Introducing Elevate with Grace

Welcome to our very first episode!   

Claire and Miranda explain how the Elevate with Grace podcast idea came about, how they want to help women create success on their own terms, and how the five pillars of the Elevate with Grace Model work together as a virtuous cycle to success.   

Our mission is to have a real impact on how women achieve their vision for their future. By delivering thoughtful, curated experiences and actionable steps, we will inspire women to take smart risks, to create the career that fulfills them and achieve financial success on their own terms.

ACTION CHALLENGE - carve out 10mins each day to write without a filter about what you have loved from your day and what you have loathed. 

NEXT WEEK - In our next episode we are going to look over these journal notes and see where the patterns are.  This will help you start to define where you need to invest your energy and perhaps offer some insights into your why.    Please subscribe for future episodes & share with your friends. 

Want more insights and tips before next week's Pod?  Check  out our blogs at www.elevatewithgrace.com.au or bite sized tips on socials - Instagram & Facebook.  https://www.instagram.com/elevate.with.grace/

Music created by Claire's daughter Hannah

Transcript

0:14

Welcome to the Elevate with Grace podcast, for people who are short on time and long to take steps, to create success on their own terms. We embrace school university and early careers with gumption, ambition and passion. We are fully in and ready to create a life of success. And then something else. We start to hold ourselves back. As we move through our lives, research suggests that women become less inclined to take risks, career leaps, and maintain financial independence as they move into their thirties, which is way too early to reap the rewards for all of those A's and long hours put in. This is what we want to explore with you on our elevate with grace podcast, our aim is to curate and share the best tips, insights, and knowledge from all of the content out there, and then take the brain strain out of it by giving you the, so what, and some immediate actionable steps for you to easily squeeze into your life each week. Through regular action, we will propel you forward and offer support as we all create our own paths to achieving success on our own terms. A huge, crazy welcome to our Elevate with Grace podcast launch episode. I'm Claire and with me is my fabulous cohost Miranda. We have been planning and preparing for this for so long that it feels very surreal to be recording this right now. I actually had a thought earlier this morning that we should be popping the cork on a bottle of bubbly to honor this debilitatingly scary moment for us both but then I realized that it is pretty early in the morning and I should best settle in with my signature caffeine hit in hand as a perfectly acceptable AM substitute for champers. Righto. So in today's first Elevate POD, we're going to be talking about how the idea came to us to do this podcast and what we want our listeners to get from listening to us, our purpose at elevate with grace and also our manifesto. What the five pillars of our elevate with grace model are that work together as a virtuous cycle to get you moving on the steps that you want to take each day to achieve success on your terms. We're going to give you a quick lowdown on who Miranda and I are. We're going to explain what to expect in future podcasts. And we will wrap up with our first weekly elevate challenge. Good morning, Miranda. How are you on this very exciting morning? I am very good and so thrilled to be here with you Claire. This is super, super exciting. I can't believe it. I was thinking back on when this journey first started and I think let's track it right back to when you were suggesting to myself and a couple of out girlfriends, we should do a podcast a couple of years ago, and then came back on the agenda post research. I'd engaged with women around work behaviors in early 20 20. Taking you through the same research questions. I finished our call with Claire. It's not just us. There is a real problem here. Want to work with me to help women like us? And of course you were so excited and you were like, let's do it. After additional research, extrapolating years of life and career experiences and months of strategy and planning, we are so excited to be launching the Elevate with Grace Podcast with you. Our hope is that by joining us, you'll be excited to think about your future. Identify what success looks like and take actionable steps towards achieving success on your own terms. Before we get into the formal introductions, I want to first share with you why we're here and the purpose driving Elevate with Grace. Mid last year, as mentioned, I started researching women's habits to uncover whether there is consensus across professions that women are overloaded and how to connect them to creative pursuits. If possible the findings were even worse than I had envisaged with women investing all of their hours between work and home, with nothing left in the tank. Very little evidence of a healthy whole of life balance, bit of a treadmill feeling. In many cases our women weren't sure that all of this hard work was always noticed, appreciated, or going to equate to success in their life and their career, the next promotion, or even the next pay rise. So to respond to a quote from Arianna Huffington, if we don't buy into the myth that we have to burn out in order to succeed then how do we stand out? Achieve and ultimately succeed. This is what we believe elevate with grace is going to do. We believe that with regular conversation, clarity of key ideas and bite-sized actionable steps you can take on each week, you'll be well on your way to achieving success on your own. In each episode, we'll explore concepts from thought leaders, authors articles, and condense them down into a recommended bunch of actions that you can do that don't take much time today to help you define and lead the life you want for your future. To do this, we will first help you get clear with your ideal goals and success targets, unlock and shake off anything that is holding you back and dig deep on our pillars to achieving success. We will dig into the why the what and share how you can take immediate action through curated of regular steps. This time in three months, six months a year from now, you'll be clearer, more financially free, and ideally taking some big leaps towards your ultimate success targets. When is the last time you talked or sought advice rather than just going through the motions? I am confident that these small steps are going to change the game. So, a pretty big why. And hopefully one that you're excited to join us with. Our mission is to have a real impact on how women achieve their vision for their future. By delivering thoughtful, curated experiences and actionable steps, we will inspire women to take smart risks, to create the career that fulfills them and achieve financial success on their own terms. And to compliment our purpose Miranda, that you've just beautifully articulated. We've also created a manifesto and this is to keep us anchored on our intentions for what we want to do with the elevated grass podcast. We're here to support you as your curator. Your motivator, your tribe and your cheer squad. In essence, we want to be your group personal trainer to support and energize you to achieve whole of last success for yourself in line with how you've defined what success means for you. As your curator, we will be bringing you the best of the best content out there in books, podcasts, essays, articles, even TV shows sometimes. Our aim is to bring this content to you each week, and also distill it down into some actionable steps that you can do. As your motivators, we hope to encourage you to make time for yourself, to do some bite-size work each day and each week to step you towards the life of success that you want. And we want to surround you with a tribe of like-minded people to help and support you on your success journey. And to give you an opportunity to help and support others on theirs. We will be your cheer squad as well. We'll be celebrating every small success in every big success and reminding you to do that. Before we go any further, I absolutely must introduce you to my effervescent go getting cohost Miranda. Miranda's home roots are in the town of Rockhampton Queensland, and then very thankfully for me, she moved to Melbourne to make kids' toys and start the next phase of her life journey. So I checked back to when we first met Miranda, which was in late 2012, which unbelievably is almost a decade ago. We met through a fabulous mutual friend of ours who brought us together with a group of awesome women for a book club. Okay. AKA one club and delicious dinner club. Um, our book club is still going strong today, which I'm so blooming happy about as the time spent with these amazing women is just such a critical part of my world. Miranda is a phenomenal marketing and business development professional, and she's delivered on a plethora of creative product projects for well-known global brands, both here and internationally. What I always marvel at is Miranda's ever present graciousness, her kindness, your boundless energy, Miranda, and grit, and you are one of my most beloved peeps that brings style and flair to everything you do. You challenge me in the best ways with your patience optimism and support without judgment. And you really helped me think about stuff in different ways. You're tough and compassionate at the same time. I have no idea how you do it, but it's awesome. Oh, thank you. Claire is such an incredible kind and wow introduction Listeners. My turn. It's an absolute pleasure to introduce you to Claire. As a dynamite leader Claire kept it real during our catch-ups highlighting highs and lows of reaching those executive ranks, dealing with the internal and social politics of the corporate working mother. Claire offers an incredible repertoire of knowledge across finance operations, the management working her way up the heavy corporate banking world into head of roles, and more recently taking her amazingness to the super world as a GM building teams locally and internationally, forever passionate about the projects she's working on. She brings about transformational change. Her prowess and knowledge is incredible and I'm forever grateful to be working and learning from her. Working in a very different space I've always enjoyed the window. Her insights offer into the world of finance and that of large corporations. How very possible it is to lean into your career and build a family. If you stand your ground, have the difficult conversations at work. And demand recognition for what you have earned. Claire is proof that you can truly achieve success on your own terms. And when you get close to your success vision, it's time to create a new vision. Claire has been an inspiration for me, and I'm sure she will be for you as we all take these great learnings and many more to ensure we are always lifting each other up. Thank you, Claire. Thank you so much for that beautiful introduction. And yes. I remember so clearly the day you call me about 12 months ago to tell me you actually thought I was onto something with wanting to do the podcast that I had been banging on about for so long. The desire to do a podcast came from me having an itch to scratch about finding ways to connect women, to ideas, tools, and clicks. That they can easily digest and put into action without huge investments of time needed, which is so preciously scarce for us all, right? As you know, I'm a podcast, listening, fiend and many podcasts I have noticed a hosted by people that are comfortable in the media spotlight and have had their careers in that space for a long time. And so I'm wanting to include some voices in this space who bring a different perspective from different industries that women work in across Australia. Both me and Miranda come from corporate management, not media backgrounds, but we're so used to juggling the ups and downs that have come with that life and family on top of that and everything else. So the juggling, the mental load, the anxiety and worry of, am I not good enough? And can I do this? The constant demands on our time. We know this, we live this and we want to do more than just talk about it. What we've noticed is that there's so much amazing research article books and social media, community, and corporate support but what we've found to be missing is simple, accessible ideas of small actions that I could do today if I only have 30 minutes to work on my career or financial success. There are lots of wonderful resources that are designed to support people with either creating career success or achieving financial independence. What we've come to see is that there's an interconnectivity between smart risk-taking career success and financial freedom, and overlaying that with the need to be aware of what might be holding us back and also how we can dream bigger Working step-by-step week by week on these five elements in a rotating combination is what is needed to create a life of success that you've designed for yourself. Not a life that's been designed by others that you need to fit yourself. Could not agree more. And I'm thrilled to take this journey with you and share as much as possible along the way with our listeners. From firm family values, I aspire to lifelong learning and improvement, but that missing link for me has always been, what do you do with all of that knowledge when you take it in. Some concepts sure, they form a bit of a toolkit that you draw on when you need them later in life. But most of them you're just waiting for that extra time in your world to actually digest them and to make those changes. When you finally get that break, that much needed break. You're so exhausted. You just need to turn off the computer and hit your flavor of nature and relax. Then a conversation will come up or you will pass an ER, you haven't actually taken any steps towards those great ideas that you read in that book or article months or years ago. Many of us probably feel this way about our finances and also about career. Our leadership toolkit. Et cetera. We've read it. We hear it, but it is so rare that we actually take action. Imagine what we could achieve if we did. This is why I am so excited by our elevate with grace mission to take the collective knowledge share what's worked or didn't and why, and provide bite-sized actionable steps towards action that can be tackled in the moment. Sounds amazing. Right? Each Thursday, we are going to deliver you an episode 25 minutes or so that dives into the pillars we know will help move you forward and finish with a weekly action challenge. Our episodes will dive into the why. or the what, the how of a particular aspect of one of the pillars of success. Each four weeks, we will bring in, uh, a review of a book. We have found particularly exceptional to wrap up that pillar before moving to the next Miranda to that is a perfect segue to getting cracking with our first weekly elevate challenge and wrapping up our very first podcast. In the next couple of weeks episodes, we're going to be talking about unlocking the limits we tend to place on ourselves, and then we'll be exploring how to start the process of drafting out what some of your goals could be and what success on your terms means for you and your future self. And don't worry, this isn't going to be pie in the sky stuff. This is going to be short, easy actions for you to have a crack at each week. So with that in mind, this week's first action is a simple one. It's aimed at getting your heart head and guts, all working together to start thinking about what are the things you want more of in your life, and what are the things that you want less of. So we can start to take the steps needed to make that happen. So what we would like you to do, and we will be doing it to Miranda and I is to take 10 minutes for yourself at the beginning of each day. or the end of each day, whichever time of the day suits, you to take 10 minutes for yourself to write down the things that you have loved during that day and the things that you just loathe doing each day, what activities made you feel good and gave you energy? And what have you found unpleasant to do that drains your energy? Don't think about it or over analyze it. Just be mindful as you go through your day and scribble them down in a notepad or on your phone or laptop or something. And we will revisit that next week in our second POD. That is such a great activity. I know I try to journal and I get to it once or twice a week. So I am absolutely going to do this every day for the next week. All right. If you need a little reminder to take action on yourself this week, be sure to jump back into our podcast, show notes, check out a website, elevate with grace.com or onto our Instagram and these concepts will be up and we will be sharing out actions. We'd love to hear from you and how you're going. Please drop us an email at elevatewithgracegmail.com. Subscribe to this podcast. And thank you so much for listening to our first episode.