Hello
Well here I am standing on the precipice, about to jump into my very first blog post. What do I write?
About my business?
Or should it be personal?
And then it occurred to me, Business is personal. These days there is no longer ‘its just business its not personal’
Its all personal.
Even as we rely almost completely on computers to operate, it is ALL about building relationships and communicating with people, adding value and building trust.
So by way of introduction here’s a little of my story.
I come from Australia, born in Melbourne and raised in a town called Ballarat. For the first five or six years of my life it was just mum and me and we would live in houses shared with mums friends and their kids. It was so much fun. I was an only child of a single parent and in reality I had the best family I could have asked for. When I was 6ish mum met a man, got married and everyone else moved out, It was the next stage in our lives, and resulted in a magnificent extended family. My school years were really quite normal with school and friends being my main focus. Welcoming my 2 brothers into the world, one when I was 7 and the other at 15 are my highlights.
My complete objective through my entire school life was to get into University, So I studied really hard and got accepted into a science degree, fabulous….. My future was set…
Hardly….
Combine moving out of home and my first taste of adult freedom, with having no idea how to set further goals (I had been fixated for so long on one single goal, that once I accomplished it I had no idea how to refocus), I completely bombed out.
To put the next ten years into a tidy little nut shell, I went traveling! I have lived in and/or seen so much of my beautiful country. I had my fair share of personal challenges, but overall those years were pretty amazing. Four wheel driving through Kakadu National park, Snorkeling in the Ningaloo reef, hiking through the Snowy Montains, Sailing around the Kimberley Coast Line, Snow boarding… I’m getting tears in my eyes!!!
I’ve done my fair share of jobs too. Waitressing, cleaning, bar etc. To give you a little ‘employment mentality’. Before I ever got a job I remember spending a long time believing deep down that I didn’t really deserve a lot of money (I actually pictured a life of unemployment claims) I even thought I would never earn enough to pay off my tertiary education debt (this was a $2000 debt).
A series of events led me to my first job, and as it should in any good story it started with a boy! You see he was living the dream (what I thought of as ‘the dream’ anyway), constantly traveling, living in different places, and earning his own money. To me this was freedom encompassed. So because he was working and because we were living in a ski resort where you can’t survive without money, I went and got my first job. I still remember the elation I felt at having earned my first pay check, and you know what I was doing? Cleaning….yep scrubbing toilets!!
This was an epiphany for me, and took me into a state of abundance, for years I always had enough, traveling, working, meeting new people, generally having a really good time. Work was simply a means for recreation, a way to socialize and to have a better life.
So what happened? Why am I not still happily cleaning, waitressing, bar tending, retailing…?
I guess I started to need more for myself, to feel better about myself. And it wasn’t about the money, as I said I always had enough, It was my self esteem. What I needed (or so I thought) was a better job.
I went back to school and did achieve a diploma this time, and went on to trade time for money once more (better paid mind).
I loved the study, learning new skills, and how to use them, I just didn’t like the JOB.
So when I stopped work to have babies I started to search for another way, leading to my first business (which turned out to be not a perfect fit)
Living in Scotland with my 2 ‘wee laddy’s’ and my gorgeous husband, has been our new challenge. We did what many people do and used the equity on our home to loan money to get what we wanted. For us it was traveling through the UK and Europe. We were always going to work here, thinking with the exchange rate between the Aussie Dollar and the Pound would help us get ahead, earning pounds, converting to dollars. What we failed to think about and plan for was the spending of pounds from our dollars before Brendan got a job!
This has led me to once again look for a business that is both flexible for my kids, and can be run from well… anywhere in the world!!
I now run my own business from home as a professional blog writer.
So thats my life… In a nutshell!!!
Hope you enjoyed it
Have Fun and All The Best
Emma
Traveling for Life
Just loving it in Mihas, Spain
