Hello, my lovelies. How are you? Welcome to a new episode of unleashing brilliance. And today, what I thought I'd share with you is a little bit of my backstory. I'm often asked, I've received so many emails over the years from people saying, where did it all start Janine? How on earth did you get to be doing what it is that you're doing? My response to that is I am totally an accidental and if you actually look at my life, I reckon every 10 years, I've pretty much reinvented myself.
In fact, my speaker agent, often refer to me as the queen of reinvention, which I remember at the time hearing it, having a little giggle and going, really? And it was only on reflection of my story that I went, actually, yeah. I have changed things up every decade pretty much. So, in response to all of those that have asked, this is what today's episode is all about.
And I hope that by sharing my journey to here, it will give you permission to know that you have everything inside of you to become more brilliant tomorrow than you are today and to give you the courage and the bravery to unleash your brilliance even more to the world. So where did it all start for me? Well, I was actually born into a farming community in the north of England. My dad was a farmer and my mom pretty much was a stay at home mom.
And I grew up with, lots of words of wisdom from my dad. He used to say where there's muck, there's brass love, which essentially meant, if I work really hard then the results would come. And on those days where I'd come home from school, it'd be like, Oh my God, this is the worst day ever. He'd go, it'll be reet. It'll be reet. Which pretty much went, you know, you know, put on your big girl pants and you'll be fine. school was, pretty average for me. I was a real bookworm.
And I was teased quite a lot at school for, know, being probably a little bit quiet, had mousy brown hair, lots and lots of freckles. I was a bit of a slow developer on the puberty side of things and you know, found me with my nose in a book. So I was teased quite a lot until, around the age of 17 or 18 when I discovered Madonna's fashion style, Princess Diana's or Lady Diana's electric blue eye shadow and mascara as it was at the time.
and of course, hair dye, you know, hair dye changed my world. And through school, I was getting really great results. And I remember a teacher saying to my parents at a parent teacher evening one night, you know, your, your daughter should consider applying to Oxford or Cambridge. Now, as a North of England girl, it didn't even enter into my mind, into my psyche at all. And in fact, what I did is I instantly went into that box of, why would I want to go there?
And why on earth would anyone accept me? So from an early age, this lack of self belief, really started to... take root in terms of the decisions that I was actually making for myself. But what it did do is it triggered off a curiosity. And, because nobody in my family had ever been to university. And so we'd never really had those conversations around the dinner table. But this conversation with the teacher triggered off a curiosity for me. And I, so.
I started applying and I actually got into, Aston University in Birmingham to do a Bachelor of Science degree and, super excited. I had to achieve certain results at A level, but we faced another challenge then because as a family we couldn't afford to send me to university. So thankfully at that time the UK government, offered out a grant system and I applied and I was fortunate enough to be given a full grant, to be able to attend university.
There's no way I would have been able to go if it hadn't have been for that grant system at that time. And I'm forever grateful for that because, that pretty much changed the trajectory of my world prior to that, my dreams had been on a certain level, subsequently to being given the opportunity to go to uni, everything changed. And so at the age of 18, I packed my backpack, and off I went in England.
Those of you that are listening that are from the UK know that in England, we tend to leave home and we go and live on campus. And at the age of 18, I left home, and never returned. Uni was brilliant. I graduated, you know, after four years with a bachelor of science degree, a whole heap of memories. Thank God, social media wasn't around then and a hell of a lot of debt at the time, or a big overdraft at the time.
And this time I packed my backpack and I headed off to London to start a graduate training scheme at a company called Coats Viyella. So I started my corporate career working in the fashion industry. And in fact, only the other day I received a note from two incredible women that I met on that very first day of that graduate training program saying, Oh my God, it's 30 years since we started day one, it's like. Goodness me.
So yes, 30 years ago, I moved to London and I started a graduate traineeship at Coats Viyella. And over the course of the next seven or eight years, I worked my way up. I ended up in the position of group marketing manager. And it was at this time that I'd met my now husband, Jason. So we met on the shop floor, we met at work, we fell in love, he was an Aussie, he was from Perth or he is from Perth. And I. decided to move to Australia.
So, in the year 2000, on the 1st of December 2000, I packed my backpack again, and this time I arrived in Melbourne. I arrived in Melbourne with the trusted backpack, my permanent residency visa, a resume and my husband. And that was pretty much it. And suddenly I had to rebuild my career in a country where I had zero social proof.
I had to rebuild my network in a country where I knew no one and apart from you know, my brother was here and I had to rebuild my life, which let's be honest, my vision of my life in Australia had been created from watching endless episodes of Home and Away and Neighbors at uni. So I had a certain view of what Australia was going to be like, but to say it was scary, is really an understatement.
I reckon it's one of the scariest things I've ever done, to be honest, moving to a country where I thought it would be easy. you know, we speak English. My understanding was it was pretty similar to where I was from, but it was one of the hardest things I've had to do in terms of rebuilding my career, rebuilding my network, rebuilding my confidence here and learning to navigate, the different cultural norms that existed here.
So, over the next 10 years, those of you that are really smart will be working at my age by now, but over the next 10 years, I rebuilt my corporate career and I ended up becoming the group marketing director at Oroton Group looking after two incredible brands, the Ralph Lauren brand. I was looking after that here in Asia, Asia pac and I helped, relaunched the Oroton brand, its website and worked with the creative director at the time to take the Oroton brand into Hong Kong.
But at that time, I still felt there was more, you know, I had three awesome children. At the time they were, I think three, five and seven. I've still got them by the way, but they're a little bit bigger now. You know, had a home, had a career, but I felt like there was more. I was giving a lot to other people, giving a lot to my team. To, the EC, the executive committee, the executive board at Or to Mr. Lauren over in the U S to the media, to key stakeholders.
I was coming home and then, you know, giving a lot of my time to the children, to my children, to my husband. And to be honest, in all of this, I felt like I was losing myself. I knew I was great at doing my job. I could do it standing on my head. I loved it. I, I loved playing around the edges and, creating and launching brands and rejuvenating brands. I loved everything about it. I was traveling the world going to Fashion Week in New York twice a year.
It was fabulous, but something was missing. I felt like my brain, wasn't being challenged in the way I wanted to challenge it. And so I decided that there was more and that, I had to take ownership of that more. And it's a whole other story, which you'll hear in future episodes, :but I left my corporate career and, guaranteed set out on my own. And I started building my first business, LBD Group, a women's networking organization. It was totally bootstrapped, totally self funded.
And about two years into that, the big hit came in that my husband, Jason, lost his corporate job. So the company that he was working for went into receivership. We had zero cash coming in. The company was still bootstrapping and we were racking up credit cards. Quite frankly, it was, you know, everything was going on the credit card. And it got to a point one day where, Jason told me we had 50 left in the bank. And. that evening, it just hit me and it hit me.
right do I have to follow my dreams? What right do I have to pursue something different? I can go and get a job. I can turn this around. What right do I have to put my family and my children at risk? And they were at risk because we'd had to move out of our house into the shittiest house in the street. We'd had conversations with the kids about Christmas and birthdays are on pause. Don't ask us for milkshakes at the weekends. We'd even spoken.
a little bit in jest, but also a little bit seriously to some friends about we might need to camp in your backyard. Things are getting quite serious. And the reality of the 50 left in the bank hit home and I just lost it. I just, burst into tears and Jason found me crying my eyes out at my desk. And I said to him, I'm going to go and find a job. I'm going to go and find a job. What right do I have to put you to put the children under pressure? What right? I can go get a job.
I can do marketing standing on my head. And he turned around to me and he said, don't you dare. Don't you dare do that Janine. I believe in you.
And those words, I believe in you was all that I needed to relight the fire in my belly because I went, you know what, if he believes in me, if my husband believes in me, then I've got to believe in myself and it relit this fire in me and over the next 10 years since then, 12 years almost now, I've built and I've sold the LBD group, so I've built and sold a business, I've run a non for profit where over five years we, created a gift giving circle and supported an incredible
community of women and kids, here in Sydney to help break the cycle of poverty and prostitution and drug dealing being the only jobs. I've written three bestselling books. I've traveled the world, speaking on stages with incredible people. and I now work with individuals to help them unleash their brilliance, to achieve the growth that they want. I also, a couple of years ago, I got invited back to my university to be given an honorary doctorate of science.
And to give the speech at that graduating ceremony this year, that is a moment. Honestly, when I got that letter from the UK, another moment where I burst into tears. So that moment where Jason said to me, I believe in you changed everything. And the reason I'm sharing this is not about, Hey, look at what I've achieved. Hey, look at how I've, grown myself and grown this business out of being on the brink of disaster. How I turned, you know, a 50 left in the bank to a seven figure business.
It's not about any of that. The reason I want to share this story is because of the personal learning that I had. You see, for so long, I was striving and proving that I was good enough. This relentless quest to prove that I was good enough left me often exhausted on the brink of burnout and constantly battling imposter syndrome because I had this crazy fear failing.
And it was only when I stopped, it was only when Jason said to me, I believe in you, it was only that moment where I stopped and I realized that around me, everything is constantly changing. Everything is constantly on the move and we're seeing it right now, aren't we? We're seeing this constant change around us economically.
Where we're being challenged, in terms of, our businesses and where the money's coming from, we're being challenged financially in our businesses, but also financially at home, we're being challenged in terms of all of the uncertainty, politically and globally, we're being challenged with what we're reading and seeing in the media. We're being challenged from a health perspective on the back of the pandemic. And now we're being challenged socially, in terms of how all of this is filtering down.
So the reality is there's change is constant. It's happening at a macro level and it's happening for all of us at a micro level. And I realised at that moment that Jason said, I believe in you. That despite all of this change, I faced it before, despite all of the change at that time, I faced it before and what I realised is the only thing that is constant amongst the chaos is you. Who I was being, who I wanted to become, and the same is you, right?
Since I owned that, since I went, you know what, who am I? Who am I being every single day? And who do I want to become since I owned that? Since I stepped into owning me, into owning my brilliance, into owning my expertise, into owning the fact that I can experience heartache, tough situations, I can pull myself out of it, owning the fact that I have this experience of life.
It was only when I started being intentional about owning that, about stepping into my brilliance, about knowing the impact that that makes every single day, only by doing that did things change. And I want you to think about this because the same can happen for you. Everything around you is changing all the time. Businesses are changing, your clients are evolving, the economy is evolving. Everything is changing. But the only thing that is constant is you. Who are you?
Who are you being and who is it that you want to become? When I started owning that. When I started stepping into my brilliance, that is when everything around me changed. That is when I started becoming the author, the speaker. When I started owning the clients that I wanted to work with. When I started really committing to the business that I wanted to build, but also building it on my terms. Committing to the life that I want for myself, for Jason and for my three children.
I want you to imagine what more you could achieve if you could step into your brilliance. The questions I want to leave you with in this episode are Who are you not to be more brilliant? Who says you can't be more brilliant? And the second question I want you to consider is what will change when you are brilliant? Because here's the thing. Undertaking any meaningful endeavor requires each and every single one of us to be exceptional. It requires you to be exceptional.
And when we can accept our own imperfections and stop beating ourselves up for what we don't have. When we can start accepting our limitations and stop making excuses for our mistakes. When we can start owning who we are, who we are being and who it is that we want to become, accepting those imperfections, accepting those limitations, when we can do that for ourselves, we give permission to those around us to do the same. Stepping into this space is a choice.
It is a practice and it is a discipline. And I want you to think about because who you are, who you are being, and who you want to become is all your choice. Thank you for listening to this episode, where I've been. I wanted to share with you my story. It hasn't all unicorns and rainbows and champagne popping moments. There has been a lot of challenge, a lot of picking myself off the floor and a lot of really digging deep of deciding and making the choice around who am I in this moment?
Who am I working to become? And who am I being to everyone around me? Until next week, enjoy and have an awesome week.