Liz Nable 0:00
I'll be honest, when I first started enable my business, I had quite a narrow minded, short term view of what my business would do. I naively thought I was helping women led businesses to grow, leveraging the media and PR just like I had done for myself, using my journalist skills from my first career in TV news to grow my first bricks and mortar business to seven figures in the early days of my entrepreneurial journey. But coming up to my third anniversary as a media and PR coach to women in business, it's become glaringly obvious to me that there's a whole lot more going on here than just encouraging women to promote their business or their brand in the public domain. Women, in my experience, Australian women have a massive problem selling themselves. They battle dark thoughts of what others will think of them. They feel ill at the thought of being called an expert, and have crazy amounts of imposter syndrome at every turn, even when they're seriously accomplished, and they compare themselves constantly to those around them, normally, other women. This is a repeat theme of working with women of all different cultures, business sizes and levels of experience, and trying to help them share their stories, their opinions and build their reputation and authority in traditional media. So when I learned about an in depth study written by Australian behavioral scientist Penny locas, ironically, a referral from a student inside my MMA course. I couldn't get my hands on that research fast enough, as well as being a behavioral scientist, Penny is an impact expert and mentor, international speaker, published author, budding psychologist and trauma therapist, nature lover, Yogi and a proud single mom, and now here she is on the podcast just a few weeks later, and not a moment too soon, because the findings of her white paper Hidden Figures. Where are all the female experts are mind blowing. Did you know that only 24% of news sources globally are women, and just 31% of paid speakers are female voices. And at the current rate of change, the World Economic Forum predicts that it will take another 131 years to reach gender parity. In this fascinating episode of the podcast, we discuss not just the incredible results of Penny's white paper, but why women constantly self deprecate, why we feel so weird about being considered an expert in our field, and more importantly, why it's up to each and every one of us to do our part to overcome generations of being good girls and staying in our own lane and disrupt The status quo if we're to see any sort of significant change to these shocking figures in our lifetime. Hello and welcome to media magnet, the podcast for female founders and women owned businesses, startups and side hustlers who want to learn how to grow their business leveraging the media and free PR, I'm Liz Nabal, and I'm your host, personal publicist. PR, strategist and dedicated hype woman. My goal with this show is to give you a behind the scenes tour of how the media works, to break down the barriers between your business and the big mastheads, so you can see how easy it is to get featured simply by giving journalists what they want. At media magnet, you'll also get access to the top journals, editors, writers and PR people in your industry and beyond, sharing their secrets and expertise on the how, why, what and when of pitching and getting featured in the media consistently, I will share with you how to build your reputation as an industry expert so successfully, the media will be knocking down your door. When I first started in small business 12 years ago, I had no idea what I was getting into. I had spent 15 years as a television news reporter working at several major networks in Australia, and then, as a freelancer in the US and around the world, I spent years dividing my time between working long shifts on a news desk and traveling the world, chasing stories it was unpredictable and exciting until it wasn't anymore. I decided I wanted a life where I was in charge of what happened next and where I was working to build my own empire, not someone else's. There was a lot I had to learn about running my own business, but getting media and great free PR was not one of them. I already knew what the media wanted. I knew the secret formula for what made news, and I knew how to leverage those media outlets to build my business, get more exposure and ultimately make more sales. I was featured in every major media outlet in the country, and I never spent a single cent on PR. I took that knowledge for granted until it dawned on me one day that I could teach what I knew to other business. Says, let them in on the secret, and they too could build their brands with organic media and PR, let me help you take your brand from Best Kept Secret to household name. This is media magnet, the podcast, and I'm pretty pumped to have you here. You Music. Welcome penny to the media magnet podcast, thanks for having me. Liz, and excited to be here. Yeah, I'm really excited. I feel like I could, I mean, we just had a little pre talk before I hit record. I could talk about this behavioral psychology stuff, or, sorry, behavioral science, science stuff, for hours. But tell us a little bit about your early career, and, I guess, your corporate experience, and where you started, and perhaps the change over to what you do now.
Speaker 1 5:51
Yeah. So I spent 16 years as an executive with shell which, you know, back in the heyday, was considered sort of, you know, the gold standard of corporate career. And so I basically had worked with some amazing people, had had a lot of success, and found myself at the age of 39 in 2014 and I ticked all the boxes I was told would make me successful, slash happy. And yet, there was something inside that was kind of incongruent, in terms of there was this disconnect where I was looking for more meaning. I was like, is this it like, how is it I've arrived at this place where, literally, like, I had the white picket fence out the front, the corporate career, the nuclear family savings in the bank, the Masters, and I was like, Why do I feel that there's gotta be more than this? And there was this moment where I stepped into the backyard that I'll never forget, and I said to my three year old son at the time, come and hang out. Let's go and do something in the kitchen and cook. And he said to me, I can't Mum, I'm too busy. And literally, it was like a look at your phones. It was like a mic drop moment for anyone who's got parents, I'm sure, yeah, because there was kind of all this stuff bubbling inside. But that moment was like holding the mirror up, you know, naked, yeah? And I was like, because I was like, Well, what? Where does a three year old learn busy? Okay? Because there's nothing busy about a three year old. And what does the word busy tell a three year old about their value and their importance? And so that was kind of the moment where I was like, this has just got to change. And so I basically stood back and asked myself, what does success slash happiness look like for me on my terms? And literally like I almost felt like I sort of stepped out of my head for once and into my heart, and my heart was like human connection, positively impacting the lives of others, sharing experiences and being present in a moment. And so with that insight, I literally turned my life upside down in pursuit of happiness. So I left a 16 year career at the top of my game. I relocated my family from Perth back to Melbourne. I left an 18 year relationship and started my own purpose driven company with the sole intent of helping others define, you know, what enables them to flourish, what gives them meaning, and then learn evidence back, ways to inject more of it into each day.
Liz Nable 8:27
It's fascinating like human psychology and behavioral science, which is what you specialize in, I find it fascinating as a journalist, because it's really important as a journalist to understand people, to ask questions, to get answers out of them that perhaps they wouldn't give to anyone else, to make them feel comfortable, to endear them to you, all those sorts of things that sit around, like that psychology kind of thing. And it's interesting also, because so many women talk today about finding something that they feel passionate about, and that mic drop moment when they wanted to make a difference, but I find the way you've pursued it to be most interesting, because you're talking about human like, you know, behavioral science, and it not from a just an experience point of view, but you've gone back to university and got yourself some heavy education and backing what You do with data, which is really, it's really fascinating that you've kind of decided to go that path.
Speaker 1 9:25
I think I have to be honest with you, and I know before we hit record, we kind of chatted about this, but that has been extremely intentional for two reasons. So originally, it was very intentional to always be backed by evidence, and if the evidence didn't exist, to look at how I could go about creating it through research, because coming from a corporate background and working with pretty much every major corporate there is cross industry. As an entrepreneur in the last 10 years, you know that these guys will not invest in anything that has not already been. Proven, yeah, because they're all so they're all about trust. And the only way you can crack in there, you can't go in there and go, You know what? I'm great at this, and there's no substance behind it. You just can't do it. And, I mean, I teach people how to crack corporate, and one of the fundamentals is to have some bloody credibility, some credentials, which you would appreciate as a journalist. And so it was very intentional to go and have and look, here's the thing. I talk a lot about this. I think credentials are really important, but what is equally important is applied action. So there is no point. And I see this all the time. Women are brilliant at becoming what I call self development junkies, so they hide the hit behind the next certificate, behind the next credential, and then, like, when I've got this thing, you know, then I'll and I'm like, no, because you need to, if you don't apply that learning, it's just knowledge, and knowledge without application, yeah, is not skill. No. Comes from application and from proving like applied action, proving that you can do the thing, that you can get people their results and so, yeah, having the credibility and their credentials behind me was extremely important. But the waiting between applied action and the credential, I think, is equally important for people listening. The credential alone is not enough.
Liz Nable 11:24
Yeah, absolutely. So share a little bit about what you do. Now, talk to me first. Actually, what did you go back and get? You got a degree in behavioral science? Is that right?
Speaker 1 11:34
No. So I have, originally have a master's in business, right? And then I went back in COVID and started studying psychology, but before I started studying psychology, I had gone through a process where I was doing a lot of research around building a framework to help people adapt with intention, because so much of the adaption we see in our society now is unconscious, which I believe is what drives so many of the mental health issues and the burnout that we see because we're just trying to keep up, but we're not sure who or with what, and so off. That's me off the back of that originally I went and they told me that I couldn't do this unless I was a psychologist and couldn't get my work published if I didn't have a psychology degree, but I did. I went and partnered with one of the top org psych companies in Australia and Deakin University, and I took what I'd created and I had it validated, and we've got the work published. And when that happened, I was like, Well, you know what? Now I'll go back and study psychology. So I've been studying psychology for the last four and a half years. So I'm nearly finished honors. And then I went and studied trauma with Dr gabal matay, because again, trauma is very important if you're trying to help people realize their potential and optimize their performance. And yet it is extremely undervalued. And there are not many people in my domain that are trained in it. Yeah, and so when I call myself a behavioral scientist that was born out of me saying, What can I call myself that is legitimate, that's not another coach. That actually speaks to the fact that I have had work published. I've just published another piece of research. I do. Do my own research. I'm not yet qualified as a psychologist, but I'm fascinated by human behavior and understanding it, and behavioral scientists, when I looked up the definition fits within the qualifications that I have in the application, and that's why I call myself that.
Liz Nable 13:34
Yeah, wow. Well, you're you're certainly very educated, that's for sure. Just a quick question before we talk about this paper, which is another fascinating, fascinating work that you've just released a couple of months ago. Do you think, with everything, with, obviously, with what I do, I'm coaching women to share their stories, self promote, get featured in the media, you know, get that organic PR, which is kind of weirdly integrated with what you do and what you're teaching women to overcome, not just self confidence, but something much longer lasting than that, is understanding human behavior like a superpower. Because I feel like if you can unlock the way people think you could potentially do anything. Am I just a dreamer to think that, or have you seen what you can do with all the education that you've had in the work that you do now? Do you think this is just so powerful,
Speaker 1 14:30
without a doubt, right? But I think there's two things. I would say that awareness is the first step to any change so my background is actually in large scale change management, and I was trained, trained by one of the top change management organizations in the world, called Pro site, and that was kind of where this began, because change management is human behavior. 101, right? Because you can't get people to change unless you can get them on board. And so what I learned in that, which still, I still use it every day to this day. And that is, awareness is the first step to change. And what behavioral science and this understanding of human behavior gives us is an awareness of where the opportunities lie. And so much of what I do, as you know, especially when I do a keynote, is just creating awareness of your behavior like because, as I was saying earlier, my previous research into intentional adaptability, so much of our behavior is unconscious,
Unknown Speaker 15:27
right? And so you don't have to be
Speaker 1 15:29
a rocket scientist to create awareness, and we'll talk about off the back of this research in terms of how your listeners can just start to apply it. You know, the study of behavioral science, or human behavior, you know, so much of it is awareness. So is it a superpower?
Speaker 2 15:46
Look, I would say, yes, but it's a superpower that
Speaker 1 15:52
I would say most of us can cultivate. Yeah, exists, right? It really depends on how determined you are to read, I would say, you know, empirical evidence, like stuff that's actually proven, rather than, you know, some BS article that's like, oh, research found this. Dig into where the research comes from, came from. And I think that's probably the most powerful thing that I've learned. When you say, I think the superpower is actually understanding and being able to interrogate research. Because there is so much research out there that is quoted, that's absolute bullshit, and it's on very shaky ground, even though it comes from universities. And I can tell you that because I have studied advanced statistics, and I can now read a journal article in a way that I never thought I could, and it fundamentally changes how you look at the stuff that's out there.
Liz Nable 16:38
Yeah, wow. Yeah, that. It's so interesting. So let's talk about this report, this research paper that you put out a couple of months ago. It's called Hidden Figures. Where are all the female experts? Yeah, obviously. Is why I have you on the show, because this is what I am trying to overcome. But I don't have the education or the research that you have done. So I'm super keen to dive into this and find out. So where did this paper start? Like, what kind of where was this born from?
Speaker 1 17:10
Yeah, so like yourself, as someone who mentors slash coaches Executive Women and female entrepreneurs, I've done over 300 coaching conversations and depth interviews for research in the last two years with these women, and I started to notice something that was kind of a bit interesting. And it was always this diminishment of expertise. You know, no matter how damn good they were at what they did, yeah, they would always kind of diminish the fact that they were an expert or wouldn't own it. And so I came up with a hypothesis, and the hypothesis was that women's relationship with the word expert is often negative and creates a barrier to them becoming one. So I was like, You know what I did? So I finished advanced statistics, which I think was the hardest thing I did in my psych study. Oh
Liz Nable 17:59
my gosh. The word advanced statistics just makes me feel a bit ill, but I know that it was, it's good for you.
Speaker 1 18:06
I It made me feel sick. I cannot tell you how much, how apprehensive I was starting that subject, but I worked my ass off and I got a HD. And I think I surprised myself so much with getting a HD for both my my stats in my first sort of degree in Psych, and now here I was, like, I'm obviously good at this. And like you said, this is a bit of a superpower, because now I understand how to do good research and how to assess whether research is worth quoting. So I took that knowledge and said, I'm going to go and create my own piece of qualitative research, and I'm going to answer or look at the hypotheses and prove or disprove it around whether a woman's relationship with the word expert impacts or ability to become one. So I recruited 21 women across different platforms that I utilize, and I undertook the research, and out of that was this white paper that's gone a bit nuts. You talk about the media. I'm a huge fan of making women visible in the media. So yeah, basically Hidden Figures, where all the female experts was born out of that. And was very fortunate to be able to secure half a page that I actually wrote in the AFR, which was, I suppose, for me, that speaks to the testament of the quality of the work. Yeah,
Liz Nable 19:23
that's massive. AFR for a research paper that you've done yourself is is amazing.
Speaker 1 19:30
I'm not going to brag like this is not bragging, right? This is an example for your listeners, yeah, and I put a post on if there's one thing you take away from today, it's screw the humble brag. Women are brilliant at diminishing the significance of their achievements. Getting a written piece in the Australian Financial Review that was half a page. I am damn proud of that. It was born off the back of five months work, and I have no shame in owning it, and I do that in the service of other women, because we need to own our achievements, and we need to do it publicly. Day, and it's not bragging, it's actually celebrating the fact that you're damn good at what you do.
Liz Nable 20:04
Yeah. Okay, so the $64 million question is, why do we do that? Why do women diminish our achievements? Is it an Australian cultural thing, which is sometimes what I think I lived in the States for a long time, and I didn't notice it, but that was a different point in my life. Maybe I wasn't conscious of, you know, I wasn't aware of it. Is it an Is it a women thing? Is it a female entrepreneur thing or a corporate thing? I Why do we do that? So I spoke
Speaker 1 20:31
to women across corporate and entrepreneurship intentionally, because I wanted to see if there was any differences. There was not. And like I said, this is qualitative research, right? So this would form the basis now to go out and do some quant research to further validate but what I've and I also spell spoke to women from different cultural backgrounds. So the 21 women were culturally diverse. And when you say, why do we diminish? I mean my intuition from from what I've studied, would be a couple of things. I would say a lot of it goes back to how we're raised, and gender roles. So we are raised to be good girls, which means that we're raised to, you know, to please others, to not rock the boat, to keep people happy, which then plays into we don't over promote because that might be seen as egotistical. It might not please people. It might jar people like one of the things that came out of the research was women were afraid to own their opinions because they didn't want to upset other people.
Liz Nable 21:37
Because we're worried about what other people think, definitely worried
Speaker 1 21:41
about what other people think, extremely worried to the point where amazing women will not publicly own their voice, be it in the media, be it on a stage, own their opinions. Yeah, which could, you know, make significant shifts out of fear of being criticized, out of fear of being exposed? I love this as an imposter, so worried that, because they don't know it all, which I found fascinating, I don't know it all yet, so therefore I can't be the expert. But when you ask them about the experts, the women who are having an impact, who they consider experts, and what they admire most in those women, it's the fact that they don't know at all, and they're more than happy to share that in the service of their growth and the growth of others. So the standard that we hold ourselves to versus the standard that we hold others to is completely incongruent, and it's a barrier again, to us putting ourselves out there, because the standard is impossible. It's never enough. So
Liz Nable 22:40
are we worried about what strangers think of us, or are we worried about what family think of us, or a partner thinks of us? Or is it really just everybody? I
Speaker 1 22:50
think it's from from the research I do, so I couldn't specifically hone into those areas, but from the research that I did, it was about putting yourself out there in a public domain, right? So I would say it was the public you know, or people that, especially you know you talk about, I always think about coming from a corporate career. Women who come from a corporate background worry a lot. What other what their old corporate peers think of them? Yeah, wow.
Liz Nable 23:16
Because they don't want anyone to think that they're too big for their boots,
Speaker 1 23:20
yeah, or that they're claiming to be something that they're not
Liz Nable 23:24
yet, right? Wow. And what were some of the others sort of So, I guess, what would it be fair to say? One of the themes was that women are not, I guess, just going back to, you know, where are all the female experts, we are shying away from self promotion because we're worried about what other people think. What were some of the other themes that you saw come out throughout that research about the reasons why as women, we hold ourselves back from being being those experts, or being industry, you know, opinion leaders and those sorts of things. So
Speaker 1 24:00
the number one thing which linked directly to my hypothesis was what I called the ick of expert. I love the word Ick. I just think it's so good from a marketing perspective, right? Because everyone it creates a visceral feeling when you say, your shoulders go up and you can't cringe. But that's exactly what I saw in the research. The ick of expert. Most women, when they if I ask them to call themselves an expert. They got an ick, yeah. And so what we found was a woman's relationship with the word expert is often complex. Makes them feel awkward. They some women suggested that it infers peacocking like this self promote over self promotion, which they didn't like at all. And for other women, which I thought was fascinating. They said that it created a visual of a man's face when they thought of the word expert. So they didn't even see it didn't even conjure up the thought of a woman, which I thought was fascinating. The second thing, which we touched on a little bit was how much is enough? And that was about saying women were sort of like, well, I'm not an expert yet, because I haven't ticked all. The boxes. And I was like, okay, so what are the boxes you need to tick? And they couldn't tell me, yeah. So it was never enough, because they didn't know how much enough was, yeah. And then the third thing, which we've touched on lightly, was I'm afraid, and this was, you know, afraid of criticism, afraid afraid of being exposed as a an imposter, or, you know, particularly being called out on being wrong in a public space. And the cost of that fear was so high that it actually diminished their confidence and their willingness to put themselves out there. That was pervasive. And then the last one, which I just think was fascinating, because it's not something your listeners wouldn't have heard before. This concept, if I can't see it, I can't be it. Yes, no, there's a lack of women on stages and in the media, significant lack, which was why I did this research. So what we know is that less than 31% of speakers on stages around the globe are women as experts, and less than 24% of news or experts in the news are women globally, okay? And so when women said, you know, there's not enough experts, I was like, Well, this is interesting. I can't see women like me, so therefore I don't believe I can be the thing. But what we found was it, yes, it was a lack of diversity. But when we spoke about diversity, women came out and said, it wasn't just in terms of the color of your skin, it was diversity in terms of, I don't see women the shape or the size of me, yeah, wow. And so the women that are on stages often, and I know this because I'm an international speaker, and have been, you know, on stages around the world for the last seven years, and I know that most of the women look a lot like me. You know, they're white, and to be honest, I'm not skinny, but I'm probably on the voluptuous side of what we see of most women, you know, they're white, they're skinny, often they look a certain way. They're academics. I'm generalizing, but it's a very particular profile,
Liz Nable 27:00
because our, I guess our general perception of success, or being worthwhile enough to being on stage looks like that, or we think that it looks like that. So that's
Unknown Speaker 27:11
interesting, because it's just, it's such
Speaker 2 27:17
bullshit, because it's like people who are good at stuff come in every like we
Speaker 1 27:28
expertise is not defined by how we look. It's defined, in my view, because I talk a lot about impact experts, like you can be an expert in anything. You can be an expert in chess. That's great, but that's not what I'm talking about when I'm doing my research and who I'm trying to support. I want to support people who want to make a positive impact in the world. And the best way to do that, like the pathway, and this is why I did this research, was to encourage women to own their expertise, visibly, and to speak about their expertise and advocate for their expertise, because that is the path to realizing the impact that you seek. And when I asked women, you know, what was kind of the thing that was in place of expert, like, what women are motivated by is not being an expert, they're motivated by helping others, making the world a better place and having a positive impact. And so when I speak now about the research, so much of what I say is, if you want to have a positive impact, if you want to make a meaningful difference, if you want to help as many people as you can and leave the world a little better than what you arrived, only way you can truly do that at scale and at your potential is by owning your expertise.
Liz Nable 28:42
So okay, so let's talk. I can already hear the students in my course saying to me, yeah, but like, you know, Penny's done all this education, and she's super smart, and she's got honors in this and distinctions in that. What about me? I've just started my own business, like, what quantifies an expert? Because what I teach, and I'd be interested to know your opinion on this is for a lot of people who you know, you know, launched a startup business, or, you know, let's say they started a retail business, or a bricks and mortar shop, they're weighing into conversations in the media, or they're providing their opinion on how they did, what they did, how they've come so Far. To me that's expertise as well, because it's lived experience.
Speaker 1 29:24
Would you agree? Yeah. So the way I define an expert, and you can go and have a look at so when I started this research, the first thing that you do when you do any research is you go to the literature and look at what exists. So I looked at how we define an expert, what makes an expert, and then what the research had to say about women and expertise. And what I found fascinating about how we define an expert was that it was very masculine the way we define it. The research spoke a lot to experts as chess players or sportsmen, which I was like, this is interesting in and of itself, right? Which, and this is where it gets funny. When you go down a rabbit hole, it was so obvious within two days of research to go there is a massive gap here. Yeah, like, this is so and, but this is the reality of most research because of the fact that there's been inequality for so long. Most research has been done by men, historically because they've been in positions of where they're educated and it's and most research is very Western, which is why we have an absolute cultural bias. So knowing this stuff is powerful. So that, like I say, that highlighted the opportunity. I was like, I know I'm onto something, but I wanted to redefine expertise in a way that made sense for women to attach to it, to own it. And so what I came up with was an expert, is a person driven by impact, who is invested through deliberate practice in building and sharing their extensive knowledge and experience in a particular area for the greater good. So to your point, that speaks to the small, absolutely, and you can't. So here's the other thing, yes, I come from a place of privilege, but I come from a single parent family, a mother who was a dog groomer and ran a thoroughbred start, and literally, I grew up bathing dogs in my teen years. Okay? So I came from very humble beginnings, from an Australian context, and I think I was only the second person in my whole family to get a degree and so, so it's not so when people, you know, yes, people can sit there and say to now, 10 years down the track, after turning my life upside down, yes, I have all this experience and these credentials and stuff. But I started where most people are starting, in terms of their entrepreneurial journey, yeah, with a corporate career, which was, you know, an amazing career, but I had to create a whole new network. Yeah, a whole new network. My connections were all in oil and gas, yeah, now they're across every industry around the globe, but that's taken 10 years, and so I think that's the thing that I would want to bring to consciousness for your listeners. We sold the bullshit online that it's like be the overnight success. I am yet to meet the overnight success, and I've spent a lot of time with some very successful entrepreneurs. It is a long game. Becoming an expert is a long game, creating an impact is a long game, and around 10 years is what it takes to get to the point that I'm at.
Liz Nable 32:30
Yeah, it's so true. I think as women, I don't know if you, if you delved into this aspect in your research, we are constantly comparing ourselves to others, and therefore are always feeling less than because I'll get to give you an example. I'm going to name her, hopefully she's listening to this. I've got a student in my course right now who sent me an email, super smart. She runs a photography, self portrait photography business, and has, you know, done various degrees in education, and has landed on this business, which she's been running for 20 years. It's just her on her own. And she sent me an email a couple of weeks ago, just as we'd started the course, and said, Who am I to tell anyone how to run their business? Who am I to be an I'm not an expert. I'm self employed. Like, what do I after we'd gone through this whole, you know, we do master classes on where you could, you know, where your opinion could be, you know, infused with what's happening in the news and where your level of it, etcetera. And we talked about how a lot of women come to her to get professional headshots and to change the perception of themselves visually in the workplace. You know, the power of photography is incredible, right? We talked about all these different ways that she could apply that 20 years of experience working with these women to help them feel a certain way, to increase their, you know, their visibility, you know, in the workplace and all these sorts of things. She still couldn't see how she was possibly going to be weighing into any kind of media or PR exercise where she could be seen as a voice of expertise, which I found mind blowing, because to me, I just think that 20 years experience alone, running your own business, whether it's for 20 people or two people or just for yourself, comes with a level of you know you're working on the ground every single day, supporting yourself by your business alone, that absolutely makes you an expert in something. And you know, you obviously, you choose what that area is, and you weigh into those conversations where you feel like you've got something to add. But I just find that psyche of women. I see it all the time, and I hear it all the time in my courses. So it's interesting that we're looking to other women. And she would perhaps look to women in corporate areas, or, you know, to someone who's, you know, got a massive, big photography business with 50 staff, they're more validated as an expert than she is, even though she's had her skin in the game for 20 years.
Speaker 1 34:51
So this, this quote, and I've written about it so many times, especially on social media, because it came. Out in the research. Who am I to think I can dot, dot, dot? Yeah, with women, who am I to think I can dot, dot, dot. And so to your your learner, your person, that you're growing, I would say we are the stories we tell ourselves, and you could tell yourself a different story, and the story you could start to train yourself to believe is, who am I to think? I can't absolutely there are two ways to look at every situation. And again, I talk about awareness, right? This is the basics of awareness. And I remind myself of this daily, because it's funny how we forget the things we know. There are always two ways to look at every situation, from a positive lens and from a negative lens. No matter how terrible the situation, there is always a perspective that you can look at it which is positive, be it you know, this is a growth, this is a learning. Yes, it's painful, but this is going to teach me something, and we get to choose which narrative we believe. Okay, so it's a choice, but we forget that mindset is a choice. So that's the first thing that I would say. The second thing that I would say to her is, if you're not there yet, I want you to write a list of how much is enough, what would you need to arrive as an expert in your chosen field. What is the list? Because, again, if you can't see it, you can't bear it. And this is what happens women don't know what the list is, and therefore they will never be it, because you can't tick things off. We love to tick things off a list, so it's funny. So one of the things that I did do off the back of the research, because so many women said they didn't know which boxes to tick, I asked them when they I've asked them to visualize a woman that they looked up to who was an impact expert, and they could all do it instantly. I said, Okay, so then tell me, what are the characteristics and the behaviors that these women display that make you perceive them as an expert in your eyes. And they came up with a beautiful set of behaviors, yeah, and what I did was I took those behaviors, I created an impact Expert Skills framework. But on my website, I'll send you the link for your show. Nabal, I have created a checklist so that you can download it. It's called the expert checklist, you can download it, and it will tell you all the boxes you need to tick to work towards becoming an expert. But there is a caveat on downloading this. You're not allowed to download this if you're going to wait to tick every box before you start owning your expertise. You don't have I'm still working through ticking the boxes. Yeah, doesn't mean I can't own the fact that I'm still damn good at what I do at the moment. Yeah, it's,
Liz Nable 37:47
it's, and that's exactly what I'm trying to teach, is you have to start now, promoting yourself, sharing your story, you know, adding your opinion, where you can in what's happening in in the in the current, you know, zeitgeist of what's happening in the world, in the news and current affairs. Because as that ball continues to roll, and you continue to consistently put yourself out there in the background, you're still gaining expertise, you're still working you're still growing your business, you're still, you know, ticking some of those boxes off. But if you wait until all the boxes are ticked, you will you'll be lucky if you're still alive, you'll never be done. It will never be done,
Speaker 1 38:27
especially when, like I said earlier, right? If we go back to the example of the self development junkie, so many women that are high performers just continue to develop and grow themselves. We are so
Liz Nable 38:36
because learning is safe, because regret and learn totally it's safe. Reading those self development books make you feel good, but actually actioning them is completely uncomfortable, which is, I know, because I'm talking to myself here, because it's learning is safe,
Speaker 1 38:53
but that's what came out. So when I did go and look at what makes an expert, the one thing that I took away, that I freaking loved from a very masculine definition of expertise and how to cultivate them was the number one ingredient to becoming an expert was deliberate practice. And that speaks to as I say, there's no point in having the credential or the qualification without the applied action. So it's every day practicing doing the thing but not doing the same thing over and over. It's deliberate practice with the sense of surfing your edge, so continuing to just push yourself to the point where it's challenging, it might be slightly different, and it's growing you in the process not doing the same thing over and over a million times, because you'll get to a point where, you know, the returns will just flatten. Yeah, there's got to be the stretch element. So, yeah, I thought that was really interesting, the concept of deliberate practice. Okay,
Liz Nable 39:49
so I and again, I could sit here and talk to you for hours. I'm sure you've got work to do two more questions. Talk to me. Firstly, about trauma, because we touched on this a little bit before we hit record. And. And how you think that what, I guess, what the research showed you about trauma and how that inhibits women, and perhaps the stories we tell ourselves is, is that, right? What? How does that impact that outcome in that paper? Well, it's
Speaker 1 40:12
funny, because if I use your client as an example that you've mentioned, okay, and I'm going to generalize, but I'll take a long shot in terms of what I've learned about trauma, her not owning her expertise, and her not feeling she's enough to call herself the thing is likely to go back to a childhood experience where she either didn't feel enough off the back of some interaction, and it might not have even been an intentional interaction with the other person. The other person might not have even known it had an impact, or it might have come off her being rewarded when she was younger for not rocking the boat and keeping people happy. And so when I say we are the stories we tell ourselves, what happens with trauma is trauma is not what happens to you, it's what happens inside of you as a result of an experience. So trauma changes your physiology. There's a brilliant book, yeah, called the Body Keeps the Score one of the best books I've ever read, and it's, again, all based on science. But what happens with trauma? And when I say trauma, there's two types of trauma, right? So often when we think of trauma, we think of what we would call in psychology, big T trauma. So I had a horrific domestic violence situation. I come from a war torn country as a refugee, that is what you know, I've got PTSD and I was in a war. That is what we call Big T trauma. But many of us, I would say, pretty much all of us, have many instances of what we call little T trauma. And it might be parents got divorced, for example, that's where most of my trauma comes from, and that little T trauma is what happened to us in our childhood. And like I say, it might have been an experience for me when I was 11, my parents got divorced, and as someone who has always been told you're so strong, you're so resilient, you're so independent, and it's amazing. What I realized was the way that that trauma imprinted in my physiology was to present as extremely strong, as extremely resilient, like nothing affected me. That was my trauma response, and it has served me throughout my life, but it's equally had, you know, negative impacts,
Liz Nable 42:45
yeah, because
Speaker 1 42:46
it means that I'm I don't rely on anyone, I don't ask for help, which is why I end up burnt out. Do you know what I mean? So understanding how trauma it Well, the fact that we are, the stories that we tell ourselves, those stories often originate from a small t trauma, for many of us that we've not even considered as a trauma, a moment in our childhood that's had an imprint on our physiology, and then what happens is when we show up in the everyday, and that same feeling is triggered within us, even if the experience is completely unrelated to what happened when we're a child, the way we respond, it's like taking yourself back to being 11 years old. For me, yeah, and I go into fight mode. That's my default mechanism. My body recognizes the feeling and says, what did we do the last time we felt this way, even if it's not in our service, because the body is designed to keep you safe, and it responds in the same way, which is why I went and learned about trauma, because if we don't understand how our body is responding based on the experiences that we've had in our childhood, we can't actually be consciously aware of how we can adapt to show up in the world in the way that we want to and understand why that's not happening, just because we want to
Liz Nable 44:04
make sense. Yes, absolutely. That's why I feel like I could be here all day and talk about this all day just before we go. I guess I always love to give sort of any of the listeners, like takeaways. And you know, they might be thinking, well, I don't have time to go and do a psychology degree to understand my trauma, or understand why I do what I do, why I hold myself back from promoting myself, or, you know, pitching myself to the media, or, you know, owning that expertise that I have. How do we change the outcome of this paper? How do women like, what is there any sort of, like, quick little tips you could give or
Speaker 1 44:42
so the paper, just for your listeners. If they download it, we'll drop the link in show notes. Yes, absolutely. Paper has a number of recommendations, whether you are a woman like us, whether you're a corporate wanting to elevate women, or whether you're a conference or the media wanting to support. More equality on stages in the media, so it's jam packed, but the key kind of little things that I would give today to your listeners, number one, if the word expert makes you feel ick, sit down with a pen and paper and get curious about your relationship with the word expert, why does it make you feel that way? Where does this feeling come from? What does this feeling have to tell us? You know, why do, why do you feel the way you do about expert? So that's the first thing. Just get curious about your relationship with the word expert. Because, as I've said three times, now, awareness is the first step to change. Yeah. Number two, micro bravery. Okay, so what we often find, as I say, fear is the pathway to what we want, but because our physiology is designed to keep us safe, we avoid the discomfort that fear presents even you know, even though we know it's not life threatening. Yeah, so micro bravery is doing one small thing each day that makes you feel uncomfortable, and basically it's a practice in building resilience. It's a practice in putting yourself out there and doing the uncomfortable thing. Because the more you do it, the more you build the courage and confidence to undertake bigger acts of courage or bravery over time, because you realize the things that make you feel uncomfortable and that you're scared of, like being criticized or feeling like an imposter, and nowhere near as bad as what you make them out in your head. Yeah, a game changer. I still use it to this day. It's what's got me to where I am. Yeah, get caught up with being uncomfortable with but that's a very practical way to do it. Like, yeah, so resilience is a practice. It's not an end state. It's like confidence. These are muscles to be built. And then the third thing I would say, which I find fascinating, because, again, you're a journalist, right? One of the women that I interviewed told me, I asked them all if they could call themselves an expert, and out of 21 only one did. And the one that called herself an expert, I said, What makes you call yourself an expert? She said, Well, I wrote an article for Smart Company, and they told me I was an expert, right? So what, what I've now found is that when someone else calls a woman an expert, she's more likely to believe that she isn't an expert. Yeah, wow. Think about the women you consider experts and get on freaking social media and call them out as experts and tell other people about the work that they're doing, because that is a brilliant way to get another woman to own her voice.
Liz Nable 47:25
Yeah, and that's so true, because when, and that's part of what I teach, is when the media call you an expert, or when the media tell the world how great you are, or even even, not just the media, even someone else tells the world how great you are. It, first of all, it means you don't have to do it for yourself. It gives you credibility and authority. But secondly, it does start to help you reinforce those new ideas that perhaps, yeah, you are more of an expert than you thought, because it's someone else's opinion of you. And like we've talked about, everybody else's opinion of us seems to matter more than our opinion of ourselves. So true. Oh my gosh, amazing. Thank you so much penny. I absolutely love talking to you. I'm going to pop your website and the link to the paper and ways people can work with you or connect with you in our show notes. Is that? Okay? Yeah, that'd be amazing, excellent. And maybe we can do like round two in a year from now and see where we're at. I know years, not very long time to move the needle. But I know International Women's Day next year. The whole theme of International Women's Day is progress. So not just talking about the stats, but what we can do to
Speaker 1 48:31
actually get me started, we could do another so, oh my gosh, yes, I am. I'm actually thinking you were doing an anti International Women's Day event, right? And here's the thing, I can imagine, your listeners are going, oh my god, what is she talking about? Yeah, I am sick. I've spoken on panels. I have been invited to that many events to speak, and I'm sick of talking about this. And it is not getting any better. I talk a lot now I want to put the eye back in equality if we don't individually take accountability. So what can what can we do as women, to freaking own our voices? Yeah, to put ourselves out there, because that is what's going to start to make a difference. Yes, there's structural things that need to change, but we need to put the I, the individual, back in equality, because this collective action doesn't work
Liz Nable 49:16
and the talk, it's just all talk, all talk. I got an email from my bank, from actually an executive director of small business, or big, big honcho at my bank, and it was just a blanket email that goes out to everyone, and it talked about women in business and how we need to, you know, do our you know, do Do you know, help each other give women a leg up or some sort of stuff. And I just replied to her, and it was like, You guys are all talk. This is all bullshit. Like, what have you actually done to help support women in business? Lo and behold, that's a whole nother podcast episode too. She actually called me, so I'm potentially going to do some work with them about what they're not doing to move the dial for women in business, because it's all just talk. It's all rhetoric. In my. In as well. So I'm glad that you feel the same way as I do, because International Women's Day is becoming, yeah, a lot of bravado and not much action.
Speaker 1 50:09
Now, individual action, I think, and then the collective, you know, of those individual actions will be what moves. Now, let's each individually be accountable for bloody doing something. Yeah,
Liz Nable 50:19
100% don't wait for someone else to tell everyone how good you are. Thought for you. Thanks for
Speaker 1 50:24
distracting me from my assignment. Liz, oh, I know procrastination. That's
Liz Nable 50:27
That's exactly why I haven't gotten got myself a psychology degree, because I'm a journalist and I can leave everything to the last minute. Master of procrastination. Thanks, Penny. It's been awesome talking to you, and I hopefully we can do this again soon. This episode of media magnet was brought to you by my signature group coaching program, the media masters Academy. The media masters Academy is a live, online, six week course taught by me and designed to teach you how to become your own publicist and give you exclusive access to pitch the country's top journalists and editors. Doors open just three times a year. Check it out at Liz nable.com along with a ton of free resources to help you get started taking your business from Best Kept Secret to household name right now. If you love this episode of media magnet, please share it with your business buddies or on social media and tag me at at Liz underscore Nabal. And if there's a specific guest you want to hear from on the show, or a topic or question you want to know more about, please tell me so I can make sure the show stays dedicated, especially for you. You
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