of Hatch. We'd spent five years at Hatch, and we were so laser focused on delivering a change in the wealth landscape for New Zealand.
Speaker 2:Lived it, breathed it, had a real impact on it. It had an incredibly epic ride there. And then we came out five years later and looked up and just saw not only had the landscape of women in leadership not changed, which we'd expected to, only eight percent of global CEOs are women still, that we're actually starting to take a step back backwards, and COVID actually led to a lot more women. As most of us have experienced, especially those with families that taken on more of the household load had started teaching their kids from home. So actually, that led to the mass resignation that oh, I can't even remember what it's called.
Speaker 2:Not quiet quitting. That's one of them. But the great resignation. That's the one. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So there is a real problem there. And when we started digging into it, we probably gaslit ourselves a bit thinking, oh, the woman thing's a bit done. You there's a sort of sense around that women are whining about this problem that no longer exists and the pay gets sort of solved. It's not. New Zealand's One of the top in the in the world, and we're still sitting at 9%.
Speaker 2:That women have this equality. Let it go now. There's bigger problems to solve. We started digging into it, and what we found extremely quickly is that this is probably one of the biggest problems facing the world still. The reason for that is it costs an actual dollar amount that they count in about the trillions of not fully getting the value of even if it's labor knowledge economy from women.
Speaker 2:It's a hugely costly issue, but it also impacts the lives of a % of people. And the reason for that is women are not leading. And when we say leading, we've actually redefined it. So what if you don't wanna be the CEO of a company? You can lead at any level.
Speaker 2:Women are not leading and getting into positions where they can influence the the outcomes of the things that they want to influence and that they can live and work on their terms. And that has a meaningful impact on their lives, but also if they're on men's lives because men all of these gender roles are leaving are leaving people in these boxes that actually creates limitations for them. And we see it often with men who try and be the stay at home parent, and they try and break into mother's groups, and that's not a comfortable situation for them. So there's so there's that sort of global context. When we started working with women leaders and those on their way up, we realized there's three critical traits or things that women need to be able to make it to the top.
Speaker 2:And it's slightly different from what men need still. They do need the traditional learning, the the formal learning, and that's things like courses and conferences and elearning and all that good stuff. And that's where organizations are currently paying. They need mentoring and sponsors and that's where as a gap and coaches. And there's a big gap there.
Speaker 2:And what we've found is that actually it's quite hard to find those people because there's a huge trust element. There's a huge amount of shared experience and the ability to respect and and learn from people. And there's this payment thing that feels wildly uncomfortable in some of those sales.
Speaker 1:So uncomfortable for people.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Yeah. Because it's sort of a general life thing. Right? Like women don't see it as I've got a coach and a mentor.
Speaker 2:They see it as I've got challenges across every part of my life, and I want to work with someone who can coach me at sometimes, mentor me at sometimes. So there's that big thing. And then the third one is this peer group, which again is an incredible challenge. It's not your friends. A friend of mine says it like this.
Speaker 2:She says, have a board of directors for my life, and my friends are the cheerleaders. We are the people who will be have her back regardless if she's operating at her best or if she's doing at a operating at her worst. She needs people who work at the same level of her as her, who understand the complexities and nuances of her role and can challenge and hold her to account. And that's and that's again across every part of life. So we've recognized those three things.
Speaker 2:And then on the same time, we've looked to organizations and where in the past the concept of women in leadership is almost a nice to have. It's a bit of a we're doing our bit for equality. Now it's an actual pressing issue for them because the world of work has changed forever as a result of COVID. We are now in remote hybrid work. We are now moving more and more into tech solutions.
Speaker 2:There's no longer an IT department and offices. Tech is transforming everything. We need a new style of leader. We can no longer think that bums on seats is a way to measure productivity, even though it never was. So we need to open up in general our understanding of what leadership looks like and and create space for different types of leaders across different organizations.
Speaker 2:So now organizations are for the first time ever really motivated to solve this huge chunky problem. And while we don't think a power suit, we can do everything, we can help with this little part of it. And we Yeah. Obviously wake up every single day, which is why we landed on this living and breathing it and spending way too much time in the weekend thinking about it. Do you know what?
Speaker 1:It's really interesting because as a coach faced with the the just seeing women seeing it as a as a luxury to have a coach and yeah, it like, you know, I I never profess to know what your financial situation is but actually, when I've spoken with women who have finally said, yes, I want to book in and come and do some coaching. The the the weight of responsibility they feel to contribute and and to the family dynamic is so huge that taking that little bit of money away from that by you know and spending it on themselves is is such a weight. But then what they've realised, it's like when I know that if I don't exercise or be on my own every day, I'm not a good mum. Like that's just the way it is. But they realise that when they go into those sessions and just basically vomit what's going on in their brains and have someone sort through that stuff, they're an actual better person when they go back to their families and their workplaces.
Speaker 1:So they're like, the statement is always why didn't I do this years ago? Is like I wanna create something around that because it's it's that ability to say no, I I am act like what does one, what does responsibility mean? And what is being irresponsible? So is being irresponsible spending some money on yourself? But also that ability to say, no, no, I am worthy of sliding this across or putting up my prices so I can afford to go.
Speaker 1:You know, it all kind of that chain, like leads to itself.
Speaker 2:I so agree. I so agree. I had some leadership coaching probably about a year ago and at that time that's when I was considering leaving Hatch and I was in a relationship that was no longer working but I was in denial. And I'm on day one, I went in and this was leadership coaching and I just balled for an hour. I literally could not
Speaker 1:stop. Yes. We've had balled.
Speaker 2:And she was so incredible. Her name's Jenny and she just said you are in a crisis right now. We need to get you out of this crisis. And and the that she taught me so much about sort of that put your own oxygen mask on first, but that I was no use to anyone at that point. What I needed to do is and no one else in my life was able to give me that.
Speaker 2:I had my friends who were extremely supportive. And actually, like, I have incredible friends who really do move into coaching territory. I have a few friends who are in people experience, and they really understand and can, like, put friendship aside and sort of get into the nitty gritty. But you don't that relationship with a coach where and the biggest biggest takeout, and I know it seems really silly, but every week I'd turn up and she'd given me homework and I'd be like, oh, I because we moved very quickly over six weeks from absolute crisis to I was back to running the world. Like it was an and she said in the last session she was like look at what you've done in such I
Speaker 1:know. And
Speaker 2:it was I was mind blown. But every week she gave me this homework and every week I'd come back and be like is this the right answer Or I think I'm I wanna do this. And she just said at one point, stop. This is not about you telling me or showing me what you've done. This is about you for the first time in a very long time taking an hour out of every week and focusing on yourself Yeah.
Speaker 2:And figuring out what you need and how you want to approach it. And as soon as she'd see that, it was such a light bulb moment for me of, oh my goodness. And now I actually do stick with that. I invest so much more time in just thinking about myself. And it's so funny because it sounds really selfish, but it was shocking to me that I had for years stopped thinking about myself and hadn't thought about what I wanted and how I might approach it.
Speaker 2:And just having that mindfulness over it and someone to bounce ideas off was just an an obviously a very capable coach as you are. Like, it's just incredible, incredible what it did for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's it I mean, I had I started with a coach about three years ago, and it honestly changed my life. Just like you talked about like that thing of, am not here as a coach and my coach said this, and when I was doing my training, we're not there to tell you what to do, you know everything that you should be doing yourself. You know. We don't know you, you know, you know you, and it's that thing of somebody else seeing it from a different perspective and just teasing out what is already in you.
Speaker 1:So we, you know, I always say to people when they're starting that process, you're gonna come in and sometimes you, it's like when you think, oh, I've got nothing to talk to my therapist about that. Those are the days you need to go to the
Speaker 2:You're like, go
Speaker 1:to them. Like I've had someone sit and bowl for sixty minutes and then they've been like, holy crap, that was the best sixty minutes I've ever paid for in my life. And you're like, what do you need to do now? And they're like, this, this and this, right, off you go. And then the next one might be a list of action steps that they go, like they're different every time, but it's not about it's about the ability to say, I am important in this process
Speaker 2:of the world. And I can and I think oh, I I mean, I always translate it to finance because I spent so long in there of reframing it from selfish to selfless. Yeah. And I think, like, with women often they bow out of money conversations at home and they hand over the financial ranks to their partners. And when I rephrase that to them as, do you think that's quite a burden to put on someone for you to just not participate in that?
Speaker 2:They went, oh my goodness. I have to step up and help. But initially, the way they'd looked at it was, oh my goodness. I can't do this. I it's all very internal.
Speaker 2:Like, I'm no good confidence. But as soon as it was reframed as a way to add value to the world, bam, women were in for it. And I think it's the same thing with coaching. You I approached it as a selfish thing. I thought, oh my goodness.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Same thing. Fortunately, I mean, I was working at Hatch. Incredible. My current cofounder as well, I had clearly identified before I had that I was in a bit of a crisis and had very gently suggested that I go do this thing.
Speaker 2:I mean, what a powerhouse. What an incredible person. But there's a cost involved. You're taking time out of your day. But when it's reframed and when I personally experienced it as, no, this is a way to be selfless.
Speaker 2:This is a way to equip yourself with what you need to add value in the world. It totally changed how I felt about it and made it seem like an absolute no brainer.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Totally. I totally agree. So for women who are listening to this, what how could one, how can PowerSuite help them or what can they do next? And should, and I use that in inverted commas because I hate telling women what they should and shouldn't be doing.
Speaker 1:But what is the best thing, what are the best things that they can be doing around? Well, one, financial literacy, but just starting that journey into I like to call it, like, financial literacy and health. Financial health. Like, what what can they be doing around your stuff, but also just in general?
Speaker 2:So I'm I'll start with the finance stuff, and I think health and wealth sound the same for a good reason. When it comes to finances, and I actually I'm I'm about to do this talk on radical collaboration funnily enough, but it's in the context of an investing building an investing platform. And one of the things that we had fundamental to Hatch was growing wealth was not the barrier was not money. It wasn't technical skills. I mean, it's as easy as shopping when you're buying shares.
Speaker 2:It's as easy as shopping for shoes. There is no actual barriers in the path to people building wealth. You can start very small now. All of that stuff is sorted. So the actual problem we needed to solve was confidence.
Speaker 2:This is always the case. Yeah. So the first thing that anyone can do if they want to get better at money is take those tiny steps, break down this huge mountain that it's been presented to us as all our lives into the tiniest step. Is it putting $5 a week or $50 a week into what we call an emergency fund, a rainy day fund to protect yourself, to give yourself that safety net. So if things go wrong, not a shopping spree, not a holiday.
Speaker 2:If your car breaks down, if you have a flood like recently happened in Auckland, if you need something in a hurry, you if you want to get out of a bad relationship, get out of a bad job, what is that money you can start to build yourself a safety net and you can start extremely small, and what that also does is buy you mental peace. The more money you have in your safety net, the less time you spend thinking about money, the more confidence you have. If you've moved on from that and you have a bit of a safety net, confidence is the biggest thing to start working on. The easiest, easiest thing you can do, there's two options. One, start talking about money.
Speaker 2:Have money date with your friends, with your partner. Start actively having open conversations where you share your shame, your embarrassment, your fears, and find out that they feel exactly the same and start making talk transparently about pay, pay negotiations, investing, stupid money mistakes, whatever it is, start talking about it or learn by doing and sign up to an investing platform. Make a very small investment, $50, a hundred dollars, monitor how it goes. As much as people think right now we're heading into a recession and the share markets all look doom doom and gloom, this is actually a really good time to start investing. Francis Cook, who's a great financial journalist.
Speaker 1:She's epic.
Speaker 2:Yeah. If you're investing in something like the 500 biggest companies in the world right now, which is very easy to do through a fund called the S and P five hundred, and in ten years time, those 500 biggest companies are no longer in existence or have lost your money, you're gonna have much bigger things to worry about. You'll probably be like sitting in a cave worrying about how your next gonna eat. So that feels like a risk that you don't need to worry super much about if you're spreading your money across all the stuff. So that's the financial side.
Speaker 2:From the power suit side, I think power suit is for everyone. And at the moment, we are prelaunch. We are very much in trying to do what Kristen and I do best, which is building a movement around something
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And building a community, bringing people together to have those vulnerable conversations. So we've launched a newsletter. If you go to it's powersuit, p 0 w r suit Com, Sign up for our free newsletter. We send it out weekly. Really interesting, actionable tips.
Speaker 2:Whatever we write it as well, by the way. It's a hectic writing. No. It's great. Writing.
Speaker 1:Love the other day because the only two newsletters I read are yours, and I get the NASA newsletter on a Saturday, and it's Oh. Epic. It's, like, funny. And, like, I'm like, what's Starzawa? What?
Speaker 1:So I read your two, and then I read Guardian, and then I'm like, off off on the leftist way.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, we think the great thing, the newsletter was like what we'd call a minimum viable product. What can we put out immediately? And our audience has grown organically week on week. And the thing is every time we send out one, we have a jump in numbers, which means people are sharing it, which means people are finding value.
Speaker 2:But the coolest part is people are interacting with us. So we've got this actually incredible crowd of women already. We've got some pretty high profile, pretty successful women, early stage career women, a whole bunch, a lot of men who are following us, a lot of hatchlings who support us, incredible men. And we're opening a conversation. So join it.
Speaker 2:You can also obviously follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn. I think we've even Pinterest. We've got Twitter. Join the conversation. Help us build from the ground up the community, the network you've always wished you had, and very soon and it will help you keep up to date with very soon what we're gonna be launching as far as our first product.
Speaker 2:So that's absolutely where you can find us, and we love talking to people. So please have a conversation with us. Tell us what you think. Share your stories. We have a tip every week or an action people can take, and we're just blown away every week by the number of people who respond that they've done something.
Speaker 2:Last week, someone actually asked on a general Slack channel what their pay gap was and asked the CEO to calculate it. They she got that from reading our newsletter. Yeah. We've had someone bought a no T shirt after our boundaries edition saying, I need to remind myself every day to set a boundary, and that's often saying no. So we've got these incredible success stories already, and we haven't even launched yet.
Speaker 2:So join us.
Speaker 1:Join us. Amazing. I get very, very excited about this stuff. I think we need to have a party in a field somewhere. Yes.
Speaker 1:Just get everybody in a field. There's always a field. There's music. There's food. There's dancing.
Speaker 1:There's discussions. I see it now. Getting totally distracted
Speaker 2:by that because I wanna throw friends because I'm like, there's nothing more powerful than bringing women together. But Kristen, on that note about not getting distracted is like, not where we're at. The next you next time.
Speaker 1:Met Kristen like five years ago on a bus. We sat next to each other and we were chatting going to an event and we were just talking about money. I think it was one of the first times I'd ever had a openly outward conversation about money, and I was like, oh, this is an interesting conversation to be having on
Speaker 2:a bus to
Speaker 1:nowhere. And she stuck in my head forever and then saw her pop up, so that was where our journey began. Right, Quick fire round because we could talk, I'm sure, all morning, but, you know, we have jobs to go to. Something you want to learn?
Speaker 2:About artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1:One concert or gig you'll never forget?
Speaker 2:Oh, well, Taylor Swift. Nice. She she ended we ended up accidentally front row. I was, like, crying. People were like, I love you.
Speaker 1:At a party you'll find me, dot dot dot.
Speaker 2:The loud one, slugging back whines.
Speaker 1:I love it. I feel lonely when?
Speaker 2:Oh, when I'm in a situation with someone, but I don't feel like they are supporting me or get me.
Speaker 1:Okay. Watch left or right arm? No watch. Oh, nice. Favorite hot beverage?
Speaker 1:Tea. And one thing you'd get rid of in the world?
Speaker 2:Sadness.
Speaker 1:But if we didn't have sadness,
Speaker 2:we wouldn't feel the other side. I know. That was a real quick fire fire answer. I'm like poverty? Sadness?
Speaker 2:Which one do I choose? Climate climate criminals. I don't know.
Speaker 1:I love it. I totally love it. Natalie, thank you so much. This has been epic. We could talk for a hundred hours, I'm sure, about all this stuff, and I'm sure we will.
Speaker 1:And we can find you on Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Snapchat.
Speaker 2:Everyone, LinkedIn, Power Just search Power Suit. P O W R. We've changed it. We've removed the e.
Speaker 1:And find us everywhere. Amazing. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Thank you. That was fun.