Release your village-building money blocks with Denise Duffield-Thomas
Interview with Denise Duffield-Thomas
I chat with Denise Duffield-Thomas, a money mentor for the new wave of online entrepreneurs who want to make money and change the world. We discuss the option of paying for the village of support you need, including housekeepers, nannies, cleaners and more. At the core of this conversation, we explore how being a mother is separate from being a housewife and that you have permission to focus your time on the things you love!
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About Denise
Denise Duffield-Thomas is the money mentor for the new wave of online entrepreneurs who want to make money and change the world. She helps entrepreneurs charge premium prices, release the fear of money and create First Class lives. Her books Lucky Bitch, Get Rich, Lucky Bitch, and her newest Chill and Prosper give a fresh and funny roadmap to living a life of abundance without burnout.
We explore the following questions:
How do you have three kids, a successful business and a happy and relaxed life?
Can you tell us about the village of support that you pay for?
How do you cope with letting go of domestic control and someone doing things their way?
How do you hire people, and how do you keep them?
What can people do to start taking action to build their village?
How do you manage logistics more professionally?
How did you get your partner on board with hiring more support?
How do you overcome the mindset that women should be able to do it on their own?
Why did you write your book on business?
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Transcript
Julia Jones:
Hello and welcome to the Newborn Mothers Podcast. We have Denise here today who a lot of you hear me talk about. She's one of my mentors, particularly around money and mindset, and she's been a really huge inspiration in my business, but also in my life in general, just in terms of choosing to be happy and really having a good life. Denise, I just bought your book on pre-order and joined your pre-order book club. Is that still available now?
Denise Duffield-Thomas:
Yes. So we're doing the book club until the end of March.
Julia Jones:
Awesome. I recommend everyone jump on that because then you get to join this awesome book club. In the book club, Denise, one of the first questions you asked was, "Why did you buy the book?" I don't think I actually wrote my answer. My thought was because I just buy everything that you create. I'm just like, "Oh, if Denise makes it, it's good." So go and buy the book. It is awesome.
Can you tell us what a money mindset mentor is? (01:25)
What I really wanted to get you to talk about, although you're really into money and mindset, what I really wanted to talk about today is about how stuff at home impacts your ability really to grow your business and to live the life that you want to live because it's such the hidden conversation that doesn't often get talked about. So Denise, do you want to introduce yourself before we jump in?
Denise Duffield-Thomas:
Sure. I call myself a money mindset mentor. I help mostly women really kind of get over their stuff around money, get over their fears around money, feel okay charging for what they do, and to release their money blocks so they can be, do and have everything that they want to do in life. I've got three kids. I've got an eight month old, a two and a half year old, and a five year old who just started school. I'm totally in the season of motherhood and business. I'm totally in the season of business as well. I'm so happy that we can have these conversations because I just want to tell you everything and be really honest about how it works.
How do you have three kids, a successful business and also a really happy and relaxed life? (02:24)
Julia Jones:
I bet you always get the question that I get, which is how do you do it all? How do you have three kids and a successful business and also a really happy and relaxed life? That's really the secret that everyone wants to know. My answer is always I don't actually do everything. I'm very selective about what I do and very good at asking for help. I'm guessing that you're going to say something along those lines too.
Denise Duffield-Thomas:
Yeah. Actually, people don't ask me about balance a lot, but they often say, "Oh, you must be so busy." The truth is I don't feel very busy unless I'm at the start of when I have a new program and I have a bunch of students come in, usually for a week or two, I'm like, "Oh, I do feel a bit full." But apart from that, I'm very intentional about what I put into my life. I don't do anything that I hate. Like today, I listened to a webinar. I've got an interview with you, and I just had a long lunch with one of my girlfriends, Tammy Guest, who you know as well. Now in the afternoon, I'll do a little bit of work. I'll hang out with the kids. Nothing in my life makes me feel busy and that's very intentional, and also because I don't do a lot of the stuff that makes a lot of mums feel busy and harried.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, totally. A lot of that stuff is actually the invisible stuff. There's that saying which I never know who originally said it, it goes around a lot, but you have to work like you don't have children and then mother like you don't have a job. That's actually impossible to do. It's a really masculine approach to running a business to act like you don't have a family and it does destroy families. I mean, we can see how many men who go down that path and they end up really separated from their families because they don't have that balance.
I have a series of podcasts where we've been talking about this topic that I call village building, and it really is about how do you get the help that you need at home so that you can be the person you want to be.
For some people it is running a business. For a lot of my audience it is. But for other people it's just about being happy and fulfilled. Having time to exercise and eat well and have a social life and all of those things that everyone says you should be doing. But how do you get it done when you've got mountains of laundry and you can never keep up with the cooking and the dishes and the shopping and all that kind of stuff?
Denise is an absolute pro at outsourcing in her personal life and just had a very viral article that I've shared with my audience as well that we'll put in the show notes about her team at home. Because we talk about team at work, don't we? But we don't talk about team at home.
Can you tell us about the village of support that you pay for? (05:00)
Some people will build their village through, and we've talked about lots of these topics on the podcast, through mothers groups or through family or there's a lot of different ways. The way that do often doesn't get talked about because money is a thing for women is paying for that village. So can you tell us about the village that you pay for?
Denise Duffield-Thomas:
Sure. I have a nanny who comes four days a week. She comes 8:30 to 4:00. She usually only has one kid at a time because I think it's too much sometimes to have more than one kid. So we juggle around that and we have a mixture of daycare and school and all that kind of stuff, and we take turns as well. But the game changer for me was hiring a housekeeper recently because when we had one kid, our nanny did laundry. Great, she can do laundry. When we had two kids, she could do a little bit of laundry. When you've got three kids. No, she just needs to focus on the kid. So for me, having a housekeeper is a game changer. So she comes at 7:00 in the morning. She lets herself in, she makes breakfast, she does the laundry.
She actually now packs lunches now that we've got a school kid, she packs lunches. She does some cooking. So today she puts something in a slow cooker for us to have for dinner tonight. She made muffins for the kids. She does the cooking. She's the one who goes, "Oh, we're out of wipes. I'll go get some more wipes. Oh, we're out of laundry detergent. We'll do that. Oh, there's no toilet paper in the toilet. I'll fix that."
She is like our mum. I've had lots of women in this role and the first thing I say to them when I start, I say, "You are a cross between a mum and a hotel manager. Everything is your responsibility. It's not my responsibility, it's your responsibility. I'm going to give you full freedom to do whatever you want."I give them very little instruction actually. I just say, "You're the mum of the house. Make sure we're fed and make sure everything is clean and done." I kind of just let them find their way, which I think is really fun too. So that's housekeeper and nanny.
Then of course we'd have the things. If there's a problem in the house, I don't wait for my husband to fix it. I get a handyman in. We've got someone to come and do the lawns and the pool and that kind of stuff. But for me, the game changer is someone to come and do laundry is the biggest thing. I think that's the hardest thing.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, I think so too. I think laundry can be completely overwhelming once you have three kids. It's actually impossible to keep up. I don't think anyone could do that all on their own.
How do you cope with letting go of domestic control and someone doing things their way? (07:43)
You bring up a lot of things. I think one of the first things people listening will feel is freaked out about letting go of control. A lot of people aren't happy for someone to come into their domain and let them take over and do things their way. How do you cope with that?
Denise Duffield-Thomas:
The way I cope with it is I either tell myself I have to set a standard for it or I have to let it go. There's certain things sometimes that my housekeepers have done things and I'm going, "Oh, I don't like it." So I'm like, "Okay, well, I have to either suck it up and create a standard and I keep on meaning to create a manual for the house, which I will do one day. Or do I want to do it? No. Okay, so I'm going to have to be okay with someone else doing it." That's going to be a really tricky thing because sometimes you do want things done a certain way. The only thing I'm really precious about in house, and this is so weird, is stacking the dishwasher. I like stacking the dishwasher because I feel like I'm the only one who can do it properly.
Julia Jones:
I'm sure everyone can relate. To me, it's folding the laundry the KonMari way.
Denise Duffield-Thomas:
Yes, exactly.
Julia Jones:
No one else does it that nicely.
Denise Duffield-Thomas:
If you have people in your house, I mean, a lot of people are worried about the control, they're worried about safety and things like that, which we can talk about. I think it's just like, ‘Well, do I want to do it? No. Am I okay at not being perfect? I kind of am.’ Because I've got other things that I want to do. I want to write my next book. I've got students that I need to give love to. I don't have the energy to do both. Anytime I get involved in household stuff, it does sap my energy for other things that are important to me, let alone hanging out with the kids and doing the kid thing.
Julia Jones:
Well, that's exactly right. I mean, if you are working, then when you are at home with the kids, you want to be making the most of that time. You don't want to be putting the TV on so you can hurry up and get the laundry and the cooking done if you haven't seen them all day already.
How do you hire people and how do you keep them? (09:41)
The other thing I noticed in there is that people have different skills. Your nanny isn't necessarily going to have the same skills to be a housekeeper and vice versa. The pool cleaner, they're all different people. So it's important to do that. I want to know, how do you hire people and how long do they stay for? Because I know introducing a new person to your household can be a big deal. We've had our nanny for many, many years. We've had cleaners for many, many years at a time. But then what happens when they leave and you start again? So how do you hire and how do you keep them basically?
Denise Duffield-Thomas:
Yeah, that's a great question. I should also say that we have a cleaner who comes every week as well. The housekeeper does light cleaning, but we have a cleaner who comes and they do the deep cleaning. That is actually a husband and wife team who have a business. So what is brilliant about that is they have to deal with the new people. I'm not dealing with that. They have new people all the time because that's the nature of their industry for cleaning. They have people coming, but that's not my responsibility. If someone calls in late or they stop doing it, they're responsible for that. There's many times that they themselves come and clean their house because they've got staff turnover.
In terms of nanny, I've had two nannies in five years. I've been really, really lucky. I think the reason why is I've got a good mindset around it. I believe that I'll find the right person and I believe that I'm worthy of that help. I find that when you have guilt around it, sometimes you attract people who are crap so you can justify not having help.
Julia Jones:
Yes, I think that is so true. That's the same with the control. I think a lot of the time, that's where the control comes in. People go, "Oh, she didn't do it the right way. It's never going to work out. It's too hard. I'll just do it all myself." But really what that is telling is underneath the stories of what they believe about their own worthiness and that kind of thing.
Denise Duffield-Thomas:
Exactly. Do you remember in Mary Poppins how the kids write a letter about all the things they want in their ideal nanny? I do the same thing. I write a massive big list of what the job actually is, what it really, really is, what I need them to do, what I expect them to do, even things like the hours and my non-negotiables. Then I also kind of write what do I want in a person. I think that can help you to write a job description, an honest job description, but it also helps you to kind of manifest that person because you're putting it out into the universe, this is what I want.
Then when it comes to interviewing, this is I think such a great learning around boundaries and asking for what you want. Because I remember very early on, we had a cleaner and she said, "I don't do laundry, I don't do beds and I don't take out the rubbish." I was thinking, "Oh no, I can't ask her to do those things." Then the next time that happened when someone said, "Oh, I don't do this, this and this." I said, "Oh, okay, well that's the job. So I totally understand if this job is not for you. Thank you, goodbye." Instead of trying to pigeonhole people in because you feel bad about saying no.
A lot of people also sabotage it by hiring people that they know and then it's really awkward. It's like, "Oh, it's my cousin and she's always late and I never want to ask her to do this." So it becomes this disaster because you haven't been, I guess, professional. You haven't been a grownup about here's what I need and here's what the job entails.
We want someone to start at 7:00 because we want someone to come make breakfast. We've had heaps of people who have applied and said, "Ah, I can do it like 10:00." I'm like, "No, that's not the job." That's a big part of it.
In terms of where, we've hired from agencies, we've hired from Gumtree. You can just put out an advert about it, or if you want, you can go through an agency. What I find is I actually like hiring people direct, people who've got their own ABN number because they get more of the money. A lot of agencies I find do nothing and they take a cut for it. It's really simple. Some people will work and some people won't and that's okay.
What can people do to start taking action to build their own village? (13:58)
Julia Jones:
If someone's going to really listen to this and wanting to take action, I mean, that's exactly what they could do right now is write up their dream list, who is the ideal person that you need in your household right now, and just put it up on Gumtree straight away. We've had massive responses when we've advertised on Gumtree. Like you, we've had to say no to a lot of people. But a lot of them, I don't feel like they're even that serious about the job.
One of our requirements for a job once was that they had to have their own car because I wanted them to do some shopping and some errands. A number of people who wrote and said, "I'd love this job, but I don't have a car." I was like, "No, you need a car. You can't do this job without a car." So you have to be ready to put it out there and ready to have some boundaries. If anyone's listening, you can actually take that action today.
Denise Duffield-Thomas:
Oh, absolutely. I think that's really good personal development, because I know I had to overcome some stuff around that of like, “Oh, is it okay to ask somebody to do these things for me?” Really ask myself what do I want, what annoys me, what do I hate doing. There was one thing I was like, "Oh, I hate going to my post office box. I hate it." Then I was like, "Can I put that on there?" Yes, you can put that on there.
It doesn't have to be all or nothing. You can start a couple of hours a week. Even if you got them at the start of the week and they did iron all the school uniforms for the week, or they made lunches and froze them for the week. Just you've got to think small, but you've got to start, because I started with a cleaner once a fortnight 10 years ago.
Julia Jones:
Yes, exactly the same. I think we even started with a cleaner. It wasn't even fortnightly at the beginning because we were flat broke. We were both starting our own businesses and just had no money. But I knew that that's where I wanted to end up. I think that's really important too is having the vision of where you want to be in the future and just taking the small steps now.
My very first cleaner I think was just when it was an emergency. Sometimes it would just be like, "Oh my God, it's rent inspection." Or it was just like, “Okay, what are we going to do? We've come back from a camping holiday and everything's wet.” So I would just do it once off because we couldn't even afford it fortnightly. But then we went up to fortnightly and then weekly and then twice weekly, and now we have a nanny as well and so on. You can kind of grow it from there. So I think that's really good advice.
Denise Duffield-Thomas:
You grow it as your confidence grows, as you become a better employer and better at asking for what you want. My recent one now, I'm like, "Oh, can you unpack my suitcase when I come back from a speaking gig? Then can you repack my toiletries or can you..." and it's so great to not have to think about that.
How do you manage all of the logistics in a more professional way? (16:44)
Julia Jones:
Then another kind of logistical question that I think a lot of people will have is things like insurance and worker's comp, even like you were saying, ABN. A lot of people want to be paid in cash. So how do you manage all that in a more professional way?
Denise Duffield-Thomas:
Well, for starters, put that on the ad, must have ABN. We just pay workers' comp. I thought it was going to be really complicated as well and I thought it was going to be really scary. It's just you just buy a workers' compensation policy. It's really simple. Some of our team, we pay their employees, we play pay them super and we pay them tax and all that kind of stuff. Other people, they're contractors and they take care of their own tax, but you just be really upfront. We don't do cash in hand because I want to account for that. Also, I want to pay well and I want to just make it a really clean relationship.
I think with our nanny, we do have a contract, a written contract. For our housekeepers, because often our housekeepers might stay for six months, we don't really have a written kind of contract. We just say to them, "If you can give us two weeks notice, but otherwise we'll just pay you by the hour." For our nanny, we actually got a lawyer to look at our contract and we pay a workers' compensation and she drives our car, so she's on the insurance. Things like that just make it a little bit cleaner and a bit more professional.
Julia Jones:
Yeah. I love all of that. I think that's really great. The other thing I was going to mention in your book, and I recommend everyone reads it, the new book is called Chillpreneur. You talk about the keyless lifestyle and it's something that I have a similar idea and I'd never heard you talk about this, but I call it a cashless lifestyle because I think that's one of the reasons why Uber is so successful, because you have that feeling of waltzing into your driver and then waltzing out and you never have to actually physically pay. It's such a luxurious feeling and it actually doesn't even cost you a cent more.
Denise's example in the book was she bought a car with keyless entry and with three kids and nappy bags and all of that kind of thing, that 10 seconds a day of hassle of finding keys, it's not even something that costs money, it's more just the space and the freedom.
I think that's the same with paying your staff in cash too, isn't it? If you have to go to the bank and get out cash and then keep it in your underwear drawer and all of that kind of thing and then try and count out the coins, it's not a luxurious feeling. I think a lot of it is about that. Try not to cut those tiny corners because in the end they cost very little to do things properly. It might literally cost you a few dollars extra. Tthe feeling of abundance and luxury and being professional is so, so worth that small boundary.
Denise Duffield-Thomas:
It really is. Even for the point where we pay mileage for our housekeeper because they're using their own car and it's just like, "This is what you charge us. This is what you put on the invoice. You invoice us every week." It's easy. I want my life to be as easy as possible because I've got other things to think about. I don't want to have to think about clothing appearing in, I love the laundry fairies. I don't want to think about those kind of things. As I said, I do want to put together a manual at some point because training new people can take up a little bit of time, but that's why we just say, "Just go for it and we'll adjust as you go."
It's really interesting when you just give people latitude to do that and just say, "Just cook us some food." Then we'll go, "Oh, you know what? We didn't really like that one you cooked last night, but we loved this one." So they're not sitting there waiting for us to give them instructions. I think you're looking for that right person who'll be proactive.
Julia Jones:
You can even maybe start getting them to write their own procedures. I do that with my work team. If they do have good recipes, say, "Can you put that in our family folder for the next housekeeper or whatever?"
Denise Duffield-Thomas:
That's a great idea. Yeah, they can just print it out, put it in the binder. Sweet.
Julia Jones:
Yeah. Then write down how they do the laundry and then you don't have to do that. They've got that ready for the next person.
Denise Duffield-Thomas:
Well, the truth is I probably wouldn't know how to do it anyway. Someone asked me how to use the washing machine, and I was like, "I don't know. I guess you just press the buttons. I can figure it out, but you can figure it out too."
Julia Jones:
Yes, yes. I think it's all those details too. I was thinking earlier when you were talking about the invoicing, that's a change we've made with our nanny as well over the many years. I used to have to remember how many hours she'd done and then which fortnight she was due to be paid. Then I just said, "Can you just send us an invoice at the end of each fortnight with the amount we owe you?" so she sends that through. Now on top of that, sometimes she goes and buys some clothes for the kids or takes them to get new shoes for school, or she'll take them somewhere like a museum or the swimming pool, which has an entry fee and all of that just goes into her invoice at the end of the fortnight so we just have one transaction.
Denise Duffield-Thomas:
Yeah. Well, what we did with that is we set up a little separate bank account. We're with NAB. You can just set up extra bank accounts. We've just given our own nanny and our housekeeper, they've each got a card for that. That bank account's only got a couple of hundred dollars in it at a time, but they don't even have to ask us now. They can just go and tap, or I think they've got a pin for one of them, and that's so easy. We never have to think about that kind of stuff.
Julia Jones:
Yes, that's perfect. These are all the kind of barriers that I think people who haven't hired staff before, they think these things are really scary and big and difficult and they're really not. When you really work on your mindset and you're really ready to have that help, all of these little details, it can be figured out along the way.
Denise Duffield-Thomas:
It won't go perfectly all the time. I know you said you want to talk about firing. I have had situations where people were just not suited to the job. I had to pull on my big girl panties and just say, "You know what, it's not working out." It's not the end of the world, but it's a really great learning experience to do that. I find if you do the stuff upfront of knowing that you deserve it, being really clear and upfront about what the task is, interviewing people and being okay to say no to the wrong fit, then that stuff will happen less and less anyway.
Julia Jones:
You've sort of had some practice as you go as well. It's a bit like you start small and then you build up your mindset as you build up your team and that kind of thing.
How did you get your partner on board with hiring more support? (23:21)
Denise Duffield-Thomas:
Absolutely. It's so worth it. It's so worth it. Sometimes I hear people say, "Well, I'm on board, but my husband isn't." I got to that point where I said to Mark, "You can do it if you want, but I'm not going to do it. So you choose."
Julia Jones:
I think it's quite a difficult thing. It's quite a radical and revolutionary thing really for women to just say, "You know what, my house is going to be a pigsty because I'm not doing it. So you as the husband either take that on and sort it out or we hire someone.” But I think there's so much wrapped up in women's value, this idea of being a good housewife. Also, the idea of being a good housewife is so wrapped up with the idea of being a good mum, which are actually very different skills. I think I'm a great mum. I'm a terrible housewife, but being a bad housewife doesn't reflect on my ability to mother whereas a lot of women feel that it does. They feel embarrassed that if their kids have dirty clothes on or haven't had their hair brushed or whatever, they feel like that reflects on them as a mother.
Denise Duffield-Thomas:
Well, I've even heard it where it comes to birthday parties. I've had friends apologize for buying a store bought cake. I'm like, "What? Who cares?" If you love making a cake for your kid's birthday, that's a completely different story. But why should you know how to bake? I remember my sister-in-law, I hope she doesn't listen to this, but she said, "Oh, you're going to make a cake for Mark's birthday." I was like, "What?" She was like, "Well, I can make one if you want." I said, "I don't even have all the stuff. To go buy all the stuff for me to make a cake it would cost me like a hundred bucks." I was like, "I can just go buy a cake that's already made and not have to buy all those things like a pan and a cooling rack, and I don't know, the flour and all those bits and the decorations." I was like, "I have none of those things."
That's okay for me to not be good at that because it's such an arbitrary skill in a way. Of course, as you said, it's wrapped up in being a woman and a mum. But I would never judge someone for, I don't know, not knowing how to knit or paint, but yet we're suddenly, when we become mothers or wives, we're suddenly supposed to learn all these things that maybe we've never learned before. We don't know. It's weird. Especially I think too if you've got a business or maybe had a corporate career, you're still expected to carry on that role.
Julia Jones:
Research shows that women do more housework after they become mothers than they did before, even if they work for money. So the gap when men and women, and this is only in traditional gendered relationships, but when men and women first marry, the gap is smaller. After they have kids, women do more housework than men even when they return to work. That is just insane. I just kind of think what world are we living in that that is still normal in 2019.
Denise Duffield-Thomas:
Women must be exhausted around that. I'm exhausted enough. I really am. I am tired. I've got three kids. They wake up at 5:00 in the morning if we're lucky. My baby still wakes up in the night. I just think I'm so tired. I've only got such finite energy to be a mum, be a wife, be a friend, be a daughter, be a sister, and be a business woman, and all the things that sometimes I should-
Julia Jones:
Be you.
Denise Duffield-Thomas:
Like this week I was so tired because I'd been up all night with the baby and I just went, "I'm done." I just made a massive big bowl of popcorn and I went to bed with my phone and my book, and I had two hours sleep in the afternoon. Mark woke me up at 4:00 and said, "You've got to take Willow to ballet." I was like, "What?" I had popcorn all over me. I was just like, "I really needed that nap." I needed it.
How do you overcome the mindset that we should be able to do it on our own? (27:18)
Julia Jones:
Yes, yes. You need to not feel guilty about your needs. I mean, that's just a basic human right to get enough sleep. I just have one more thing I want to touch on and that is really the stories we have about our mothers and our grandmothers because they didn't have the opportunities that we have now as women. How do you kind of overcome that guilt that my grandma did it all alone with no washing machine and 10 kids and blah, blah, blah? I should be able to cope better than this. So yeah, how do you overcome that mindset?
Denise Duffield-Thomas:
That's a such a great question. So my nan died at 65, so I haven't had her in my life for about 13 years now, so quite a long time. I think she would've been really supportive of me as a business woman. I think she would've been really proud of me as a business woman because she always knew that I loved entrepreneurship. When she died, I was in my twenties and I just was still finding my thing. But she would be so proud, I think. I don't think she would be judging me for not doing housework because I think she probably would've thought of some of the things that she wanted to do as well. She was very creative. Later on in life, she painted and did art, but she had four kids and she had an unsupportive husband and she had to do all the things.
I remember this very clearly. My granddad, he wanted his dinner at 7:30 on the dot every night. I remember one time, it's this family lore, that it was quarter to eight, and he said, "Why isn't my dinner on the table?" She threw it at him and it stayed there on the floor. She refused to clean it. It stayed there on the floor for two weeks, this baked dinner. I just thought, whenever I think of any guilt or shame or fear around doing my business, I just think of my nan because she would've loved to have my opportunities. I feel like it honors her. I don't feel like it disrespects her that I'm not doing house work.
Julia Jones:
I think it's really true because they didn't have the choice. Back not that long ago, women had to quit their careers when they got married. For a lot of women, if they did want to do anything with a career, they had to choose to be single for their entire life. No marriage, no children. The same thing, once they were married, then they couldn't have a career, but also they couldn't get a divorce. That made it really difficult for them to ever stand up for their rights and follow their dreams and they were really stuck. In a way, we almost owe it to the women who went before us who didn't have these opportunities to actually grab them with both hands and say, "Yes, let's change this and let's do this for our daughters and make sure this doesn't happen again."
Denise Duffield-Thomas:
Absolutely. I was reading a story to George last night. George is two and a half. In this story, the dad was doing laundry and the mum was on the computer. It's very normal for him to see that. Mark does most of the cooking in our life. George is used to seeing me work because I work and play all day long. He sees me go in and out of those things. I just think that's really cool for them to be able to have that example for their wives too. I don't think George is going to expect his wife to do all the cooking because he is never seen that in his life, that that's the automatic role. Same with Willow. Sometimes I think, "Oh, I hope she finds a man who has been brought up like that”, but if not, she can teach him. Because Mark didn't have that. Mark saw his mom do everything and he's learned to be okay with a wife that just refuses.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, I think it's true. A lot of the time women kind of don't think they can stand up for themselves, but actually if they did, it wouldn't be so terrible as they think it's going to be.
Denise Duffield-Thomas:
No one's going to give you permission, by the way. It's very rare that the husband or the partner will be like, "Hey, let's get a cleaner, or let's get someone in to help you." You really have to usually advocate for that yourself and juggle around the family finances to make it happen or to not feel guilty about it and find ways to do that. Or if you can't afford it for a while, opt out of that kind of stuff and work on your business so you can afford it. It's okay for your house to get a little dirty. It's okay to have tuna salad every night for dinner for a little while.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, absolutely. I'm always inspired by when people say, "Oh, how did you do it all?" Because she was broke and a single mum when she was writing the first books. She openly says, "The house was trashed for years. I did not clean for years." So if that's what it takes you to get through that stage, but know that you've got this bigger vision and that one day it's not going to be like that. You just have to start where you're at.
Denise Duffield-Thomas:
Absolutely.
Why did you write your own book on business? (32:26)
Julia Jones:
Awesome, Denise. Do you have anything else to add and let us know about your book as well?
Denise Duffield-Thomas:
I actually want to tell you why I wrote the book because I think it's really important. I'd just given birth to my second baby, and so I was like, "I'll catch up on all my business books that are sitting here." I started reading this business book and it was written by a man, and it was a case study about a man, and it was talking about how he worked all day and worked all night and slept on the couch and worked on his thing, and he had three hours sleep. Right at the end of his description of his day, he's like, "Oh, and then I went home and gave the baby a bath." I was like, "Oh my God, he has a kid and this is how he lives and this is supposed to be success."
That's when I started writing Chillpreneur because I thought there has to be a better way. There has to be something that works for women and works for women that I know and works for mums. That was the inspiration for the book. It's out now. We've got a book club for all of March. All the details of that are at chillpreneur.com. It's available online and Audible and Kindle and paperback, and it's in BIG W in Australia as well. I want everyone to read it.
Julia Jones:
It's an awesome book. A lot of my audience, we're all about changing the paradigm. In my context, it's about approaching motherhood with a feminine lens. I think we even do motherhood in a masculine way now. That's exactly your book is that book for business. It's like how to start doing a business the feminine way and embracing your strengths as a woman and your power as a woman. That is different. Anyone can be masculine or feminine when it suits them. Like you were saying, you have to hire people and fire people. You have to have boundaries. There are times you're going to engage on with those masculine parts of yourself as well, but not at the cost of losing who you really are and what your strengths really are. If you love that idea of approaching business the feminine way, I definitely recommend it. Thank you so much. Denise, you've changed your website lately, haven't you
Denise Duffield-Thomas:
I'm just at denisedt.com.
Julia Jones:
Awesome. Denisedt.com, if anyone wants to check it out. We'll put some links in the show notes. Thank you so much for being here and sharing all of the insight into your home and your business. We'll catch up later.
