How Women Can Thrive in Midlife | Joy Foster on Confidence, Tech & Business

Midlife can feel like the moment the old rules stop working. The commute feels harder, confidence gets shakier, technology has moved on, and you may be carrying more than anyone can see.

In this powerful episode of the Women Like Me Stories & Business Podcast, Julie Fairhurst sits down with Joy Foster, founder of Tech Pixies, to talk about midlife reinvention, confidence, neurocoaching, business, technology, and the courage to begin again.

Joy works with women who want to reinvent themselves online and in business. She explains what is really happening beneath the surface when women freeze, procrastinate, overthink, or talk themselves out of the very thing they want. Julie and Joy explore imposter syndrome, perfectionism, automatic negative thoughts, and the inner resistance that often appears right before a woman posts, pitches, leads, sells, or steps into visibility.

This conversation also reframes time in a powerful way. Joy shares the 25-year plan mindset, why thinking in quarters can reduce overwhelm, and how focusing on the “big three” priorities helps women move forward with more clarity. They also discuss the importance of creating a power hour that truly belongs to you — not laundry, errands, or everyone else’s needs dressed up as productivity.

Julie and Joy talk about women’s strengths in business, including empathy, emotional intelligence, organization, communication, and relationship-building, and why these qualities become powerful business advantages when women stop undervaluing them.

The conversation also gets practical. Joy shares insight into funding, grants, sales, and why selling is serving when it is aligned with your values. They discuss why sales skills keep a business alive, why belief in what you offer matters, and how women can build confidence around asking for the sale.

Julie and Joy also explore AI for business, AEO, and the bias that can show up inside technology tools. Joy shares why women need to choose technology with their eyes open and use it as support, not as something that steals their voice.

If you are a woman in midlife ready to rebuild confidence, learn new skills, plan smarter, use technology with courage, and create a next chapter that fits who you are now, this episode is for you.

Subscribe, share this episode with a woman who needs a reset, and leave a review with the one idea you are taking into your week.

Learn more about Joy Foster and Tech Pixies:

Website:  https://techpixies.com

Joy Foster LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/techpixiejoy/ 

TechPixies Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/techpixies/ 

TechPixies Facebook - https://facebook.com/techpixies

TechPixies YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/techpixies 

TechPixies TikTok - http://tiktok.com/@techpixies 

TechPixies LinkedIn page - https://www.linkedin.com/school/tech

If this conversation stirred something in you… good. That’s where change begins.

Make sure you’re subscribed, share this with someone who needs it, and if you’re ready to tell your story, step into your voice, or build a life that actually feels like yours… You’re in the right place.

I’m Julie Fairhurst, and this is where stories turn into power.

Go to my website if you would like to be a guest on the Women Like Me Stories & Business in the toolbar click Let's Podcast

Julie's Website

Transcript

Welcome And Why This Matters

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of Women Like Me Stories and Business. Oh, I'm I'm very excited about our guest today because not only are you gonna learn a bunch of stuff, but I'm gonna learn a bunch of stuff. So let's dive in. I want to introduce her to you. So I'm joined today by Joy Foster, and she's the founder of Tech Pixies. Joy has helped women thrive in midlife through neurocoaching, training, digital skills, confidence building, and business support. Her work is deeply focused on helping women and understanding what is really happening beneath the surface when we feel stuck, overwhelmed, afraid, or unsure of what our next steps should be. So we're gonna explore the wisdom Joy has gathered from business books, especially those written by women, and how female founders can stop trying to fit themselves into systems that we were never designed with us in mind. This is a conversation about courage, brain science, reinvention, and the beautiful bold truth that midlife is not the end of a woman's story. It's where the chapter will begin. So, Joy, welcome so much to the podcast. Super excited to have you here. Do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself and your company?

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Yeah, no, great to be here. Thanks so much for inviting me on. So TechPixie has been around nearly a decade, and that's just it. We specialize in helping women in midlife to really reinvent themselves, get themselves online. A lot of women are scared to go online.

Tech Pixies And Fear Of Posting

SPEAKER_00 1:44

What I learned really early on is I could teach you everything I know about social media, but if you're afraid to use it, that's not gonna work. So I had to do a lot of work helping women to overcome the neurological barriers that stop them from posting. Anything from, you know, compare and despair to perfectionism, you know, getting women on the LinkedIn. We saw a lot of imposter syndrome and you know, and a lot of this like sort of not feeling good enough. Who, you know, what am I gonna say? Who's gonna listen to me? What about the trolls? So really what we focused on was really squashing the automatic negative thoughts, the ants that come up when you're about to do something really challenging or something that you would love to do, but there's a block or a barrier stopping you from doing it. And so that's that's really the work that I do, and you know, really helping people overcome blocks and barriers that are stopping them from making progress in life.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

So, what inspired you to get started in this business and to help midlife women?

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Yeah, well, of course, I was 36 when I started the business, so I wasn't really midlife. And my initial when I initially started, it was to help women go back to work because I was a trailing spouse. I'm American, but I live in the United Kingdom. And when I got married, we were

Career Breaks And Midlife Pressures

SPEAKER_00 2:54

living in Switzerland, and so I gave up my career, I gave up sort of my life in America to move across to Europe. And, you know, it was amazing going to live in Switzerland and then now living in the UK. So I've had this amazing, wonderful life, but it also meant that I gave up what I thought I might be doing in terms of a career and you know, that career trajectory and everything like that. So, you know, really when I started this work probably 23 years ago, I I had I moved countries and I was, you know, I was really realizing that I hadn't to shape my own identity, I had to find my own way through. So, you know, fast forward to being 36 and I launch Tech Pixies and now fast forward to 46 when we're a decade older. My the audience that I've always worked with has been either out of work because they were looking after kids and then they wanted to go back into work, or now, a decade later, a lot of women aren't taking career breaks like they used to. So I know in the US and Canada it's slightly different, but in the UK, you can take a full 12 months and your job will still be secure when you come back a year later. So the maternity rights here are so much better. But what that does lead to is a lot of women deciding at the end of that year that they don't want to go back. And so they'll find themselves thinking, okay, I'll just take two years off and then I'll come back. And then 12 years later, they're not back in work. So that was the first demographic that I worked with. And then the second, then as that, as that group has aged, you know, now I find that I'm working with women who are perimenopausal and the regular nine to five commute corporate jobs not working for them anymore because, you know, there's a lot of things going on in their body that's affecting their ability to work and sleep and all those things. But also a lot of women in midlife are looking after elderly parents, you know, they've got dying parents and and you know, navigating that generational shift as well. So there's lots of things that take women out of work. It could be children, it could be elderly parents, it could be cancer. We've dealt with a lot of women coming back from breast cancer, bowel cancer, and then just you know, neurodiversity as well. We have a lot of women who are neurodiverse and they struggle to fit into the normal, again, nine to five. So, you know, that's that's the woman I'm I'm primarily focused on. And then all the things that midlife throws.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Yes, for sure, for sure. And I know quite a quite a few ladies that are at that age group and they need help. They uh they want to continue, they want to do something, they want to do something productive and meaningful, but they don't know how, or or they're afraid to. So, what do you think the biggest struggle is for women?

SPEAKER_00 5:34

Confidence, you know. So, this is the number one thing that that we did a this is what we're all based on, really, is confidence. And I learned also early on you couldn't sell confidence, no one wanted to buy confidence, no one wants to raise their hand and say I'm not confident because that's just you

Confidence Loss And Tech Catch Up

SPEAKER_00 5:49

know not a very confident thing to do anyway. So, you know, the we did a study of a thousand women and we found that quite a large percentage of them felt that a career break of any kind had a long-term damage on their career. I think it was 45% felt that it had a long-term damage, had a long-term impact on their career. I certainly have felt it myself, having had career break, I've had two, two career breaks. One was to be a full-time athlete training for the Olympics, and then the second career break was my children. And so, you know, I have felt the impacts as well of taking a career break. So the confidence is really what it's about. So when you take a career break or take any time away from the workplace, you know, for whatever reason, all those reasons we talked about earlier, your confidence drops, particularly when it comes to technology, because technology is moving so fast. And, you know, a decade ago it was moving at what we would call a snail's pace compared to today. So, you know, really it's about making sure women don't feel left behind when it comes to technology, because that is the number one block and barrier to returning to work. So that's what we did our work on. So, yeah, a lot of our work is based on confidence and really helping women to feel more confident in and of themselves. Because if women feel confident, you know, then the world is their oyster. And my friend Eleanor Mills, who used to be the editor, the editor of the Sunday Times magazine and worked for Rupert Murdoch for in you know in the UK, she's written a book, The Best Is Yet to Come, or Much More to Come is what's called. Sorry, the Much More to Come. And her point is we live in the

The 25 Year Plan Mindset

SPEAKER_00 7:20

hundred-year life. So 50 years is only 50% of the way through, right? And so that's really your third chapter or your third quarter, if you will. And it's this idea that actually I like to borrow, you know, you said I read a lot of books, um, and I do. This one's actually from a male author, but his name's Dan Sullivan. And he wrote a book that I love about the 25-year plan. So, you know, think about it if you're 50 and you put together a 25-year plan, that gets you to 75. And if you think about each year, it has four quarters. So there's a hundred quarters between now and when you're 75. That means every quarter is 1%, right? And when you break it down like that, it's a totally different way of looking at life. It's a completely different way of looking at it. Yeah. And what I love, I met him in person a couple weeks ago. He just turned, I think, 82, and he's on his third 25-year plan. And he plans to live to be 156. That's his sort of goal. But what he what he said is when he when he was 34, when he did his first 25-year plan, he was made, he got divorced and made bankrupt in the same day. And he says that between the divorce and the bankruptcy, he went to lunch and put it on his card. He was smart enough to at least be able to pay for his last lunch. And then he said, you know, and then he put he said, he said, I'm my next 25 years, I'm gonna be successful, I'm gonna be married, I'm gonna have a successful business. And he thought by the time he got to 59, he'd want to retire. Well, he got to 59, he'd found his life partner, who he's now been married to, Babs, for like 43 years. And he had a very successful business. And he thought, well, I don't want to go anywhere. So he put together another 25-year plan. And it was then, you know, he'd build this business and he'd continue with his life partner. I mean, they're married, and but he calls her his life partner. And so then he gets to 59. So 59, and he gets to 74, right? So he's yeah, now he's done two 25-year plans. And at 74, he's like, I'm not done yet. I'm gonna do another 25 years. And so, you know, I met him, he's 82, he's on his third 25-year plan, and he's he's probably got the energy and vibrancy of someone who's 25 years younger, you know, um, and and medically he's he's 25 years younger, so it's pretty incredible. So I just want women who are listening to this, I want them to think from that perspective of 50 years is nothing in 2026, you know, it's it really is an is an opera, it's a springboard rather than a what do they call what do they call it on the pirate ship, you know? Yeah, yes, yes, it's a springboard, not a plank.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

Okay, yeah. I appreciate you sharing that, Joy, because even for me, it just like because of course we get older and time is ticking, but the way that's explained, it it it removes that because so many of us are worried about well, I don't have enough time, you know, how am I gonna get there? I should have done it earlier. But when you think of it in those terms and you break that down like that, it just removes the barrier.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

Well, what he says, and I think this is totally true, is as soon as you start thinking about the 25-year plan, time slows down. Oh, well, I'm starting to think about it today. I love that. It's absolutely genius. And and I, you know, and there's another great book, again, apologies written by a man. No, there's a great there's another great book called The Twelve, the 12, the 12 week year. And what he talks about in that book, and I can't remember the author at the moment, but what he talks about is we traditionally look at a year

Quarterly Goals And The Big Three

SPEAKER_00 10:50

as 12 months. Yes, and yeah, he he said that's a mistake because what happens is people will go through the year and they'll think, you know, oh, you know, they get into the last quarter and they're trying to make up for what didn't work in the first two quarters or the first three quarters. His point is make every quarter a year, which fits really nicely into this 25 whether every quarter is 1%. Yeah, because you can pivot from quarter to quarter, yes, right? And so if you own a business and you're running a business, you got to think about it in quarters, not in the year. So, you know, what are you gonna do this quarter? What's your offer this quarter? And how does it compare to your previous quarter? So I started looking at my business and even my life, really, from a quarterly perspective for a very long time now, well, probably for several years. And I it it's a game changer because I I'm no longer comparing 2026 to 2025 to 2024. Right. I'm actually looking at what was I doing in Q1, 2020, 2021, 2022? You know, so I'm like, how can I beat Q1 from two years ago, three years ago, four years ago? And then when I get into Q2, how can I beat Q2 from last year? So it's it's you know, thinking in quarters is is fantastic because you're not you don't have you're not getting caught down, bogged down on having to make the whole year plan. How do I flow on a quarterly basis? And a lot of people they'll miss making a revenue mark on a quarter, you know, they they don't have a quarterly revenue plan and they're not tracking all these things. So, you know, thinking in quarters, I think is is really really beneficial and setting quarterly goals. And you know, again, this comes from Michael Hyatt, which is a book called Free to Focus. Sorry, another man. That's okay. But these are all the fundamentals that I've got. And then of course a couple ladies that I would would recommend on top, but that didn't come out the right way. But the the the Michael Hyatt talks about the big three, yeah. So you've got you've got the big three for the year, you've got the big three for the quarter, you've got the big three for the month, you've got the big three for the week, and then you've got the big three every day, right? And so, what are the three things I need to do today? Not the hundred and three things. And as women, we focus on the hundred and three, and then we get paralyzed, we get overwhelmed, we don't do any of them. So it's really about saying, okay, if I needed to get three things done today that's in service of my bigger quarterly goal, what would those three things be? And then you eat the frog and do it first in the first thing in the morning, right? And you reorganize your schedule so that you're doing that deep work at the beginning of every day.

SPEAKER_02 13:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

Now, here is a woman that wrote a great book, Adrienne Herbert. She wrote a book called The Power Hour. So a lot of people are like, Hal Elrod fans, you know, let's do the morning, early morning. I will, you will not see me, at least at this point in my life, getting up at 5 a.m. to do pretty much anything. I love my sleep. And I try to go to bed before midnight and I try and wake up around seven. That gives me a really good night's sleep. And and I'm then I'm ready to go for the day. And I've restructured my day so that I have an hour, like my power hour, from eight to nine o'clock in the morning. And then I go for a dog walk or you know, I do a workout or something like that. But I I have that power hour, and that's an hour just for me. And it's built into every single day before I do anything else. And Adrienne Herbert, she said, you can do it anytime you want. It does not have to be at 5 a.m., like all the gurus say. It can be at whatever time suits you, but you need that power hour for you. And it's not laundry time, it's not dishwashing time, it's not dog walking time, it's not kid taxi time, yeah. You know, it's not clean and organize your sock door time, right? This is you time that's for you, and and it's a very powerful concept. So there's a couple concepts I'll blend into one there. That's beautiful. Well, thank you so much for sharing those.

SPEAKER_01 14:33

I we can we can stop now. No, just kidding. That was so good. That was so good. So I'd like to know what strengths do you think women bring to business, but they undervalue compassion, empathy, uh, organization.

SPEAKER_00 14:51

You know, those are all strengths that they

Women’s Undervalued Business Strengths

SPEAKER_00 14:54

definitely undervalue. Now they can they can get them in trouble because if you're very compassionate and empathetic, you might, you know, if someone says they can't pay, you might say, okay, don't worry about it, right? So sometimes that can, you know, work to a disadvantage for us. But I definitely think we're very good people, people. You know, we can read people, emotional intelligence usually is pretty high. This is a bit of a blanket statement, but yes, most women have good emotional intelligence and we're good listeners. And so that's also a wonderful trait to have. Surprisingly, it's a great trait for sales. So if you can, if you're willing to be a good listener, there's great opportunity for you in sales.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

So those are some of the things, and the organization I think is really, really important because women are very organized and not not all. I mean, yes, like me, if you've got ADHD, you've really got to work at being organized. But that's actually been one of my coping strategies, which is has been learning to be organized and learning to get structure in place so that I can function at my highest optimal level.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:56

What do you think female founders need more of right now? Female founders right now. Well, funding's always Yeah, money. Money, which is great. I mean, I I feel very, I mean, you create your own luck. I believe that very much. You know, I applied for grants to start my business. I won those grants.

Funding Options And Sales As Service

SPEAKER_00 16:17

I didn't have the money for them. Uh I didn't have the money to start my business. So grants were amazingly helpful. Yes. And I didn't always get every grant that I went for. I got rejected quite a few times and I'd apply for it again. And but until I it took me a while to learn how to make money. And I think what funding does is it helps you to learn how to, it helps, it gives you time, right? So I have raised investment for my business, I've taken loans for my business, I have used you know different credit opportunities. Would I do it again? You know, I I love where I am now, and and I still have, you know, people I need to pay back, I still have loans I need to pay back, and I and I am paying back. And it's helped me to grow my business faster than if I just bootstrapped it. Now, I'm in a group with women who own million plus businesses. Many of them have been bootstrapping, and many of them are 17 to 25 years into their journey before they're in the multi-millions. So it's also recognizing what you and your family need in the meantime to get there. You know, there's, you know, decisions I made were based on what my family needed and what I needed. But I think I think women, women need sales skills. You know, you if you if you don't want to take loans and you don't want to get investment, you're gonna have to learn to sell, you know, and Sarah Blakely is a perfect example of someone who was an incredible saleswoman. You know, she sold Xerox door to door, and then she was so good at that. Xerox said, Well, come and teach everybody else how to sell Xerox. And then she really hated that job. And then she had this, she was going to a party, she didn't like the way her butt looked in her jeans, she put on some pantyhose, cut off the bottom, and thought I could turn this into a product. And then she went and made a lot of money. You know, she just sold the business for $1.2 billion. Yes. So, you know, don't underestimate your good ideas, right? Yeah. I think don't, you know, funding it. I would I would say fund it. However, you fund it, you've got to fund it. And yeah, if you can fund it with sales, it's way better than anything else.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

Yeah. It and I was in sales for 36 years before I tried pivoted. I oh, I started my business in 2019. And then two years ago I I retired to do this full-time. Sales is so important. And when you retired to run your own business, oh well, exactly. I know. I retired from that sales job to do this job, but which is also sales, which is also sales, exactly. I know, I know. But what I find is that we are such good salespeople, we're way better salespeople than men because we care. Yeah. You know, and then and not you know, nothing against men, but they're very, you know, they're rigid and we're very so we sell with relationships, which is something that is what sales are.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

People buy from people, right? People buy from people, exactly. So I think what women need to be doing more in business right now is learning how to do sales and learning how to do it in a way that feels comfortable and authentic to you.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

Yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

And understanding that selling is serving, and I believe that with all my heart.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

Selling, oh my gosh, selling is serving. Yeah, absolutely. And we have to remember that that our our clients, our buyers, they don't know what we know, possibly. And that's for us to be able to show them how that how those things can benefit them because they don't know. So so it it um no, I'm gonna go on a little rant here, but I'm gonna stop myself. I won't go too far. Women who are selling products and they don't know you need to know every little thing about the products that you're selling, because how can you sell them properly to people?

SPEAKER_00 19:49

If you don't I've always said that you can I could sell anything I believed in. Yes. I think to your point is women need to make sure that what they're selling they believe in. Yes. And you know, I would never sell something, but well, in fact, I have made the mistake of selling something I hadn't done myself, like a course I hadn't taken. And it's and it was, and I will never do it again because it didn't, I my values didn't align with the person that was selling the course when I did the the promotion. And I realized it in retrospect. So I made a decision a couple years ago that I would never sell someone's product that I personally hadn't tried or used or heard good news from. So, you know, that that was that's something that I made the decision of. But I think if you believe in the product, you can sell it, you know. And I think that's for a woman, that's very important to know to really believe in what they're selling.

SPEAKER_01 20:35

Yes, we need to really believe in what in what we're selling. And and and if we're selling ourselves because we're coaching or something like that, just so important. So important. Yeah, I gotta believe in myself, absolutely. Sure do. Yeah. So you you mentioned that you you do some work or you're in community with some very high achieving women. What do you think? So, why do you think so many women look successful on the outside, but maybe they're feeling chaotic on the inside? And I guess that's not just the high achieving women, but I'm I'm bringing that up because I think that

Hidden Burnout Behind Success

SPEAKER_01 21:12

so many of us look up at those high achieving women and we don't see what's necessarily going on inside of them.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

Yeah, I mean, one of my favorite entrepreneurs of all time, and she's she's well, she wasn't originally British, she was originally Polish, but her name is Dame Stephanie Shirley. Now she's passed away in the last year, but I I love to talk about her because she's really someone that stood out to me as a role model. And I got to have dinner with her at the House of Lords when she was in her 80s. You know, she died in her 90s, but I got to have dinner with her about a decade ago, actually. And we shut the place down, and it was like eight, she was like 85, and it was like midnight. We were the last ones there. And I just I wanted to spend every minute I could with her. So Dame Stephanie Shirley, a couple things. She was a she was Polish, she was in Poland, and when Nazi Nazis came through Poland. She was put on the kinder transport, sent to England. She then was saved by living with a British family, and then obviously became British. And one of the things that, and she was reunited with her mother, but it never, she never really, really gelled with her mother, having been separated from her, and I think about it, four years old. But what she said was that even at the age of four years old, she recognized that she that she'd been saved and she needed to live a life worth saving. You know, imagine being seven years old and thinking, I need to live a life worth saving. You know, and that's by the time the war was over, that's about the age she was. And she really made that decision. I need to live a life worth saving. She then, in her uh in the 1960s, this is before she could even have a bank account without her husband's signature, right? You have to have a husband's sign on your bank account. There was real, real concern about being sexually assaulted if you went to a job. I mean, this she said it was, you know, I because I remember telling me about this, like it being alone with a man in an office was a very scary thing in the 1960s. And she, anyway, she built this company. They did the black box coding for the Concord. That's an example of the work she did. So she got women coding from their kitchen tables. All, you know, all of her staff, almost the whole team, was female, all working from home, all mothers doing all of these, all this coding. And this is back when coding was like on a piece of paper and you had to put holes in the paper and all this stuff. Anyway, she also had a very severely autistic son. And so she uh while she's building this career, which then went on to be a three billion dollar company, she has a mental breakdown. She ends in the ends up in the hospital herself. Right? So here is a highly successful woman who's been through traumatic stuff, you know, kinder transport, come back from that, built a successful company, come back from that, or you know, I mean, navigated all the ups and downs of that, severely autistic son, navigate all the ups and downs of that. And she she herself has a mental breakdown and she ends up in the hospital. And there was a period of time where she just was not mentally or physically available to do what she needed to do. And that's because I think women carry a lot and women don't talk about it, they don't write about it, they don't express it, they don't get coaching, they don't get support. It when you have all of that dis-ease in your body, it causes disease. And so we need to make sure that we've got support around us that we can talk about what's going on with us, that we can get the help that we need and not try and carry everything. Because if we try and carry everything and we don't navigate our way through it, we will have, you know, the inevitable break, you know, breakdown that she had. And I think it's, you know, so for me, that's been a really important thing for me that I am, that I have balance and harmony in my life, that they're that I'm looking at all four quadrants. So I'm not just looking at vocation and creative expression. I'm also looking at love and relationships. I'm also looking at uh health and well-being. I'm also looking at time and money freedom. And I'm trying to find harmony in all of those and have a very clear vision of what I would love and what I'd love it to feel like. Right. And that is something that I think will guide you and be your North Star as you're building your business is what's happening in my love and relationships? What's happening in my health and well-being? What's happening in my time, money, freedom? And you know, where you have longing and discontent, it's the sign and signal for growth. So there's an opportunity for you to actually work on creating something that you would love, but don't be afraid to get support, don't be afraid to get help because, you know, I think successful women, the ones who look successful on the outside but are falling apart on the inside, you know, I've I've seen more than one woman, you know, crash out because they've burnt out or whatnot. And that was something I did not want to do. So, you know, you might take a slower path to success, or you might take a different path to success, but making sure you prioritize your mental health, your physical health is going to be key. You know, and she did after that. I mean, Ariana Huffington did the same thing, you know, she was gone, gone with her child to go look at universities and collapsed on her desk, bumped her head. And not only that, but she built a very successful business off the back of that, right? So women have this gift of I can take whatever problem I'm having, turn it into a way to help others. And, you know, if you're enterprising enough, you can turn it into a business that pays you too. Yes, yeah, for sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:22

What do you think of women who think that they're doing it wrong? Like maybe they can't focus, they have difficulty finishing things. How do they handle the mental noise that's going on around them?

SPEAKER_00 26:35

Oh, such a great question. Okay. First

Quieting Self Criticism And “ANTS”

SPEAKER_00 26:37

of all, you're never doing wrong, right? We want to, we if we start doing that, that's really gonna damage your ability to function. Okay, so everyone is doing the best that they can at the level of awareness that they have. Okay. So you're, you know, if you yell at your kids when you're tired, you're doing the best that you can at the level of awareness you have. Once you recognize, okay, I didn't want to yell at my kids. Oh, okay, I didn't sleep very well. That's what led to me having a short fuse. What do I need to do to sleep better so that I can show up better? Right. That's awareness. But what a lot of people don't do is reflect. So when they when they think they've made a bad decision or they think they've, you know, made a bad choice, they get fixated on themselves being bad, not the choice being bad or the decision being bad, right? So it's about understanding that I am not the decision, I'm the decision maker, right? I'm not the choice, I'm the choice maker. I'm not the the thought, I'm the thinker of the thought. I can change the thought. So really getting, really getting familiar with that and starting to notice what you're noticing, starting to believe that you know you you're doing the best that you can at the level of awareness that you have. And, you know, this idea of do what you can with what you have with where you're at, right? So we 100% can increase our level of awareness, and therefore we can change the way that we make decisions. Someone who's making 5,000 pounds a year or $10,000 a year, they have a different level of awareness than someone that's making $50,000 a year, and who has another level of awareness to someone that's making a half a million or a million, or you know, in Sarah Blakely's case, $1.2 billion, right? So everyone's got different levels of awarenesses. And once you understand that I am living at a certain level of awareness, and if I want to change my life, I have to change the way that I think about my life. It's in the changing the way that you think about your life that your life changes.

SPEAKER_01 28:34

Absolutely. That's great. Excellent advice. So, what is a lesson from a woman author or leader that changed how you run your business?

SPEAKER_00 28:46

Oh gosh, I have so many. Let me just go back one more point on that last one. Yes, okay. A great

Books By Women That Hit Home

SPEAKER_00 28:53

question you can ask yourself, because I didn't think I really ended the plane on that one. A great question you can ask yourself, especially when the negative ants come in, the automatic negative thoughts. Yeah, is this write it down, get it out of your head, write it down like I'm rubbish at speaking, you know, whatever. Write it down, I'm rubbish at speaking, and then ask yourself, is that true? Is it really true? And you can find evidence that actually you have given a speech at the school PTA and people came up to you afterwards and really liked it. You know, you've got evidence that you can do it. And even if you don't have evidence, there's evidence that other people have been able to do what you want to do. So, you know, like Grandma Moses, she was broke and had no money, and then in her 80s started painting, by the way, because she had no money to buy presents. So she started painting for her presents. She ended up, you know, she she made a ton of money at the end of her life. So, you know, understanding that other people have done it, you therefore you can do it, right? Mel Robbins is a great example right now because, you know, she was $800,000 in debt, you know, she was everything was being reclaimed, you know, she'd lost that she'd lost, you know, financially she was in a hole. She didn't want to get herself out of bed, and yet she did, and she did it in her midlife. So there's lots of examples, even if you don't have examples of other people succeeding through through adversity. If they can do it, you can do it. Now, to go to the story of like my entrepreneurs, obviously, I talked to you about Dame Stephanie Shirley. So she wrote the book Let It Go, which is a play on words because she ran an IT company. So that was that's a book I really highly recommend. I also love Marie Forial's book, Everything Is Figure Outtable. But really, there's two other books that really, really got me, like in my heart. One of them is Believe It by Jamie Kern Lima. So if you've now, and she's just written another book called Worthy, which is a brilliant book as well. And I remember I was listening to Believe It and I was walking, I was going for a run. This is pre pre-perimenopause when I could run without any challenges. And I was running along the river, and it was it, and I got so into the book, I ended up running 10K out one direction and walking 10K back just so I could finish listening to the book. So Believe It is about Jamie Kernlima's journey to building a it cosmetics, which she sold for 1.2 billion to uh L'Oreal, and she became the first female CEO of L'Oreal. And in its 400-year history, by the way, let's just land on that for a second. That they a female, a female focused company run by men for 400 years, and then she comes in and runs her division, and she sold all the, you know, she had to work work out, and now she's now she's in the personal development space, she has a podcast, she live next door neighbors with Oprah. Very, you know, very interesting trajectory. But she she was overweight, can you know, like she had rosacea, and you know, when she went to sell all of her stuff on QVC, they were like, Well, we need skinny models. And she's like, No, I want me to model because I want people to see what a real person looks like. And I've got rosacea and the models don't, and I need to show people how to apply my makeup for their rosacea. Anyway, they, you know, they let her do it. She sold out and she became like the number one selling brand on QVC. So, you know, she her story is amazing. And there's another gal named Joy. Have you heard the movie, seen the movie Joy? I don't think I have. Okay, so Jennifer Lawrence stars in the movie Joy, and and I'll get her last name wrong, it's Mingiano or something like that. But Joy is like, and the movie's great because it sort of sets the scene. But she's basically her her, she's divorced, her ex-husband lives downstairs in the basement. I think her dad is Robert De Niro in the movie. Anyway, her parents are divorced and they don't get along, but they're also in the, you know, the dad moves back in downstairs in the basement with the ex-husband. She's got a couple kids, she's got this grandmother that she loves who then dies. And she's always been an inventor her whole life. She's been this inventor. And her dad gets a new girlfriend, she's Italian, and they go, and this is a true story. And they go on a boat, and the Italian girlfriend says, You can do anything, but just don't bring red wine. She brought red wine, the and or the dad brought red wine. The wine breaks on the deck of this boat. It's got this cherry wood, right? And she's she's mopping it up with a glass, with uh, with a regular mop, and then she's mopping all the glass up. And then when she goes to wring it out, she she rips all of her hands from wringing it out. So then what's amazing about this story is she thinks in her mind there's got to be a better way to do a mop where she doesn't have to ring it out with her hands, like a self-ringing mop, a self-cleaning mop. So she goes to town, she creates this in her head. There's all sorts of things that happen. A company tries to steal her idea, yada, yada, yada. Anyway, she ends up going on QVC, she ends up becoming very, very successful, and then she ends up um helping a whole bunch of other women become entrepreneurs. Now, I was doing the same thing with her book. I was reading it. It was a really difficult time in my business. And at the very end of her book, I mean, I was listening to it on Audible. At the very end of her book, she has like a dear listener, and she starts telling you, like, if you're in this position and if you think it's hopeless, and if you and she starts speaking right to where I was, and I was just floods of tears. I'm running along. I'm like, you know, she's speaking to me. And it was such those were those were two books I vividly remember where I was when I was reading them and the impact that they had on my life. And and bearing in mind, this was probably like in the last like five to ten, well, definitely five to six years, and there's been an explosion of books written by women that are successful, but there weren't at that time. There were very few books, and I've read them all. So a lot of these books, like Shonda Rhymes' book, The Year of Yes, that's a more recent book. There's much, there's many more books that are coming out now. But but you know, six, seven years ago, there were not women selling billion-dollar businesses. And you know, that's really cool that there are now. And I do hope Sarah Blakely writes a book. I did, I read, I listened to a case study on her, which is why I know so much about her, but I'd love for her to actually write a book. Yeah. But you know, these these are gifts that women who've gone before us have passed on to us when they write their words down. So those are two that I highly recommend. And I can't remember what you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 35:02

I would be I've I've made a few notes here, but I'm gonna be watching this again so that I can stop and and make those notes because there's some fabulous stories.

SPEAKER_00 35:15

Absolutely. So well, if you if you go to techpicly.com forward slash joybook club, I have about a hundred books that are Oh, I did notice that you had books there.

SPEAKER_01 35:24

Okay, perfect. I'll do that. So, Joy, tell tell us what my audience is 99% female. So tell us what you do to help us.

SPEAKER_00 35:35

Okay, so I have three ways that I help women. So I do social media coaching and training, which now is going to be shifting to AI coaching and training because that's where the world's going.

AI Skills And Bias To Watch

SPEAKER_00 35:47

And actually, quite frankly, a lot of social media is now uh infused with AI, so it's sort of a perfect bridge. I do business coaching and training, and then I also do life coaching and training. So I have sort of three, you know, and leadership training now is we're we're doing that on this the B2B side, but B2C, business to consumer, where you're talking directly to the woman that's life coaching, business coaching, and social media coaching with AI.

SPEAKER_01 36:12

Perfect. AI is, I know when AI first came out, because I've been doing books since 2019. So before it's AI kind of got there, and I never, you know, our covers were never done with AI. And, you know, it was uh I had in my agreement that, you know, they're not, you know, that everything is their words and stuff. And then I realized that I need to make an adjustment. And so now we do. So now, so now we know, and and people disclose because I have to disclose on Amazon if we're putting those books on there. But you I find you just need to figure out how you can work it in your business. It's not going away. No, it is what it is. It's and and it's a great tool. It is really a great tool and very helpful, but but it's not going away.

SPEAKER_00 37:03

Yeah, I mean, it's like social media a decade ago, right? Like every everyone needed to be on social media a decade ago, everyone needs to now be on it, you know, and and it's not just about like using AI, it's building with AI and it's being found with AI. So you've got to think about it like AEO, which is AI, you know, engine optimization. So there's a big shift that's happening right now. And, you know, the traditional ways that people find people is changing. And also there's an interesting thing happening on social media, which is people are now overloaded on social media, so they're spending less time on it, ironically, because more content can be churned out more quickly. And there's a lot of social studies that say that when people get overwhelmed, they retreat. And we're starting to see that on social media as well. So there is this very interesting thing happening, and I don't know the answer. I don't think that even the people at the top of the food chain know the answer. But I will say I'm watching Anthropic and what they're doing. They own Claude and they have a very different approach to how they're building things and you know, making sure that it's AI for, you know, for the human good, which is not always the case with AI. And so, you know, I think there's I think I think it's and it's important to understand Anthropic is co-owned by a co-founded by a brother and a sister, and many of their leadership positions are female. And so, you know, when you're looking about and when you're looking into consuming AI and which AIs you use, you want to look at the team behind it, who's developing it, is their female representation? Because, you know, it's really interesting. I did a, I did a on my I do a boot camps, and on one of my boot camps, I was teaching women how to create AI generated images that they could put on their vision board. And I gave them all this, I gave AI all these descriptions. We were using Gemini for this particular experiment. And I said, you know, I'm 46, I'm blonde, I'm blue-eyed, like I'm working on a computer, I've got like a light and a microphone, and you know, so we wanted it to create this picture. I never said the gender. And it didn't ask me the gender. And when it published the picture, it was a man. Interesting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:08

So the biases interesting.

SPEAKER_00 39:10

The biases are real. And and so it, you know, educating yourself on AI and making sure that you're, you know, that you're you're making sure you're specific about the AIs you're using and you know, all those things. So yes.

SPEAKER_01 39:24

Wow. It that's so interesting. Well, everyone, we're almost out of time, but I want you all to know that I'm gonna have Joy's information in the show notes so that if you want to reach out to her to or go to her website, see if she's got some things that can help you or you want to work with her, we will have that information there so that you can go ahead and and reach out. So, Joy, I have really appreciated you doing this. And thank you for being so open and in what you're sharing. I I do have one last question for you. And I want to know what you would say to a woman who is in midlife who feels she's lost herself.

SPEAKER_00 40:09

That's a very valid feeling. Yeah, that's the first thing I would say. If you feel like you've

Feeling Lost And Rebuilding A Vision

SPEAKER_00 40:15

lost yourself, it's you're probably right. Yeah, and that's okay. Yeah. Uh I think it's important to validate feelings. You know, when someone feels that way, go, you know, I I hear you, you know. And yeah, but then I would say you don't have to stay that way, right? There is so much opportunity available to you right now. And there's never been a better time to be a woman in terms of financial prosperity and bus, you know, business building and all of those things. And so I would really say to that person, you know, spend a little bit of time, we talked about this earlier, but spend a little bit of time, what are your longings and discontents? And really focus on love and relationships, time and money freedom, vocation and creative expression, and health and well-being. What are your longing and discontent? And then leverage that to rewrite a vision, right? So, for example, perimenopause, right? Like let's just talk about that for a second. Because I got hit with it really early. I'm 46. I went through it, I started going through it at 41. It lasts five to 10 years. So I'm either halfway through or I'm done, but I'm pretty sure I'm halfway through. I got probably got another five years to go.

SPEAKER_02 41:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:26

There's all sorts of things that happen in perimenopause. And one of the things that happened was calcium deposits in my knee. Now, I didn't know it was perimenopause related, but when I started, you know, when I was about 41 and I was working on my vision, one of the things that really bothered me was I had I had pain in my knee. Now I was a full-time athlete. I had done trained for the Olympics for archery. I had then I was a rower. I I then switched to triathlon. I did the Iron Man for my 40th birthday, and then I was doing marathons. And I was so suddenly I couldn't run. Suddenly it was painful to even walk up the stairs. I rested my knee thinking, for a year, maybe two years, you know, thinking, oh, you know, it'll get better. And then never did. And so I had I so my longing and discontent was that my knee was painful, right? My vision was that my knee was fully healed and that I was doing all the things that I loved doing, climbing mountains with my kids, doing yoga, Pilates, you know, and even at that point I hadn't on, I hadn't had it on my vision, but was to do, you know, strength training and other things. But in my vision, it was Pilates yoga, climbing mountains with my kids. So I focused on that vision. And then you ask yourself every day, what's one action step I can take towards that vision? And things magically start to appear because what you're doing is you're turning on a part of your brain called the particular activating system. So you're focused on climbing mountains with your kids, you're focused on doing Pilates and yoga, and your brain starts to go, okay, how do I make that happen? You know, I'm focused on healing my knee. How do I make that happen? In my case, someone sent me a podcast. They were talking about a frozen shoulder and they were talking about calcium deposits. And I was like, hang on, you know, if you can get calcium deposits in your shoulder, you can get calcium deposits in your knee. So I went and I booked an x-ray through my GP, which is uh in the UK, it's your your doctor. And sure enough, I had calcium deposits in my knee. And I then went to back to the doctor. I made a case. I said, calcium deposits are a big part of perimenopause. I think I'm in perimenopause. I've got all these other symptoms. And I said, I want to go on HRT. And the female doctor said, No, you're too young because I was 41. And I said, I want to speak to another doctor. So I spoke to another doctor. I went in and I said, This is what's wrong with me. This is what I need. I've read all these books, Dr. Mary Claire Haver's book, The New Menopause. I read The Menopause Brain by Dr. Lisa Miskoney. And I went in very educated. And I said, because in the UK, you've got to, it's a it's public health insurance, so you have to really advocate for yourself. And I went in and I said, I've got, I've got, I'm going through perimenopause. I need HRT. This is what I need. I even knew what medications I needed. And they were like, Okay, we'll get you started. And they got me started. And within six months, I could I could climb mountains, I could run. All those pain knee things that I had went away. So what I'm saying here is if you feel lost and if you feel like you've lost yourself, fine, great. We now have a starting point. Okay. Now go into the long discontent. What is the longing and discontent? Okay, great. We know what's we know what we don't want. Now what would we love? Right. And then once you turn on the reticular activating system and you start focusing on this is what I would love. I would love an intimate relationship with my husband, which a lot of people in midlife have stopped having. Once you get focused on what you would love, then things start to happen. You're paying attention and you will get knowledge downloads and conversations will align and you will be going in the right direction, and opportunities will show up for you to bring about the vision that you would love. So that's what I would say to a woman who feels lost. Acknowledge it, but don't camp there. Let's let's let's put a stake in the ground and say, Yeah, that was, you know, that was then, this is now, and I'm moving forward with my life. And yeah, you know, the best is yet to come. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 45:13

Well, thank you so much, Joy. I you've just been so forthcoming with with your knowledge, your wisdom. And I I do books. I can't even remember who the authors are in my book and who

Final Takeaways And Goodbye

SPEAKER_01 45:28

wrote in my books, let alone what you're remembering. I'm just in, I'm like, okay, Julie, you gotta pick up the pick up the slack here.

SPEAKER_00 45:35

Some of you have a photographic memory. I have like an autographic memory. If I hear it, I'm it's in.

SPEAKER_01 45:41

Got it, got it. So don't don't beat ourselves up out there, ladies. Don't beat yourself up. Yeah, we're listening to Joy. It's one of my two superpowers, I think. Yeah. Oh, well, thank you so much. I appreciate you doing this. And and uh thank you all for being here for another episode of Women Like Me Stories in Business. And we will see you again. Take care, everybody.