Transcript
Speaker: Hello, before we get stuck into this episode of Bite Big, let me tell you a little bit about who the hell I am and why this content is important to me. My name's Amber Bonney and for the past 25 years, I've been reshaping iconic Australian and international brands, helping them stay relevant, get noticed and be remembered in the good kind of way.
Speaker: I'm a passionate feminist and committed to advocating for better representation of women in senior creative and marketing roles, which is why this podcast is proudly brought to you by my business, The Edison Agency.
Speaker: If your brand or organisation needs help aligning your vision to your reputation, then you can find us at www.edison.agency you can connect with me on LinkedIn. Let's get into it.
Speaker: Hello and welcome to Season 4, Episode 5 of a special Bite Big series, coming to you from the centre of London. I'm Amber Bonney, Brand Strategist and Agency CEO, and right now we are on the road in the yeah UK to record a very special Bite Big season. We're meeting women, building culture, challenging and redefining what leadership looks like in a country where tradition and innovation collide.
Speaker: This series is a spotlight on the pulse of global creative leadership and today i'm joined by someone whom I knew from our very first online conversation would be someone I'd definitely like to share a wine with. Hello and welcome to the straight talking and exceptionally fabulous Amy Keene. Hello. Hello and welcome. Thank you. Now, Amy is a social psychologist, bestselling author, CEO, and one of the most credentialed and unconventional people working with creativity and brands. She spent 17 years inside global advertising networks, working with brands from Lego to Channel 4 to CNN, holding roles including global head of creative and innovation at StarComp. head of strategy, APAC, and Mindshare. And Amy knows the industry's power and its problems because she studied both.
Speaker: When Amy left agency life, she didn't disappear quietly behind the scenes consulting role. She founded Goodshout, a social learning company that helps people find their voice in every sense. She ran the media strategy course at a university level. She became culture editor at Shots magazine and wrote a picture book for adults about self-worth that became a UK bestseller and has been described as a feminist handbook. I'm still going. She's been called a diversity trailblazer, ranked at the top three most influential people in global marketing, inducted into the British Interactive Media Association's Hall of Fame. And right now, her platform, Good Shout, gives teenage girls public speaking skills that we all wish we had at that age. So Amy, let's jump in and talk about why we believe you're a boss woman.
Speaker: All right. So this podcast is all about personal mantra. My personal mantra is bite big and chew like hell. Your personal mantra is nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Speaker: Tell us about that. Other people's opinions suck. And it's taken me a little while to realise this. But when I think back to... I've had quite a long career now, maybe 20 years. yeah And every single time I didn't do something that could have been amazing or felt a little bit shitty about myself, it was only ever related to other people's opinions and other people's narrations. And I realised later on in my career that...
Speaker: I have absolutely control as to whether I believe those opinions or not. It sounds weird that that's an epiphany. Yeah, but it is. Yeah, the old, um I've been teaching my 11-year-old about the circle of influence and how you can influence what's in your immediate body and actions and how you respond to things. Well, you can control that, sorry. And then the outer it the next outer ring is you can influence and actions. how people think or behave or what you choose to do. And then there's another ring outside of that where it's like, this is out of my area of control and there is no point focusing on that.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. And I always say, i say a lot to the people that i work with, particularly the women, you cannot control what people think of you. You can only control how they remember you.
Speaker: So I spend a lot of my time really focusing on how I'm remembered from a creative perspective, from a professional perspective. So I'm really careful about the words that I use. I'm really careful about the work that I put out there. And I know, for example, when I speak at a conference, 5% of that the audience...
Speaker: are going to hate me. I know for a fact, for a bunch of different reasons. I appear to be quite confident. I swear sometimes. I can be quite irreverent. I tell jokes occasionally. That's absolutely going to make at least 5% of the audience hate me. Making peace with that is actually really freeing.
Speaker: Wow. I've heard you talk a lot about your early career and experience with recruitment consultants and the sentiment around having an average accent and this perceived lack of gravitas. Has this got something to do with your mantra now? Absolutely. i was going to say this. I think when you come from a working class background, which I'm really proud of, but I'm from a place called Essex and And Essex, I don't know if you know much about the reputation of Essex. I've been to Essex, yes.
Speaker: What? Where? I lived in the UK in the early 2000s, 2001 to 2003. And so my boyfriend at the time was a big kite surfer. Yeah. And so we would go down to Essex to kite surf. What i look a life. I know. It's really boring and I thoroughly, if I did my time again, would not.
Speaker: Sit there for hours on end while he kite surfed. While he kite surfed. Yeah. At least he didn't play darts and Essex is also so thorough and Essex is very famous for darts. quite good at darts. I feel like I would have preferred that because the least I could play ah sitting on the beach waiting for a kite to land and like it's just really unfeminist move to do that.
Speaker: But it Essex has a bit of a reputation. It also has a very famous accent. And like I said, I'm from a working class background and I... The definition of social class in the yeah UK is really tricky because it's something that you can self-identify as. Also, a lot of working class people don't see themselves as working class. It's just we're so obsessed. layered and complex. Yeah, we're so obsessed with class in the UK, but it's just so murky in terms of how you define it. But I ticked all the boxes.
Speaker: Yeah. The thing about the Essex accent is that it's very notable and when I left university was told by a recruitment consultant that my accent was too common to ever be around important people. So I should have a more behind the scenes role. And that was just the first. I mean, firstly, horrifying thing just to hear. But at the time I didn't even realise it was horrifying. I was like, oh, okay, okay, yeah, I guess. I guess then I won't have an important job. guess that's just my lot in life. I'll just. Yeah. So Essex girls have a certain stereotype, which is being blonde and stupid and wearing really high white stilettos. And so as soon as I started working, I dyed my hair black. I started wearing glasses. I really toned down what I wore so that I didn't get associated with that stereotype. But being mocked for my accent was just the first of many statements and microaggressions that I had. across my career in advertising related to my class. So the reason why such a fan of the phrase, no one can make you feel inferior without your consent, is that when it comes to class and your financial status, it's really easy for people to make you feel inferior. It's really easy to believe people when they say you don't belong in certain rooms.
Speaker: And It took me a while to realise that it was my class that was making them feel that way about me. Yeah. Now that's an Eleanor Roosevelt quote. People say that it's Eleanor Roosevelt, but it's also been attributed to Marilyn Monroe, Mark Twain. There's loose copyright attachment. But, yeah, obviously this is something that's been happening for a really long time. Do you feel there's a difference between...
Speaker: you know If we think about the notion of a mantra as something that you you know have to repeat it time and time again, do you think it's something that you have to still consciously think about? Every single day. yeah Every single day. It makes sense. No one could hear that phrase and think, oh, no, I don't. No, it's nuanced. It doesn't resonate with me. I've heard that before. it's not I don't need to hear that again. But it is. Every single situation is potentially a new situation. Every single conflict, every single opinion you get from someone is potentially a new opinion. i have to remind myself of that constantly, every single day. When I worked in Singapore, I worked in Singapore for a while, and during that time, my confidence was at an all-time low. I was head of strategy for an entire continent, so you'd think that I'd be… All-time high. Yeah, pretty sure of myself. Yeah, career goals ticked. It was an amazing job, also such an amazing job.
Speaker: I worked in every single market. in APAC. I was working on amazing brands, Unilever, Nestle, et cetera, Pepsi. And the environment that worked in, particularly as a senior woman, was so claustrophobic and nasty, particularly towards me. Because again, I seem to be confident and i am outspoken and all of those things. Yeah. In Australia, we talk about that poor tall poppy syndrome, where it's like, if there's someone at the top
Speaker: Unlike in the United States, I feel like it's quite different. But in Australia specifically, which is probably very similar to England, it's how can we take them down a notch, take them down a peg.
Speaker: And I was, yeah, I was taken down so many pegs in that job and got myself a confidence coach, which is the only time I've ever done that. And I think it's because I was completely desperate. And I was i was younger, of course, and didn't really know how to get my confidence back. Yeah, how do you manage that? yeah is Confidence is such an easy thing to lose.
Speaker: My God, you could lose it in one pitch meeting yeah if it's if it's particularly brutal. It's the hardest thing to build back. And i i saw this confidence coach for a while and what he said I found really interesting. yeah He compared my emotions to a remote control.
Speaker: and said, you're handing your remote control to people and you're letting them push your buttons, you feel sad, you feel inferior, you feel less than, you feel like an imposter and so on. And his conclusion was, keep your fucking remote control. yeah Don't give it to other people. And that's another thing I have to keep reminding myself of. And I think we can all relate to those situations where we know for a fact we've given someone else a shit ton of power yeah that we shouldn't have done.
Speaker: Unfortunately for me, it's usually too, like it's it's after the effect versus live in the moment. I'm like, why did I do that? Or why did I diminish myself? Or why did I... Yeah. And it could be something as small as a troll slagging you off in social media. Yeah. And you just think about it all day. Ruminate. Yeah, ruminate. Why on earth would you give someone that power? Or it could be a colleague who's phenomenally good at gaslighting you. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And then you realise when you're in the midst of it, oh, shit, I've given them loads of power. yeah It's quite hard. Also, you want to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. The gaslighting is so insidiously manipulative that it does actually take reflection, I think, to notice when it's happening. Yeah. Especially if it's done with a smile, which is like the the master level manipulation because that's like oh I'm reading all the body signs here it's telling me this is positive but and actually it's not you've reminded me of a woman that i worked with once who was probably and this was a few years ago probably the source of one of my most significant crashes in self-esteem and she would constantly give me feedback relentlessly
Speaker: And it was always quite personal feedback. You were too much in that meeting. You've got too much energy, Also non-constructive, as in let's just talk about the actual work part as opposed to my disposition. Exactly. Completely subjective, only her own opinion. But what she'd always say to me is but i'm on I'm on your side. And when someone tells you that they're on your side, you believe that they're on your side.
Speaker: And that's another thing that it's really tricky to navigate. And it's a real shame, actually, having to know what people's games are so that you can navigate them. Do you think that's a moment where consent feels almost impossible? Because live in the moment, you feel like...
Speaker: someone's being helpful, but then post. And the whole consent thing can be retrospectively. So these days I run a learning and development company called Good Shout and we help people of all genders, but we work with loads of women to help them work on their voice, finesse their voice, And just be proud of how they communicate. And I work with so many women who retrospectively let a bad comment completely tarnish yeah their sense of self. So they they might have had a comment 10 years ago, you talk too much.
Speaker: They remembered it ever since. Or a like year four report from school. Yeah. Oh my God, yes. Had so much potential but spoke, talked too much. That's so common. yeah Also, i work with so many women who struggle with how they communicate because of how their parents communicated with them. So for example, if they were interrupted a lot as a kid or if their opinions were doubted a lot as a kid, they'll carry that. You'll carry that into your adulthood, yeah. Oh, notice for all parents. How does this show up day to day in a way that doesn't feel like wallpaper?
Speaker: Living and breathing this so that it it has meaning every day as opposed to, yeah, becomes a background. I'm lucky because I often get delivered people's opinions of me. Right. So it's just a daily battle, in other words. So thank God. Thank God people are so opinionated. That's a lovely way to look at it. I'm quite active in social media.
Speaker: When you work in an industry like advertising, which I did for about 17 years, And you don't sound like everyone else. So advertising is an incredibly posh industry. I think something like only 15% of the population of advertising didn't go to private school or something. Yeah. And it was like filled with nepotism, which is a very elitist thing anyway. Yeah, absolutely. And when you don't sound like everyone else, social media can be an absolute godsend because you're just writing stuff. And so that's an amazing leveller.
Speaker: Yeah, that's true. So I've used social media a lot throughout my career. So I was one of the first people to work in social media in the UK. And because of that, have been trolled beyond belief. yeah I've been cyber stalked. I've been mansplained online. I've had all of it and really, I mean, really toxic stuff.
Speaker: That does desensitize you quite a lot. Yeah. I hear that in terms of I thankfully don't have a profile that big but I really need to worry about it. I but i could troll you if you want just build you could build resilience for me with trolling, that would be a really safe way to practice this. Thank you. like do That could be a service. you reckon that could be a service? actually think that could be a service, safespacetrolling.com. Yeah.
Speaker: Get it on. Get it on. I want to ask about this sense of sociology and voice. So Good Shout is built on this premise that the world gets better when more people speak up.
Speaker: What is it about women in their 30s, 40s and 50s that become socialised, you think, to get to be quieter? So you have this generation of younger people who feel like they have no agency in voice and then maybe there's like a five-year gap where Between the way they have voice between 25 and 30. And then it starts to diminish again from there.
Speaker: And that's that's the exact journey. What you've described is the exact thing that happens across the board. Which is so gendered, right? Yes. Oh, my God, yes. There's a bunch of different stats related to...
Speaker: the causes of women losing their voice. Women are interrupted twice as much at work. That's in the UK. In some countries like Pakistan, it's even higher. as As we get senior, it becomes worse. Senior women are seven times more likely to experience or receive exaggerated and cliched feedback. Women are seven times more likely to internalise that feedback. So as we become more senior, we get interrupted more, we get undermined more, we get worse feedback and we just take all of it on.
Speaker: There's a statistic which I wish I could remember off the top of my head but I can't around when women join boards. So when there's one woman on a board, the board's performance goes up something like 30%. because typically in a board, people aren't trying that hard. They're just walking in, having a good old slap of the back, going playing a round of golf, to be cliche. and But when a woman joins, the propensity is that women need to try harder, so they actually over-prepare, which is something that resonates with me, over-preparing for something versus just swanning in and probably doing fine. without the preparation based on expertise and skill. But this sense of that the women have to outperform or be better.
Speaker: Absolutely. And I completely resonate with that. I've never been given the grace to fail, to fuck up. Or just be average. Or just be average. No, oh my God. Just be like mediocre. Yeah, absolutely. Is a privilege to just walk in, be okay and walk out. Yeah. it's And the most important thing to note is when women turn quiet and when they lose their voice and when they develop all of those survival mechanisms, none of it is irrational.
Speaker: We tend to blame the women. You're not visible enough. You're not loud enough. You're not speaking up enough, which I hate. yeah We tend to blame the women. But there's other research about negotiation, you know, so there's a gender pay gap and women aren't asking for enough money. And it's been found that women get punished when they ask for more money. I work with so many women.
Speaker: who've just amassed all of this bullshit and all of it's real. yeah And so in meetings, they'll say, oh this is probably a stupid question because they were called cocky for asking a question. They'll say... 30 times. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They'll apologise before they speak because they're not allowed to interrupt as much as the men do. All of this stuff is real. Yeah.
Speaker: And that behaviour is... is repetitive right so the more this happens the more that that ah informs the next situation the next situation so it really is about sort of cycle breaking in a sense which I imagine is the the work that you are doing you're absolutely right that behavior at work is so contagious it's most bad behavior is like a forest fire all it takes is one person and to interrupt the female boss, everyone else is going to start doing it. Doing it. So that's just recycling unless someone calls it out, which is how many times have you heard people actually call it out? Yeah, so it takes a certain level of experience, which is it shouldn't, but it does in terms of inner confidence, to set the boundary early
Speaker: yes As soon as you set a boundary, a boundary is typically respected, right? yeah if you If you call that out with respect and kindness, but live, someone is unlikely to do that again. yeah But unfortunately, it's not something that ah you know an 18-year-old or a 19-year-old or it typically, in my experience, took you know at least 10, 15 years of working experience to actually have the inner kind confidence and of course now in at 50 I will just call it out loudly and proudly but it shouldn't be that way and I think it's as older women I think that is our responsibility i genuinely do think we could do it more and do it more on behalf of younger women I know that the responsibility for
Speaker: Changing society shouldn't always rest on women, my God. We're doing a lot. yeah But we have an intergenerational responsibility. Also, younger women have a responsibility not to make fun of our age. I wish as different generations we could work together more. yeah yeah Maybe it's more about when you have the energy, use it. But if you don't, yeah like it's okay just to coast.
Speaker: It's like I know every International Women's Day is so emotionally exhausting for me personally. There's lots of events going on. There's this high expectation that you're going to be, you know, at the peak of your performance talking and responding to invites that are unpaid to say no, thank you. That's very gracious for you to ask me to speak in an event unpaid on International Women's Day. Thank you, but not.
Speaker: I want to talk a little bit about you described yourself as a working class weirdo. How long did it take you to shift from that? So in all of the work that you did with the therapist, the coach, how long did it take you to fully embrace who you were naturally and to stop dyeing your hair?
Speaker: I still do dye my hair. Yeah, but not like brown. Now that's just maybe covering greys. It's different. It's different. i only I only did a few sessions with the confidence coach because even though I found what he said interesting, it wasn't really working for me.
Speaker: It wasn't until I started running my own business and I had less opinions from people You had less influence coming in. Yeah. Filtering through. And I realised I always thought I was pretty good and I had awards and amazing work that was proof. But when I started running my own company, i was even better than I thought I was. And i had no one to tell me that I didn't belong in any rooms because those were rooms that I was forcing myself into because I needed my company to succeed. And
Speaker: I think there's so much chat about confidence and self-acceptance and you could get a confidence confidence coach to shout at you to be confident all day unless you have the evidence and the proof. It's really hard to change your own mind. Yeah, because that takes endurance, right? Like it takes a long time. so unless that's been planted from early years beyond, yeah I think that's really difficult to do. Now that you work with young people, what have, say, 16-year-old girls taught you that was unexpected? So much, sociologically, Running Good Shout for Girls is really fascinating. More fascinating than I thought it was going to be. I was a 16-year-old very, very long time ago. And i assumed that a lot of stuff would have changed by now.
Speaker: So much has stayed the same in terms of how girls are spoken about and how they're spoken to. Boys still make sexist comments in the classroom.
Speaker: Potentially they might be even worse these days, in UK schools at least. Girls are also told off for being attention seekers and told off for being too loud. All of that is exactly the same. And now they have social media, which means that they can't help but be more... influenced by the toxicity of society at large but also they really care really really really care about how they look yeah and it's easier to bully them with social media so what I'm dealing with when I'm working with these amazing girls amazing opinionated brilliant genius girls is already at the age of 13 to 16 undoing that the wonderful thing is that it doesn't take as long as it does with older women yeah
Speaker: And you can see that there's a you can see that there's a desire to celebrate themselves and a desire to support each other. So I spend a lot of time undoing that and just asking girls, like what's what's your opinion?
Speaker: What do you care about? Yeah, as opposed to the, I have to teach my wisdom to you. yeah The agency of you have a voice. yeah So tell me what you think. Yeah, it's the the young girls that I work with take feedback better than adults. They're normally more impressive than adults. Yeah. Normally more articulate than adults. And it's a really emotional journey working with them. I just don't know how the hell we're going to manage to get around every 16 year old in the country.
Speaker: to give girls a voice before society has a chance of taking it away. That's the goal. Well, I suppose the more platforms that you have to do that. Yeah. We're desperate to find a sponsor because that's the kind of thing that a really amazing brand could throw so much money behind and weight behind to endorse. The impact would just increase. Oh, my God. Imagine saying that you helped to give every teenage girl in the country a voice.
Speaker: The reality is... Brands out there listening. Well, I mean, the thing is, no offence to the brands out there, but it was really hard to find any that actually gave us shit because... They're looking for short-term ROI. Yeah. And International Women's Day is one day and that's the that's the day they care. But it's, yeah, it's been really, really hard to find brands that are willing to invest something that isn't just badging and isn't just shallow. It's actually just behind the scenes, constantly doing the work as opposed to just celebrating those short, short wins.
Speaker: Let's talk about female leadership and industry change. So you have been listed as a top diversity trailblazer. Like that feels like something you should be putting on a T-shirt. Yeah. What does that actually mean in the day-to-day of what you do?
Speaker: So that was for a piece of work. or a non-profit entity that I created with some advertising industry peers called DICE, which stands for diversity and inclusion at conferences and events. yeah And me and a couple of pals, essentially, Nicola Kemp, who's a journalist in the ad industry, Seb Joseph, who's a journalist in the a ad industry, James Whatley, who's a strategist, he works for Lego now. We were so sick of seeing all-male panels, you know, man-als, at advertising events. And nothing seemed to be changing and we were calling it out, but events organisers were just regurgitating the same old line-ups. We created this charter that helped event organisers curate more inclusive agendas. And it was a really brilliant piece of work, actually, and we gave it to everyone. It was free to access. We did it in our own time. It actually cost us money to do. Was it a series of, I suppose, a checklist of things to consider or did it also have a panel of people that were curated or a networked?
Speaker: Good question. It was a combo. So we created a charter based on the Equality Act that set out the appropriate parameters for different areas of diversity yeah in your panel. And then events organisers could submit their line up. and their marketing and their content and we as a team would give it a score score out of 100. Do you remember the worst score that you saw? You don't have to name it Shane but at least a score.
Speaker: Yeah, we were we awarded a couple of 12s, 14s. But you know what's really interesting is people would submit their agendas and all of the other stuff. I'd give them their score and they would argue with me. They would get upset with me because their agenda for their conference wasn't diverse enough.
Speaker: And they'd say stuff like, but we've tried really hard. Yeah. And I'd say, Well done, you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, my God. Well done, Steve. But it wasn't hard enough. And it it was it was so fascinating. that The reason why i think me and also my colleagues who created it with me got called trailblazers was because we had to put up with a lot of shit.
Speaker: We were getting abusive DMs for creating this charter I was getting really nasty messages. I got one. The weirdest thing, we did an ad campaign and we did it all over the UK. I got the most hideous email from a priest telling me that this was wokeism, this dice charter was wokeism, gone mad to give it up from a priest. And are they active in the advertising industry? Were they likely to have been on a panel? No. No. We just felt like that was the most important thing that his archdiocese could be focused on. I guess God told him. God told him that day there's to be taken Don't worry about the local homelessness issue. You just focus. You need to focus. What's happening in the DE and I in advertising. DE and I is the enemy.
Speaker: Father. You mentioned before being comfortable with the not being like. What is your advice to people who maybe are not as at that comfort stage yet around the perils of sort of likeability because it all connects back, right, to the good girl and the sense that women are supposed to be naturally nurturing and can't be assholes. I mean, I think when women can be on parody as much of an asshole as a man, I feel that is gender equity. Yeah. That's what we want, isn't it? When women can be completely average and massive arseholes. And massive arseholes. And that's just acceptable. That's when we know we've won. Yeah, exactly. And then we have to go around and make sure that it's the same all over the world. Yes. In every country. Region by region, yeah. We will not rest until every country in the world allows women to be average arseholes. You're going to need to live till about maybe 600. That's right. How can we speed this up? Are you comfortable with that? Yeah. Yeah. You just a series of minions.
Speaker: Do you think the creative industry is genuinely becoming more equitable than when you started? Or do you think that semantics and language have just gotten better? The problem with the advertising industry is that it's really good with words. I have always compared the advertising industry to politics. I think they're two very, very similar industries. Lots of incredibly overconfident people talking a lot. Unless you're in policymaking at a community grassroots level. yeah It's very similar.
Speaker: Similar traits in people. Well, yeah. And so the advertising industry is brilliant at creating a sheen and sprinkling glitter on stuff. They're amazing at making it seem like they care. For how many years? 50, 60, 100 years?
Speaker: The advertising industry has convinced us that they care about our family, that they care about our households, our lifestyles. No one cares. And that's evident because every single stat is going up. Gender pay gap, going up.
Speaker: Women who are being harassed. Well, that seems to be prolific. Yeah, it's all going up because, and I know this sounds brutal, they never meant it.
Speaker: Some people did. Some people did. But they've been pushed out of their jobs or they've had to become a lot more palatable and play the game in order to get anything done. Which is lip service. Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Speaker: Versus action. In a way, I've always said that advertising is ah is never going to have its Me Too moment. It will never have its Me Too moment. Well, because of Mad Men made it look so sexy, it's very hard for that to happen. Yeah, and it's and everyone is so driven by their ego and it's such a familial, over-networked space that I don't think anyone would take the risk of Which, given it's so connected to behavioural science, just seems ironic, right? And also, if we have so many geniuses, behavioural economists in this industry, why have they not fixed sexism yet? Why have they not fixed genuine social ills? Why are they always just wanging on about price strategies? And beer.
Speaker: And fucking beer. Yeah. Yeah, beer advertising and the Super Bowl and, you know, like there are things that become yeah so much of a, whether the idea, I suppose, or the campaign, the gravitas around whatever that is, that idea is much more important than the actual impact. Yeah. And they could, all of these behavioural economists could do it just one day a week. Mm-hmm. Maybe think about sexism in Adland or the rise in transphobia that's driven by the media that Adland pays for. One day a week.
Speaker: And that could that could solve a lot of problems. I feel like it's the same connection between advertising and those social issues and in Australia, gambling and sports, which certainly in Australia is an issue. But the not-for-profit organisations that are leading Australian sports, especially Australian rules, are so interconnected with the sporting gambling industry that it just seems...
Speaker: Yeah, highly unethical. Well, it is highly unethical. And I feel like that's the same between the relationship advertising. Yeah, yeah, it's exactly the same. Exactly the same. You know the book, Careless People? Yep. Did you read it? I haven't read it, no.
Speaker: Oh my God, I read it in about two days. I thought, because i worked in social media for so long and worked at a lot of media agencies, I thought nothing could surprise me anymore. And even even that, it surprised me. The most damning part was, which you'd think on its own, you'd think an entire industry should be in uproar from this fact in the book alone. That actually in Australia, META allowed an agency to target... 13-year-old girls on Instagram who just deleted a selfie because that implied that they were feeling really shit about themselves. Yeah, so this was a perfect time, insidious moment to come in and sweep in with... Beauty ads. Yeah. Yeah. And even that alone, if you take a step back and think, oh, my God, that's one of the most harmful things that you can do to a child. Yeah, it just kind of, it came out and everyone was like, eh.
Speaker: Probably not the worst thing that's happened. Yeah, it's not the worst. And also Facebook advertising is really good for our brands. Yeah. So. I really want to. We'll probably keep using it. Yeah, no, it's really bad, but we probably will keep using it. Yeah.
Speaker: It's bad, but we'll focus elsewhere. Sorry, not sorry. Let's talk about something good. You wrote a bestselling book about self-worth for women who had already lost it, really.
Speaker: Does Good Shout for Girls exist because you don't want that next generation to need the book? Yeah, absolutely. So I said before, the plan is to help give girls a voice before society has any chance of taking it away.
Speaker: And I don't think society even tries, I don't think we're even trying to let girls have a voice. And every, if you think about all the forces I dread to think how I would have fared as a 13-year-old girl in this modern culture. Modern era. And I had my issues. I had a lot of issues that teenage girls in our time had. I dread to think. thing girls now probably have all those same issues plus additive issues. Yeah. Yeah. And what's really remarkable and what I've discovered through my career, which has been pretty successful and all the things I've achieved is that a strong voice can get you fucking far. Yeah. If you give someone the gift of voice, it can really change their lives. Yeah. And how wonderful to give them that at the age of 13. Yeah, rather than waiting until they're 40 or 45. Yeah. The book, for anyone who is not familiar, is The Little Girl Who Gave Zero Fucks. I do love that title. Like, who is that little girl?
Speaker: She was dedicated to my three nieces. So when I wrote the book, my nieces were, I think, 5, 10 and 15 children. And that's the perfect cross-section of girls that probably need some care and some love and some nurturing. And so I wrote it and I've actually dedicated the book to them at the in the front of the book. And i I like to think I care for my nieces so much, so much and don't have kids myself. So I've spent many years just bigging them up and teaching them how to fight with their words and making sure they know how fucking brilliant they are. And the hope is that that book
Speaker: could do that job for other girls. Other girls. Yeah. So in 20 years time, for example, you almost want that book to be unnecessary. Yeah. Yeah. You want people to pick that up and say 50 years and go, oh, how quaint. Look what girls used to have to read to feel good about themselves. Oh my God. Yes. Is that the goal? Yes. And it's,
Speaker: Primarily about all the things that girls are told they should worry about. So in the book, the character, Elodie Rose, has a basket of fucks and fucks are these fantastical creatures and they look different for every single girl. And every time someone hurts her or embarrasses her or humiliates her or tells her off, she has to reach in her basket and give a fuck away. And by the end of the day, her basket is empty. And that's how every day pans out. And the main character one day decides what to see what would happen if she doesn't give any fucks. And so she gets bullied, she doesn't give a fuck away. She gets picked on by a boy that likes her in the playground, she doesn't give a fuck away. All the teachers tell her off for either trying too hard or running too fast in She's being too much. Yeah, she's being too much. And what she realises is that when she doesn't give any fucks away, she actually feels quite good. Everyone else loses their shit.
Speaker: Because everyone else actually quite likes it when girls really worry. Yeah, when there's action in the humiliation. Yeah.
Speaker: It makes them, I mean, that's the premise of bullying, right? Yes. It gives someone else power. So when you disable that power. Yeah. What is it about this program and the book that is missing in current, like, education programs about confidence for girls? I've spoken today about having confidence classes, but I don't talk about confidence that much. And what I know from working with so many schools is that there is no shortage of programs.
Speaker: for girls telling them to be confident. Yeah, so it's more, right so your framework is less about using the word confidence, but more about them, the action of yeah them feeling confident. Oh my God, absolutely, absolutely. Instagram can tell them to be confident, but...
Speaker: i think Do you think it's just become an over-marketed word? Yes. Yeah, where it's lost substance. Oh, absolutely. But it it was always currency. Confidence was always an industry. It's always a way. No one could ever be confident enough. And if you are confident enough, then you're too confident. Confidence is just such a red herring. It's such a distraction. But I think true confidence, if we want to use that word, is an outcome of knowing that you're good, right?
Speaker: Having skills. And so what we do with Good Chat for Girls is that we give skills. And those skills will inevitably make girls feel braver bolder. Yeah. All of those things.
Speaker: Yeah, it's interesting, actually. It's an interesting lens to just think about the over-marketed reference of confidence and how misleading that can be. Well, also, i think it's just really confident people said that confidence was ah important. and then we were just And all the people that weren't that in confident. and Oh, yes. Now they're going to write a book about confidence, a podcast about confidence. yeah We all know how it is. Well, speaking of confidence, so my, as I said in the intro, that the the premise of this podcast is about a mantra and that's for a couple of reasons. One is having a podcast focused on a mantra is less about someone telling a linear narrative of their life because it's a bit repetitive for people to talk about. yeah But also it's that daily, I suppose, belief and this sentiment of confidence.
Speaker: biting big and chewing like hell has always been part of the way I've thought, even when I didn't know how to articulate that. And it came from this sentiment of someone in university once said to me, she was a foreign exchange student and she referenced me as a mouse in a bulldog's costume.
Speaker: and And when I started to unpack what that meant, because I'm like, does that mean I'm terrifying or that I'm yeah softer on the inside than my my bark came from this sentiment that I'm always sort of saying yes or jumping in and then going, okay, how the hell do I work through this?
Speaker: What is the one thing do you think in your mantra that sort of logic never applied to you? It was just, you just sort of jumped right in. Or reframe if it's easier, thinking about has there been a time where you have either bitten big and then gone, yes, I did it, or bitten big and gone, holy fuck, I probably bit off more than I could chew. Yeah.
Speaker: All the time. Most things I do. Every day. I tell you what I did that was fucking terrifying. I wrote and produced and starred in a play. Well, that's a lot. like kind have A couple of years ago. That's trilogy of skills putting in there. In London. i wrote a play about the dark side of life coaching.
Speaker: if you If anyone follows me on social media, you'll know that I'm not a fan. of life coaches or just the life coaching industry it's just terrifyingly unregulated yes and think about think about all the life coaches you know they're the worst people that you as well and not something i'd recommend someone put on a business card ah even if it was something that they were genuinely good at doing yeah say something else Because there definitely is a stigma when someone says life coach, I start to shut down. Oh, my God. Show me how amazing your life is. And if it's not amazing, how dare you coach my life? Yeah.
Speaker: Anyway. They're usually complete basket case the internet. Oh, my God. They will be the worst people that you know. Anyway, i so I wrote this comedy character called Genevieve de Beauvoir and I made a bunch of Instagram videos and then just thought, oh, fuck it, I'm going to do a show.
Speaker: i feel nervous just thinking about this for you. Yeah, wrote the show, got a cast, the most amazing cast of amazing people, booked the venue, promoted it, and then when people started to buy tickets, it was sold out. It was a three-night run. my God. I was like, oh, no. If this fucks up, I will look a fool. Thank God it was good, but that was when it was... When opening night was a-coming... I actually had that moment where I thought I could make an absolute fall out of myself. You're going to vomit. So publicly. I did have to get hypnotized then. You just had someone backstage. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Someone you take around with you.
Speaker: ah Quick, Ian, we're on. on. But they that wasn't about confidence. It was more about i was catastrophizing. Yeah, you were projecting. yeah 100% and i I was thinking, oh God, what if oh if this goes wrong? What if this goes wrong? And the hypnotist helped me sit in those terrible moments and work out that whatever goes wrong, I can fix it. And that was that's a wonderfully reassuring thought. Don't take that away.
Speaker: I'll take that away with me. Well, I do i do it actually a lot with when I train people in public speaking and they'll say, I'm just, I'm terrified. I feel sick. I say to them, what's the worst that could happen? They say something like, I forget my words. And I'm like, right, let's sit in it.
Speaker: Let's sit in it. You've forgotten your words. if Have you got notes? Yeah, I've got notes. Can you pick those notes up? Yeah. Okay. Well, then that. fix i going to I forget my words. Does anyone else know what your words are? No. So then are they predicting what you're going to say next? No. So can you just keep talking? Yes. there's It's a really nice... It's so rational though, right? Yeah. Like the thought, but it it comes from that point of judgment.
Speaker: Yeah. And I think for me, my personal experience of any public speaking, if I'm not speaking to peers... I'm actually okay. But it's more nerve wracking speaking to people in front of people who are in your industry.
Speaker: yeah There's something heightened. If I'm speaking to clients or people out of the industry, it feels so much easier than speaking to people who are in the same circle. So I've been speaking at conferences for decades. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: I think it's okay to have a beast mode, a version of yourself, which is only a mode. So it's not a different person, but a beast mode where you flip a switch and you're just a bit more.
Speaker: You're just a bit, you just give less. That's 80% of my week, but I operate in beast mode. What are the other modes? Oh, my God. yeah How have you not had a heart attack? I don't know. Beast mode is a lot. My beast mode, if I'm doing a 20-minute presentation, yeah you can just see in my body language, in my stature, yeah and in my energy, I'm on And i care less about what people think. I'm there to provide a bloody service. yeah And then I get off and I'm like, oh. I feel like perimenopause could be reframed as beast mode.
Speaker: yeah but What is it? How does it feel? Maybe I have it. um All right. Well, um Nikki, our producer, is probably listening from behind the curtain going, I'll give you this. um There's definitely it's major zero fucks era. As you just, there's something cognitively happening that you're like, I'm not standing for this bullshit. Yeah. anymore yeah at all and aside from other things like perspiring more i think it is just the general and cognitive decline there is a little bit of like memory failure um but i think the number one benefit of
Speaker: ageing I think is you coming into a zero fuck zero because it's actually quite freeing yeah to be caring less about what, like genuinely caring less. Not just saying I don't care, but still quietly caring. yeah Genuinely walking into something and just saying no or calling it.
Speaker: like very straightly. It is quite a liberating and I do hope for girls everywhere that it doesn't take to perimenopause to actually get to the point where they can not necessarily have zero fucks about everything but to feel a little bit more free and less tolerating.
Speaker: Absolute rubbish. We did some research at Good Shout on the subject of likeability labour and specifically the relationship between needing to be liked and how we communicate. And there's a bunch of different ways that we shapeshift apologizing too much, saying, does that make sense when we've said something? the reframing of emails. Oh, my God. Yeah, I'm just going take out all the apologetic words and the... The smileys and the exclamation marks. What we've found, so women do shapeshift more... at work in order to be likable. Being disliked is a genuine fear. But we looked at it demographically and wonderfully older women cared the least out of everyone about being liked. Yeah. I genuinely think that the hormonal change flicks a switch for women where
Speaker: They're so fatigued and they have so many balls in the air at that stage of life. They're either caring for their own children but also potentially caring for siblings or loved ones or parents at the same time. They're in full swing of their career. you know, they've got a lot happening.
Speaker: They don't have the time anymore to be, yeah, thinking about everyone else's needs at 100% and kind of the bullshit that goes with that. That's what I think happens. Reflection of 16-year-old... Amy, if you could go back and give your younger self your mantra now, do you think she would have been ready to hear it?
Speaker: I wish someone had said it, to be honest. Yeah. Absolutely. But it is the thing that you also have to learn over time. The...
Speaker: how unnecessary it is to give all of your fucks away. Yeah. You do have to learn that with with life experience. But maybe having someone planting the seed would have been helpful. Even if, you know, because you're in that rebellious life stage, right, where you want to learn your own way. It's important part of your cognitive development to make mistakes. but Yeah. But sometimes I also think the if someone plants the seed early enough – even if you're not living it daily, you it's it's it's been embedded.
Speaker: So it can be reinforced over time. Yeah. And i I wish someone had told me that related to social class. I wish someone had given me a really decent lecture. Amy, you have gravitas. Don't you let anyone tell you you don't. absolutely. And yeah, I wish someone had warned me that Some people are going to think they're better than you because of where they were born and how their voice sounds. It's really important that you don't believe them. And I wish someone had also... There's something about the inner dialogue of a working class person or a person from a working class background. You're not told that you can be a shit-hot entrepreneur. You're not told that you can run the country. You're not told that you can change the world often. No. You're not told that you can be an intellectual, that you can be a social psychologist. You're not necessarily told those things. And it took me far too long to realise that I could also be an academic alongside all these posh people. yeah And I wish I'd done that sooner. sooner yeah Because I love to learn so much. And that's where modelling is so important across every area that has bias or a minority, right? Because... even if people aren't ready to hear it, to see it is so important. To see yourself in those situations yeah where they're not ah is absolutely critical. I have to shout out, there's an incredible woman called the Scouse Scientist. And she's from Liverpool. And I think she went to Oxford or Cambridge, one of the good universities. And she's a scientist. And she has a really strong Liverpudlian accent. She does so much work with young girls to show them that you can be a scientist and also sound like this. in it Yeah, you can be anything you want. Yeah. Without the limitation. Yeah, such a role model. So amazing.
Speaker: What incredible work. We'll definitely put a tag to her in our show notes. What would you say to someone who wants to care less but doesn't know how to start? Practice. Try… Daily, weekly. Yeah. Try teeny tiny experiments.
Speaker: Because the thing is, so many people, people say to me, oh I'm a people pleaser and that's how I talk. That's why I talk talk. They've already given themselves a tag. Oh, oh my God. Absolutely. no And I've never met a people pleaser who likes being a people pleaser. Mm-hmm. And people say to me, I want to be more unapologetic. And my response is always, well, stop saying sorry then. yes no There's no silver bullet. You don't need to read an entire fucking manual to become an ah unapologetic. Just stop apologizing and see how that feels. Yeah. What's the book, Atomic Habits? Oh, yeah. Yeah. It really is just about the habit of doing something in repetition and being conscious.
Speaker: Yeah. So pick pick one thing and maybe just keep practicing. Yeah. Until you get better. Yeah. Practice saying no more. Practice saying sorry less. I would also say, i mean, everyone learns differently, but sometimes for me when I write something down, when it's in the physical ether. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: It then becomes something, like it turns into an artifact. So yeah if you have something that you yeah want to work on, write it down and then it becomes almost permanent. That was the point of the little girl who gave zero fucks because that was when I wrote it when I was living in Singapore, lost my confidence, saw the confidence coach, and I wrote it to turn it into an artifact that existed in the world so that I would stop giving so many fucks. Yourself. Yeah. I love the idea of writing something that's like a self-soothing mantra yeah for yourself, but also becomes a gift for people. Yeah.
Speaker: Forever. Who are the women that you admire? So you mentioned the scientist. Are there other women that were foundational in your in the way that you think, or even people you've met recently? You're like, this is someone who clearly is giving zero fucks. Yeah.
Speaker: I've created a movement. Oh, God, everyone says they're creating a movement. i'm not I haven't created a movement. you've created I've created... school of fish. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've created ah ah a trademark yeah called Unlikable Women. yeah And sitting within that is something, an event that I call the Unlikable Women Summit. And the Unlikable Women Summit is ah is a love letter to all the women that the world's afraid who... because they're direct and they're ambitious and they're confident and they speak their minds and all of those things.
Speaker: And every time we have a summit, I curate the women who are my role models, regardless of their age, regardless of what industry they're in Women who just inspire me endlessly. There's a woman, a political commentator called Marina Perkis, who is so important to the political landscape of the UK. She is such a role model of mine. And I think she's probably younger than me. There's an incredible academic who studies and talks about the history of sex and female pleasure called Dr. Kate Lister.
Speaker: So fucking cool. So impressive. i need to get myself to one of these summits. Oh, my God, you should. You must. We're having next year i think we're going to have a sleepover. It's going to be like a festival. Oh, what a shame.
Speaker: A sleepover festival. What a shame that I'll have to fly from Australia to attend that. Yeah. I mean, we'll make it worth your while. yeah Yeah. That sounds fabulous. I love, I increasingly love to call myself a clever bitch. And I think more women should call themselves clever bitches. That is good, yeah. I love really fucking smart, loud women. Yes, me too That's why you're on this podcast. We are doing this And that's why you're hosting it. Yeah. Well, we are nearly coming to the end. I really wanted to say a big thank you to you for not only your graciousness but your sense of humility, your loudness, your attitude, everything that you have done. I mean, you have done more than most people could do 10 lifetimes in terms of what you've achieved. So, you know,
Speaker: Clap on the back for you. i hope you sit back and and really think about that. And this sense that nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent. I think if all of our listeners can just take that little sentiment away, what are they consenting that other people take? um I think that's going to be an absolutely incredible gift that you're giving to people. So thank you. Now, I wanted to talk a little bit. So this podcast is produced and made by women. And to show our gratitude, we've donated $250 on your behalf to your chosen support charity. So Good Shout for Girls is a charitable youth initiative providing for you public speaking, confidence and communication training for teenage girls. Its core goal is to empower young women to find and flex their voices at an early age, equipping them to speak with authority before social pressures tell them to shrink. Obviously, this is something that you want to scale and it's critically important to you.
Speaker: What are the sorts of organisations or businesses that you're looking for from a funding perspective so we can try and use this platform yeah to to reach out? Because it is something that should be.
Speaker: Oh, my God. Unilever. Come on, Unilever. Duff, you bastards. You can do this. Fund me. All right, we're just going to shout out. It's just going to be a hashtag dove. We tried with boots. It didn't work with boots. We've tried a couple of others. like i can't won't I won't name them. Name and shame. No, name and shame those who didn't. Makeup brands to counteract some of that work. So there's yeah obviously there's there's brands like NYX. which are makeup brands that celebrate creativity yeah and just looking vibrant, and not looking pretty. yourself, yeah, not sexualising beauty but more about, yeah. Exactly. Or tampons, always. singular tampon. Yeah, I want. This is the brand. I want i want tampons, I want Tampax to fund it maybe.
Speaker: It's just, it's so it could it could make such a beautiful impact. Yeah. We need someone cashed up and willing to follow through. Look, Unilever are B Corp certified, so money where their mouth is feels like a good thing to do. Any last words from you before we wrap up?
Speaker: Anything you want our listeners to know? I do want to reiterate that when it comes to other people's opinions, and that's what so much of our conversation has been about, when it comes to other people's opinions, feelings aren't facts.
Speaker: yeah And it's so critical that you don't take on and internalize the way in which other people narrate you. If you were to think about your entire life, and how many opinions have been thrown at you ever since you were a little girl, it would be in the trillions. yeah And we're all like Play-Doh getting moulded into these versions of ourselves that are just just just weighed down by other people's opinions. And i think it's so important to remember that your opinion of yourself is much more important. It's much more important. Yeah. yeah
Speaker: That comes back to that influence pace, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure to sit across from you and your energy is radiating. So thank you.
Speaker: I'm your host, Amber Bonney. And until next episode, I hope you all bite big and chew like hell. Thank you. Woohoo!
