Ep1: Defy Convention

EPISODE ONE - CONFESSIONS OF A CEO: DEFY CONVENTION

I found a note in my iphone notes one day after coming home from South East Asia, where I had started my business, I remember being in my late 30’s travelling on a sketchy night bus through Vietnam writing this sort of manifesto. When I re-read it I thought, wow, that’s still how I feel. On this episode I read it and discuss how it all came about.

Here I am, beginning my thirty seventh year, riding a bicycle through rice fields and villages of Hoi An, Vietnam. Swapping the office for my laptop and cafes, my heels for flip flops and switching London for Bali.

There’s no great science behind swimming upstream when the current is going the other way, you just have to do it. Grow brave, take a deep breath, turn and swim like hell. 

Society has a lot to say about a woman of my age. I’m mature - technically (I’m still in fits of giggles over a fart and mentally I’m on the same page as my best travel friend who’s 23, so that’s up for debate) and I’m unmarried, I have no children, no mortgage and technically let’s see - I live nowhere right now. But let’s say Bali, it’s where I’m home. For now. 

It’s not the stone age anymore, a woman’s path has changed so much. We can do anything and all the strides we have made matter now more than ever to our future generations, so let’s not slip back in time and let’s not tell our girls and our women where or what they should be when they’re rounding out their thirties. 

We need to be our women’s champions. 

Don’t think that I’m having a pre mid life crisis because I live in Bali, work off a laptop, own what I can carry and work on shedding 20 years of working in London, like a skin that no longer fits. Far from it, this is how life looks when you take a chance and live it on your terms.

I’m not an expert at swimming upstream but I could tell you a thing or two about it. You know that feeling when you’ve got a big choice to make and every fibre of your body is screaming at you that this chance might not work, what if it goes wrong? But darling what if it works? 

Just jump.

Sometimes magic happens when you do it differently. Standing under a canopy of pine trees, leaning against a motorbike with a dusty face turned towards the sun all I could think was damn, I made it work. 

I’m here. I survived. 

The day job is now digital, I’m out here exploring and it’s glorious. 

So defy convention if you want to. If you want your life to be well lived without regrets and wondering, do it differently. Courage my friend, it starts there.