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Emma McQueen

Emma being Emma

The power of connection

| Emma being Emma

#iso has been difficult, fun, slow, fast, annoying, exhilarating – so many feelings, like a rollercoaster ride.

Each day, my family and I have tried to get outside for some fresh air, to let off some steam, to re-energise and enjoy the sun. Last week, my hubby, daughter, Evie, and I grabbed our basketball and strolled down to the park. When we got there, Evie wanted to play a game called “King’s Key”. For those of my vintage, it’s like “What’s the time, Mr Wolf?”

And for those who have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s a quick run-down. Person A (the king) stands about 100 metres away from the rest of the players, and puts down an object that represents the king’s key. We use a basketball; others use a drink bottle. Person A turns their back to the rest of the group, who have to sneak up, then freeze before Person A turns around. If anyone in the group is moving, the group has to go back to the start. The premise of the game is to get the “key”, then run to the beginning, shouting, “I have the key!”

You can imagine how bloody ridiculous this looks with a six-year-old and their parents, right? Yeah, that’s us.

So, we’re playing King’s Key because we are ace parents, and I am the king. I turned around, expecting to see Evie and my husband creeping up on me, but to my surprise (and delight), an extra person (her name was Sarah) and her dog were playing. Sarah and her dog, Max, played with us until it was time for us to leave. Everyone had a great time and said we should totally do this again. Sarah, who was in her mid-30s, said she would bring her friends.

What struck me was that while this situation was a little odd, it probably wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for social isolation. Sarah lived on her own and said she hadn’t spoken to anyone in a while. We “just looked like we were having fun,” so she decided to join us.

You see, it’s all about connection

It was about connection before iso. It’s about connection now that we have been in iso, and it will be when we get out of the COVID-19 lockdown (any day now or is that wishful thinking?).

Human connection is where it’s at. There is nothing better than connecting with others, having fun, hanging out and having a few laughs.

For me, the real takeaway from our game in the park was that while Sarah needed the connection, we needed it just as much. She made us laugh and played silly games with us, and I was so grateful to meet her and Max.

What will you do?

People keep asking questions like, “What will you do when iso is over? What will you keep doing? What will you take or not take into the ‘new normal’?”

But for me, the question is, “What gives you joy?”  

Human connection brings me joy, in everyday life and with the women I coach, so that’s what I will keep when we’re “out”!

What gives you joy?

I’m Emma, and I’m a business and executive coach who believes wholeheartedly in the potential of women. My coaching philosophy is simple- taking action leads to results- and I love working with women in business and in corporate roles to take their passion and drive and transform their professional and personal lives.

Be enthusiastic, optimistic and energetic, every day.

Em x

I was mad

| Emma being Emma

Those of you who know me well know I am a woman of my word. I pride myself on it. I am reliable and consistent, and I try to have none of that “say-do gap”. You know the gap that appears when someone says something, then does the opposite? Yeah, that one. I hate that.

So, we had been in lockdown for a few weeks, and I had to move all my work online. This included “Lunch with the Queen”, which was slightly strange, as there was no physical lunch! Instead of simply cancelling the event, I decided to do a Zoom BYO and not charge for it, because #connection. We had a great time, and I turned my mind to the next month.

I wondered out loud (always dangerous!) what would happen if I could get 100 women to have a BYO lunch together via Zoom. What would it take to do that? Why would I want to do that?

How did you contribute during lockdown?

Early on, when COVID-19 first hit, I was challenged by one of my awesome friends and colleagues. She asked me a very simple question: “Once all this is over, how do you want to be remembered for how you contributed as a leader in your field?”

I tried to shake it off. I really did, because the question blew my mind. Then I started thinking about the impact I could have, and “Lunch with the Queen – with a Twist!” was born.

Let’s take a step back …

When I started Lunch with the Queen, it was a way for me to connect with other women in business, and to help them connect with each other. I created this lunch at the back end of 2018. Serena (Serry) works my calendar in the background (she also happens to be my sister), and she jokingly put the event in my diary as “Lunch with the Queen” – a play on my surname. I couldn’t think of anything else as creative, so we went with that!

We started with 5 – 6 people each month in 2019, and it felt like really hard work. I had always wanted to keep the numbers low (10 maximum) to allow space for people to chat and create deep connections. In December 2019, I opened the last lunch up to 30 places. We filled them and had a wait list. So, in 2020, we changed venues to accommodate a larger group, and we increased the numbers to 15. These were booked out months in advance. There were always new faces, as well as old friends who continued to come along.

Virtual reality

Ditching the venue entirely and hosting Lunch with the Queen online was a real challenge. Never had I run something as big as this on Zoom. Face to face, yes, but Zoom – totally different kettle of fish! But I am one for putting it out there and seeing what can happen.

A week out from the online event, it sold out (the event was free, but you know what I mean), all 100 places! So, I turned my focus to the logistics: how to make it meaningful, how to make it engaging (when everyone is Zoomed out), who to place where (breakout rooms are totally cool in Zoom) … the list went on.

Was I mad?

This question kept beating me around the head. I’m a risk taker – always have been, always will be. I learn by doing, jumping in, making mistakes and growing. I’m a go-getter, giving it a crack, all the time.

And I’m happy to say that the virtual Lunch with the Queen was a resounding success! Everyone had a fabulous time, and real connections were made. Despite some uncertainty and learning on the go, I’m thrilled with how the event turned out.

Maybe I am mad, maybe I’m not, but here’s what I do know: if you want something badly enough, visualise it and go for it. You never know if you don’t give it a go. Don’t wait for the perfect set of circumstances, or a new week or a new month. If you want it, start working towards it straight away.

Is there something you really want to do that you’re holding off?

I’m Emma, and I’m a business and executive coach who believes wholeheartedly in the potential of women. My coaching philosophy is simple- taking action leads to results- and I love working with women in business and in corporate roles to take their passion and drive and transform their professional and personal lives.

Be enthusiastic, optimistic and energetic, every day.

Em x

Working ON your business is a non-negotiable

| Action Station, Emma being Emma, Results, Time Management

If you have known me for some time, you will know I am obsessed with working ON the business, not IN the business.

In fact, I take time out every 90 days to work ON the business. So, when the following opportunity arrived, I was all in!

A content creation bootcamp? Yes, please!

I have been writing content for my leadership coaching business for the past year. While I struggled to write at first, I eventually got into the groove and found I was able to kick out blogs pretty quickly.

I saw that one of my colleagues was holding a “content creation bootcamp”. This was two days of working in 10-minute increments to create a year’s worth of content – on the Gold Coast, no less! I knew the wonderful woman running it, Jane Anderson, and her drive to achieve, so I knew she was fair dinkum and had 100% confidence in her guarantee of a year’s worth of content. So, I flew up to the Gold Coast and gave it a crack.

Here’s what we did …

Jane showed us a simple yet effective way to capture our ideas and thoughts. She also gave us some great tools to make the content-creating process as efficient as possible. It was a full-on two days, but by the end of it, this is what I achieved:

  • 62 pieces of content.
  • A structure, working title and subtitle for my book.
  • An additional 10,000 words towards the first draft of my book, which rendered it “finished”.
  • A way to organise my content to make it easy to use and retrieve.

To say I was stoked with my output is an understatement. The relief I felt knowing I had made serious headway with some major projects had me high as a kite.

The other thing it made me realise was that two days with zero distractions and being in the right headspace made a massive difference to my brain box. Now, I am heading into a new year with all my content done!

Do you take time out to work ON your business?

Although I already take time out of the business to work ON the business, even I get surprised when I complete an “on-the-business task” that would usually take me hours to do. Jane’s bootcamp was a real eye-opener.

Do you put off working on your business? Why? It’s time to think differently about getting this stuff done.

And to Jane, what a legend you are! You are a champion of people, productivity and generosity. Thank you for being super generous with your time and your presence. I like to bang on about the fact it’s how you make someone feel that they remember, and you made me feel like I could do it!

I’m Emma, and I’m a business and executive coach who believes wholeheartedly in the potential of women. My coaching philosophy is simple- taking action leads to results- and I love working with women in business and in corporate roles to take their passion and drive and transform their professional and personal lives.

Be enthusiastic, optimistic and energetic, every day.

Em x

Switching off – the ultimate challenge

| Action Station, Emma being Emma

Recently, as you may know, I was in Perth. I was testing my new white paper out to see if it resonated with the women around the table, and we were talking about my three-week vacation that is coming up. I was asked if I would be working and I told the table that I was currently negotiating with my husband as to how many hours I could work, being in small business, it doesn’t stop. Do you know what I love about the women I work alongside? If I say something that doesn’t make sense, they challenge me, and one of the women at the table asked me why I couldn’t switch off totally, this is a woman who has her own multi-million dollar business, has a number of staff, and as she told me, she thought she couldn’t have a holiday either, until really recently which she just needed to switch off.

Truth bomb: no one is going to miss me, and I can switch off.

The story I was telling myself is that I couldn’t take a break, the wheels needed to keep turning, but it was bollocks! I have two competent women who work with me and can hold down the fort, and I went into my own biz to design the life I want, why can’t I take some time off? What’s the point if you can’t do this kind of stuff!

Here’s what’s going to happen if I don’t do this:

I won’t be allowing myself a proper break, which I will then feel resentful about, even though I would have done it to myself.

I wouldn’t be walking the talk of women taking care of themselves and switching off, and finally but really should be first, my family are going to be very grumpy with me!!!

So, here’s my plan:

  1. Work out what needs to continue
  2. Put the out of office on
  3. Talk to the team about what they need
  4. Have a re-entry plan

Here it is in a little more thought and detail:

  1. Work out what needs to continue and ask for help, for instance, the weekly treat I send out to my subscribers, we mapped out who could contribute from a guest perspective, and this also means further amplification of other voices, which I love! It also means the lovely Jess will be taking over and giving us a look at life at Team McQueen.
  2. I would love to write a creative out of office that sends the message that I am on holidays without guilt and having a bluddy ace time! Watch this space…
  3. Talk to the team about how and if they can contact me. Shiz can go wrong, right? I know that either Serena or Jess can manage anything that gets thrown at them, I also know that they have each other’s backs, so we will dial up their meetings together (they live in different states) to ensure they feel fully supported. 
  4. Have a re-entry plan. We all know how much it sucks when you come back from holidays, and there are a ton of things that need to be sorted through. Mentally preparing for this will be necessary and being gentle on myself as I do this will be essential. 

So, here’s to switching off, with permission from myself, asking and receiving help from others and having some awesome guest contributors along the way. What about you? Do you get to switch off? How do you manage it?

I’m Emma, and I’m a business and executive coach who believes wholeheartedly in the potential of women. My coaching philosophy is simple- taking action leads to results- and I love working with women in business and in corporate roles to take their passion and drive and transform their professional and personal lives.

Be enthusiastic, optimistic and energetic, every day.

Em x

Are you worth it?

| Challenges for Women, Emma being Emma, Passion and Purpose

I don’t think I have been called arrogant, well not out loud at least! One thing is for sure- I know my worth. When I first stepped foot into my business full time, I knew I was not the cheapest. I knew that I might be seen as expensive. And I knew that the right people would find me, or I would find them. 

A potential client named Anne called me. She had been highly recommended to have a conversation with me about some career coaching. We talked about what an engagement would look like, what she wanted out of it, and what we thought we could do together. I didn’t dilly dally on price. I just put it out there, and if she thought it was valuable and that I could help, we would do business. If she didn’t, we wouldn’t, no hard feelings.

I had been talking to Anne about the type of women I had helped get paid what they were worth, doing jobs they loved. She was very excited. Towards the end of our conversation, she asked me if I would discount my price because she felt I was too expensive. Boy – this was a challenging and ironic conversation to be having. I had a choice to make- to play above the line or below the line.  

Not one to shrink from a challenge and an opportunity to use my courage in a subject I am very passionate about, it will be no surprise to you that I chose above the line. I told her that it didn’t feel right for me to be discounting my price based on her perception, and that I talk about getting paid your worth and she had asked me to discount that. The irony was a little lost on Anne. You see, if you don’t value yourself, no one else will. 

Time and again I see women accepting positions, career changes, and salary that I know are lower than what they are worth. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, even though the percentage of women in leadership roles has increased, pay equity still requires work with the gender pay gap sitting at around 15%.

The thing is that we, as women, ARE DOING IT TO OURSELVES. Not all the time, not in every situation, but when we talk about “women supporting women”, I don’t think we mean “my friend has a new business, so I will ask her for a discount”. Rather, it means “my friend has a new business, so I will pay full price, AND I will tell everyone I know about her new business, AND I will do whatever I can to support her”. Am I right?

So, how does one start to make an impact? Here’s what I do:

  1. I choose to play above the line.
  • I choose to see it as my issue.
  • I give some alternatives.

I choose to play above the line because I refuse to play any other way. I was clear with Anne about what she was asking for and told her how I felt about the ask that she was making.

I choose to see it as my issue. I had not demonstrated enough value to make it worthwhile for Anne, and in no way did I excuse myself from the conversation.

I gave her some alternatives in the form of some online courses, reading and some other coaches to contact.

My point is, if you do not value yourself, no one else will. Why should they? Why should someone else value you if you do not value yourself? And if you do not value yourself – why not? What can you do to help lift your self-esteem, to push away those loud voices in your head telling you that you are not worth it? 

Here is where the rubber hits the road (I don’t even know why that expression has been coined that way really), but there is only one person who can fix this, yes, it is you. it’s getting some help to come up with some strategies to park that voice. I work with many women who struggle with this as well. If you would like some help with this, reach out, I would love to have a chat. 

90 Day Sprints

| All Posts, Emma being Emma

I work in 90 day sprints. What is a 90 day sprint I hear you ask? Put simply, each quarter I take 3 days out of my business to work on my business. The time is used to review what I have been doing and assess what is working and what isn’t working. It is also used to plan what it is I want to do next. I then I apply all I have reviewed and worked on over the 3 days to the next 90 days and repeat this process quarterly.

While fast paced, this model of working has been an absolute game changer for me. It is so easy as a small business owner to get caught up in the day to day working in your business when there is a very big need to work on your business in order to be able to grow it.

I find that physically removing myself from my business is the best way to tackle the 3 days away from my business. Unfortunately, being physically around and available will often distract you from the “working on” the business and pull you back to “working in”. If you don’t have the capacity to physically remove yourself, perhaps try to block time in advance and advise staff and family of your intentions to help minimise distractions.

Where you place these 3 days (or however many days you can manage) within in the year is up to you. I know some people like the idea of aligning these sprints with business quarters as it allows them to also take time to do the behind the scene administration that is required to keep your business afloat (i.e. BAS, tax etc), therefore holistically approaching their overall business planning. I deliberately steer clear of these times, as that’s when I find client work is at its heaviest. It will vary for each business.

The 90 days will generally allow you sufficient time to test your offering and how you have packaged it to your client.

If it is successful (and you will need to have your own pre-determined measures for success in place), great! You have a new offering for clients.

If it fails it is usually for one of three reasons:

1. You didn’t provide enough value for people to think it was worth it
2. You didn’t sell it very well or
3. It wasn’t the right time for the market.

To me failure is no big deal, you ditch what doesn’t work and you move on. There may be time again in the future to test again at a more appropriate time when you have had time to review and reconsider. Sometimes we have an idea that we think is great but for whatever reason the market doesn’t agree, and it is a flop. The beauty of taking time out to review and asses is that you are able to kill off these ideas and take time to recreate something that the market will want/need instead.

However, in saying the above, there is no hard and fast rule about the 90 days. In some cases, the 90 days may need to be extended. For example, I launched Thriving Women Perth. As Perth is a completely new market to me and I am not based there, I have allowed some extra time to enable me to develop the connections and audience I need to trial it in a fuller capacity. Realistically I will most likely allow a full year before I make a decision on this particular program. But for most of my Melbourne-based programs and packages, as this is where I am located and I already have an existing audience, 90 days is generally sufficient for me to test the waters and have an idea if it will be successful or not and be able to make a call accordingly.

I encourage all small business owners to take time out of their business to work on their business. For me the benefits of doing so have been absolutely vital;

  • It has kept my business fresh
  • It has allowed me to try new ideas (and quickly cull them if they weren’t working)
  • It has allowed me to pivot when ideas are not working or when a need in the market changes

If you would like to know more about how this works; you would like some clarity in your business; or if you would like to meet me, see below links on ways to work meet/work with me:

Lunch with the Queen

Clarity session

Be enthusiastic, optimistic and energetic every day.

Em x