Well dear reader, if you are one of the people who know me quite well, you will probably know that for all my confidence and bluster – being in the spotlight is not really my favourite place to be!  I’m happy to put myself out there and have opinions, but like a lot of people I really don’t like listening to my own voice on recordings or seeing myself on videos.

However, I spend so much of my time encouraging people that they can do things and should have a go at things, that I didn’t really feel that I could say no when Rhea’s beady eye fell upon me as a potential interviewee for her Small & Supercharged Podcast – plus I’m not sure that taking no for an answer was even on Rhea’s agenda!  Just to make me feel a bit more seat-squirmy, Rhea’s intended topic was me and how I came to be doing what I do now – what led me to this multi-passionate career (in my head I said that in an American accent (mul-tie) and the reality is that the English me cringed because I even used the phrase;))

However, it is probably the nearest thing to describing what I do – I am so lucky in that I get to do things that I love doing every day – however the variety of them generally tends to mean that my day isn’t 9am – 5pm on a regular basis, so that’s where being passionate about what I do really comes into its own and makes long days more palatable.  Owning Hiho and being involved there takes up a lot of my time, but I also run Dimpsey and work with Blackdown Shepherd Huts on their business development.  But for me, this mix works because my work and life are incredibly intertwined and a lot of the things I do in one area generally inform and inspire the others.

The reality is that I don’t always get to do all the things I want to do as a Mum or pursue all the ideas I have for a business, however I do have a lot more flexibility in my life than the average person because I am really lucky and have an incredibly supportive husband, and the teams I work with are brilliant at what they do.  Our boys are teenagers now but when they were really small, a wonderful lady called Amanda came into our lives to look after them.  She has always been a phenomenal support, and moved on to retrain and do all our accounts as the boys grew up.  I had no worries about working as I knew that the boys were happy.  The key liberator for me was realising that I didn’t need to prove that I was Supermum, there was a way that we could all be happy with what we were doing.  Like everything in life, there are always compromises but I would say that I do have work/life balance, even if the boundaries are really blurred and probably some things that others might see as work, I see as downtime.

I hope that I managed to get some of this over in the Podcast without it sounding like a mad mess!  If you do have a listen, then the key takeaway I would like you to remember is that this works for me – I’m not saying that it’s a template that would work for you or anybody else.  I decided a long time ago to try and work with people I like being around, doing things that I love – and it’s this framework that has helped me to be a bit more selective about what I do and to be very mindful about what I juggle things for.

Also, if you’ve been asked to be a podcast guest and are wondering if you should do it or not, or are nervous about doing it – please do give it a try, particularly if Rhea has asked to interview you, she is brilliant at putting you at your ease and steering you through a gentle conversation, I’d thoroughly recommend it as being nowhere as scary as I thought it was going to be.

PS : However, the above paragraph does not preclude the fact that I will be hiding behind a cushion for most of tomorrow wondering if I can pluck up the courage to actually listen to myself!!

If you would like to have a listen – you can hop over to Rhea’s site here or find it on iTunes under Small & Supercharged.  Don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you do have a listen please – it will really help Rhea make her way up the charts!

Happy listening!