Work Life by Design

Preparing ourselves for the future of work can be a daunting task. Faced with the rapid transformation of technology, the adoption of automation and AI into our workplaces and let's not forget to throw in there a dose of global pandemic, who could blame you for thinking that the outlook was challenging. But as you'll hear from today's guest, it is also filled with possibility.

Andrea Clarke, is an advocate for people becoming "future fit". As a former television news reporter and Washington D.C. correspondent, Andrea covered major news events for Al Jazeera English, the Pentagon Channel and Thomson Reuters before working on humanitarian aid programs to re-build Iraq and Afghanistan. Andrea then led the communication campaign for the Save Darfur advocacy movement to stop the genocide in Sudan.

Through her work she has been fulfilling her life's purpose for growing careers, and in 2012 founded FutureFitCo, a digital learning business developing future fit people at scale, by accelerating the skills needed to lead with impact.

She is also the author of the award-winning book 'Future Fit: How to Stay Relevant and Competitive in the Future of Work'.

• In today's chat we cover; How Andrea's career in front of the camera inspired her desire for others to communicate with impact
• What it means to be future fit and the steps you can take to prepare yourself for the future of work
• The value of a Growth Mindset and how this skill alone will propel your career forward
• The importance of shared purpose within organisations, how to find it and communicate it
• The silver lining of COVID and how it has opened the door for us to redesign our world of work for the better
• How creativity is in all of us and what you can do to tap into yours
• Andrea's own sense of purpose and the events that led her to understanding and articulating her own values
• The routines and rituals that Andrea uses to ensure she's showing up as her best self

As quoted by Andrea; "The future of work is about our talent. It's about the way we negotiate change, actively pursue transformation & deploy human skills to create value - both for ourselves and the organisations we work for."

Andrea is an engaging and straight-talking woman on a mission to transform our organisations from the individual level for a better future. You'll leave this chat inspired to look inward and evaluate your skills and opportunities for growth.

Andrea Clarke Future Fit Co. | LinkedIn | Instagram

Melissa Marsden Download your Setting your North Star workbook www.melissamarsden.com.au/northstar

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"Being responsible for our own lives... our behaviour is a function of our decisions, not our conditions". – Steven Covey

Often, we resign ourselves to the fact that we live in a world where so much is out of our control like global pandemics and external circumstances and the limitations they place on our actions. The world can begin to feel heavy.

However, when we bring our attention back to focusing on what we can control, we are able to increase, expand and grow our personal power.

In this episode, I explore;

• Your circle of influence (the things we can control)
• The circle of concern (the external things we cannot control)
• Shifting and managing energy, focus and influence
• Expanding your comfort zone and the reason we feel comfortable playing small
• Taking back your power

You'll leave this bite-sized pep talk today with the reminder that our lives are completely up to us. Sure, negative things can happen to us and around us, however it is our choice as to how we respond to those factors. It is our decision what we do about it. That is within our control and that is where the magic happens.

Don't forget to download my free Setting your North Star values and purpose workbook to help you start designing your unique and desired life. Visit www.melissamarsden.com.au/northstar

If you're ready to deep dive and learn skills and content to level up your work and life and join a community of like-minded women who are designing their dream life, join our Work Life Lounge! You can find out more at www.melissamarsden.com.au/worklifelounge.

Melissa Marsden

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Talking about Money is often a taboo subject, however if we want to be empowered to take control of our own financial literacy it's a subject that we really need to get comfortable with.

Today's Guest Mel Browne an ex-accountant, ex-financial advisor & ex-working till she drops. These days she's a best-selling author, financial educator, business strategist & mentor and entrepreneur who is particularly passionate about helping women live a life by design, and not by default. Something we both have in common.

Mel is passionate about changing the conversation that women in particular have around money, how we make it, save it and spend it.

1. In today's chat we cover; What living a life by design means to her
2. How our money story and money type influences our decisions and approach to money
3. The money messaging that the media portrays to men and women when it comes to our behaviour with money
4. How to navigate the money conversation in your relationships
5. The routines and rituals that Mel has incorporated into her life so that she can continue to live her life by design

While Mel is an ex-accountant, and full of financial wisdom, she is also full of personality and sage advice for those of us who no-longer view corporate burnout as a career option.

So, let me introduce you to Mel Browne.

Mel Browne

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Melissa Marsden

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What does your dream life look like?

This season is all about designing a work life you love and big part of that is making sure it fits with the life that you want to live.

To do this you first need to define your own version of success, not what others or society consider to be a successful life. This is a trap we fall into often, and it's important to take a step back and re-evaluate as life and circumstances change to define what we truly want and how we'll know when we've achieved it.

Defining what a successful, joyful life is for you is a big part of then determining what your complimentary work life looks like.

In this episode I'll take you through:

• The importance of clarity of vision
• A three-year business plan
• A 25-year life painted picture and why you should plan so far in advance
• How these two visualisations marry up to create the life you love and create change and progress in your life now

If you need a little more guidance in creating your 25 year painted picture, and 3 year business plan, so you can design the life of your dreams and align your business, head over to my website www.melissamarsden.com.au/paintedpicture and download my guided audio where I'll talk you through each of the aspects for you to imagine the life and business of your dreams and provide you with the actionable steps to turn your dream into a reality.

Or, if you're looking for a bit more help defining your values and purpose, download my free Setting your North Star download. It has tools to help you define your values and purpose to allow you to create your vision with better clarity. Head to www.melissamarsden.com.au/northstar

Enjoy, find a quiet space, and allow your heart and mind to dream.

Melissa Marsden

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Creating a work life that you love doesn't mean that you need to head out and set up your own business. Often we hear of people who have climbed the corporate ladder, only to hit burn out and decide that the only way forward is to take their skills and go it on their own. Well today's guest is here to share with us, how if being an entrepreneur is not the path that you desire, there is another way. Olivia Ruello is the CEO of Business Chicks, stepping into the role in 2016, when founder Emma Isaacs expanded into the US. Business Chicks is Australia's largest and most influential community for women in business, committed to the personal and professional growth of women. Liv has had a portfolio career starting out in Industrial Relations, before joining Business Chicks to lead their Partnerships and Brand team, for four years from 2009. She spread her wings in 2013 moving across to the Commonwealth Bank, where she drove a unique leadership and culture agenda for the corporate banking division, focused on embedding vision and values to create a more human centric culture. Olivia has a deep passion and sense of purpose, advocating for women's economic security and empowerment, advancement in leadership roles and supporting the growth of female led businesses. As you'll hear in today's chat, Liv comes from a lineage of strong women who have done much to support the advancement of women and it is an absolute pleasure to have someone who I deeply admire for the culture that she has built within the team at Business Chicks join me to share her wisdom. You'll leave this conversation inspired, and with new perspective on how you can design a life you love. Olivia Ruello

LinkedIn | Business Chicks

Melissa Marsden

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One of the foundations to designing a life and career that you love is understanding your values. That means understanding your own sense of right and wrong, good and bad, what's important and what is not important to YOU, not what you've been intrinsically taught, or to those around you.

Values serve as the guide rails to our lives. They keep us moving forward in the right direction, stop us from wandering off course, or into areas that don't feel good, or right for us. They help us to embody the qualities that we want in order to guide our actions and behaviours and build the life we want to live.

This is relevant both in a corporate setting and at an individual level. As individuals we need this sense of self-awareness so that we can have our own moral compass and as an organisation we need them so that we can align our team, create focus, direction, and importantly, demonstrate what is ok and what's not ok.

In this episode, I talk through;

• Why values are crucial and what can happen when you don't stop to identify them
• How values operate in an organisational setting
• The concept of values as 'buckets' and how we can design a life and work life we love by identifying what's important to fill these buckets.

If you are looking for some help defining your values, are or in need of a refresher to check in to see if they still resonate with you, download my free Setting Your North Star workbook. The tools in this workbook help you to identify your sense of purpose and the values that are most important to you. Get your copy at www.melissamarsden.com.au/northstar.

Melissa Marsden

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One of the things that I have noticed as I have grown is that the experiences that we have are not unique to us and that if we look around often many of us are challenged by the paths that our lives have taken. While we may not be openly and outwardly shouting it from the roof tops or even whispering it to our closest of friends, there is for many of us a period of breakdown which leads to break through.

And this is where today's guest Keri is here to share what she has learned from both personal experience and from working within Health Retreats how we can reconnect with our midline and move forward in alignment with our own personal path.

Keri Krieger is a modern-day mystic, fusing her passion for spirituality with the ancient remedies of Chinese medicine and acupuncture to guide women in coming home to themselves.

Keri acknowledges that our daily lives are filled with so many responsibilities and overwhelm, so she is on a mission to provide women with the tools they need to bring things back to basics so they can thrive as they are destined to do

This is a very conversational chat between two women navigating the messy middle covering everything from burnout to finding a slower pace of life, exploring the cycles and seasons of life to wisdom that comes with age.

Keri even shares with us some of her own rituals for reconnecting with her midline, along with the challenges that can come when we let our ego chime in.

Keri Krieger

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Melissa Marsden

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"He who has a why to live can bear almost any how" Friedrich Nietzsche

Ask yourself this; What is it that you hope to achieve while you're here on this earth? And what is the impact that you want to make? Why do you do what you do? Why is it important? What is the impact that that is going to have on the people around you?

Knowing why you do what you do is just as important, if not more important than, doing what you do.

Knowing what you do and how you do it is the logistics, the functional and the logical part of your day to day. Knowing why you do it, is what connects you to your greater purpose in life. Your whole reason for being. The impact that you are going to have on those around you, your community, and the world at large. It is the legacy that you will leave for having been here on this earth.

In today's episode, I unpack three reasons knowing your 'why' is important ranging from the Japanese philosophy of Ikigai to business coaching to aligning your moral and decision-making compass.

Knowing your why is just one of the factors that forms part of the ability to live your life by your own design. When you know why you want to achieve the things that you do you can then make more informed decisions about who you want to work for, the type of work that you want to do and, most importantly, who you want to be.

If you are looking for more help on understanding your why, head to my website and download my free 'Setting your North Star' workbook. It has useful tools and tips to help you align your purpose and values to your life. Visit melissamarsden.com.au/northstar for your copy.

Melissa Marsden

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In this week's chat, I am incredibly excited to bring you our guest; the beautiful Samantha Wills.

For those of you who are not familiar with Samantha, she is the creative powerhouse behind the Samantha Wills jewellery brand. Starting this business in 2004, as a fresh face 21-year-old from her dining room table, she grew it into a successful global business. She lived in New York for 10 years, had production houses in Asia and India, and offices in France and Japan. She then famously announced its closure in mid 2018, when it was continuing to enjoy widespread commercial success. Because there was a lot more going on behind the scenes. Samantha has recently written a memoir of her life's journey in her book Of Gold and Dust, which is a beautiful, unveiled, and honest account of what it took for her to build the Samantha Wills jewellery brand, the sacrifices that it required of her, and how it took her a two-year journey to come to the decision to close what was a highly successful business.

Samantha is an incredibly talented and intuitive businesswoman; she has come up with some genius ways of creating business partnerships and staying true to herself. So, in today's conversation, we dive into all of this and cover everything from the rise of her business, to how she felt in some of those darkest times navigating very personal and professional challenges that she encountered, along with the resilience that you can find when you're sitting in the rubble of your life. And most importantly, the power that comes from rising out of that.

We also dive into how the strength of her values guided her exit from the business and the courage and integrity that comes with that through to a fearful moment as she started to turn 30. And she was realising that she had been sacrificing so much for her business, she hadn't been ticking life's boxes or the boxes that we're told that we should be ticking.

This is a conversation that will really going to get you thinking about your own life choices. It's going to have you nodding along in agreement, and it's really going to give you a good laugh along the way. She is a beautiful person both inside, generous with her energy and wisdom. I hope you enjoy this one as much as I did.

Melissa Marsden

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I'll let you in on a little secret.

Balance is BS. There is no work/life balance. You can't have a work persona and a life persona.

It's all about integration.

In today's episode, I'm going to be discussing The Balance Wheel – the most useful tool I've found in examining and evaluating all the different segments of our lives and identifying where our time and energy needs to be spent.

I'll go through:

• What is a balance wheel?
• The segments of life (outside of work!)
• Work/Life integration and boundaries
• Setting goals and shifting your balance wheel
• A real life example of balancing the wheel in action.

Also, the Live a Life by Design 6 week experience is now LIVE! Sign up here for more tools and strategies on creating a work and life you love.

Or if you want a bit more of a taste, sign up for the FREE Level UP! Masterclass going through actionable strategies to transform life and work. Just register here, and you'll get the Setting your North Star download for free.

Melissa Marsden

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