Season 3 | Episode 6 | Underinsured & Unprotected: What Women in Business Are Missing

Host Trudy Heins welcomes award-winning insurance specialist Trish Gregory of Hayes and Co Insurance Services to discuss why women often delay personal insurance and the risks of being underinsured, especially for business owners without sick pay, holiday pay, or work cover.

Trish shares how her partner’s military injury and income protection shaped her focus on insurance, and explains common misconceptions such as relying on a higher-earning partner or default cover through super.

Trudy and Trish outline a streamlined remote advice process, the importance of pre-assessment, and how exclusions and benefit periods (e.g., two-year income protection) can leave people exposed.

The episode distinguishes personal versus business insurance, including key person cover, business expenses insurance, and buy-sell agreements, and emphasises niching, support networks, and valuing women’s unpaid and paid contributions.


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00:00 Women’s Hidden Value

00:46 Podcast Season Intro

01:34 Meet Trish Gregory

03:35 Why Insurance Matters

05:09 Niching Into Insurance

07:55 Why Women Delay Cover

10:08 Making Insurance Simple

14:24 Insurance for Business Owners

16:49 Key Person and Buy Sell

18:45 Super vs Business Cover

21:20 When It All Goes Wrong

22:16 When Benefits Run Out

23:12 Two Year Cover Trap

24:45 Where to Start Today

27:27 Why Specialist Advice Matters

28:58 Exclusions and How to Remove Them

30:00 Building Sustainable Businesses

31:50 Common Owner Mistakes

34:03 Niching for Impact

35:08 Optimism for Women Ahead

37:55 Final Push to Get Insured

38:57 Closing and Call to Action


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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

As a society, we underplay how much value women bring to society, to the households. Because there's a lot of unpaid labour that we do. And especially because stereotypically, maybe not in this cohort that's listening, but stereotypically, in a heterosexual relationship, the woman will be earning less than a man. And the common phrase that I hear is well, if I as a woman am unable to work, we can still live on his income. So we don't need to get me income protection, but we should get him income protection. And then I have to go through a process of educating them about actually, you know, if one person is injured and unable to work on a permanent basis, there's a higher likelihood of you getting care of burnout.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Welcome to Fampire Rising, the podcast for women who are serious about building strong, profitable, sustainable businesses. I'm your host, Trudy Hines, the CEO of Fempire, business coach and mentor. And here we are in season three. This season we are bringing you the women behind the infrastructure of business, the experts in marketing, finance, systems, strategy, visibility, and design who help businesses grow properly. Because building a business takes more than passion, it takes structure, it takes smart decisions, and it takes the right support around you. So if you're ready to think bigger, operate better, and build a business with real substance behind it, you're in the right place. Let's get into today's episode. Hello and welcome to the Empire Rising Podcast, Her Future, Her Voice. This podcast is all about the women behind the expertise, structure, and support that help each other and other women build strong businesses and make smarter strategic decisions. And one of the things I know for sure is this. Given my background as an ex-financial planner, building something meaningful is not just about growth, it's about underpinning that with protection. So today's guest is someone whose work sits in an area where many women know they should sort it out, but often delay until life forces the issue. Trish Gregory is an award-winning insurance specialist with Hayes Co. Insurance Services. With close to a decade in financial advice and a strong background as a certified financial planner, Trish now specialises in personal insurance advice, helping individuals, families, and business owners protect their income, health, and future. She was named Advisor of the Year related to risk insurance in the 2025 Australian Wealth Management Awards and is known for making insurance feel clearer, more practical, and far less overwhelming. So today we're going to talk about her journey into insurance, why so many women avoid or delay getting the right cover in place, the risks women in business face when they are not properly protected, and what women need to understand earlier if they want to build something sustainable and secure. Trish, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me, Trudy. It is wonderful to be here. Oh, it's our pleasure. And I must also add to that, Trish is part of our FemPy collective as well. So before we dive into the bigger conversation, I always like to start by letting listeners get to know you a little bit more. So for those meeting you for the first time, can you share a little bit about your background and what led you to specialise in insurance?

SPEAKER_00 3:35

I can. I never thought insurance was important when I was younger, sort of starting out. I don't think anyone, everyone thinks they're invincible. However, I got into financial advice when my partner was medically discharged from the military. Actually, I had been the stay-at-home parent before then to our kids, following him around Australia with his job. And what happened was he was injured and unable to continue to work in the military. And we said, Oh, well, I guess you're going to be the stay-at-home parent, and I will be the employed parent, which is very fun. And one of life's great pivots, hey. And I'm so not that I'm thankful that he got injured, but I'm thankful for that opportunity to pivot. Absolutely. Because then I decided to get into financial advice. Then I did about eight years in holistic financial advice, always doing insurance through that for clients where it was appropriate. But the reason I've specialized is because I know how important insurance is. So there's a number of reasons why I specialise. Number one is my partner was on military form of income protection payments, which meant that he was a stay-at-home parent for 10 years and he's only just gone back to employment this year, which has been such an incredible gift for us to just reduce the level of stress. I mean, we have three kids now, so stress is abundant, but reduce the level of stress for finances.

SPEAKER_01 4:53

Financial stress, I think, is as we know, is one of the critical things though. Yeah, so much, so much.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

And so I've always, you know, since that happened, I've always gone, yes, actually, insurance is really important. It's made a huge difference in my life. And then when I was looking for my next role end of 2024, I actually had my current employer, she said, Oh, Trish, you know, I heard you're looking for a job. Had you thought about doing insurance only? I was like, Oh, well, I really enjoy doing holistic financial advice. I love getting into the nitty-gritty with people. Yeah, why not? We'll see how it goes. And actually, it has been way better than expected because I now truly believe that niching is the way to go. Like we talk to that a lot in FemPy. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Like you can't be everything. And insurance has always been one of those things for financial advisors that is the frustrating part. It takes a long time, it's very complex. You get underwriting, and people come back with a no, and then you're like, oh God, I have to do the whole thing again. Whereas now that I'm in specializing in insurance, it is so much easier. It's so much quicker for clients, and then also I get them better outcomes than I could do if I was doing all of their advice.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

I guess it gives you a much more honed skill set, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 6:09

And exactly, that's right. So I can go deep into the PDSs and take my time with that. I know all of my BDMs and my insurance underwriters very, very well. I know the product very well. Which one's going to be better for a lawyer versus a carpenter? And so it really allows me to take a lot of shortcuts, I suppose, because I don't have to constantly be relearning. I'm like, I already know this scenario. I've been through it so many times with clients that I just go, I know this is going to be the best insurer because of all of this experience that I've had that's so specific.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

And that's great because I think your insurance has, and obviously coming from a background that I had as well, insurance was something that I always believed was truly important. And it is a really high reward when you have put in place insurance for a client and they need it. Yes. It's one of those things that you ultimately advise on that you hope they won't, but when you do, you really understand why it is that you do that kind of work. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 7:12

It's very bittersweet. You're like, I'm really sad that you've been injured or and unable to work or have cancer or something like that. But I'm so glad that we had that conversation. And now you get this payout or you get this income on an ongoing basis so that you can just focus on treatment. You can focus on life and family and not have to stress about, well, I still need to work while I'm feeling absolutely exhausted while I'm trying to recover.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

And look, I think it's such an important conversation because insurance is one of those things that people know matters. We all insure houses, cars, boats, whatever the case may be. And again, the most valuable asset we often don't insure. Why do you think women put that in the too hard basket?

SPEAKER_00 7:53

Yeah, two reasons. Well, a couple of reasons. So if we're talking generally about people, we would say that first of all, nobody wants to think about their demise or um not being able to continue. The fallibility. The fallibility, exactly. So no one wants to think about that. And then second of all, it is the people that say, Oh yeah, I should do it. It just sits on their to-do list for so long. I have people come to me that say, Oh, I've been meaning to do this for five years. It's sitting there, and then I heard you on a podcast, and it finally motivated me to book in. So it sits there as I know I need to do it, I'll get around to it. And then it just sort of continues on. From a women's perspective, as a society, we underplay how much value women bring to society, to the households. Because there's a lot of unpaid labor that we do. And especially because stereotypically, maybe not in this cohort that's listening, but stereotypically in a heterosexual relationship, the woman will be earning less than a man. And the common phrase that I hear is, well, if I as the woman am unable to work, we can still live on his income. So we don't need to get me income protection, but we should get him income protection. And then I have to go through a process of educating them about actually, you know, if one person is injured and unable to work on a permanent basis, there's a high likelihood of you getting care of burnout or coming down with something and also being unable to work. Absolutely. And then also who knows what can happen from a divorce or separation or abuse scenario, your partner dying too young. All of those things are possible. Of course, as an advisor, especially insurance, I think about the worst things happening, and I'm protecting against that. There's a lot of reasons why I think we delay. We prioritize ourselves last, we put everyone first. And then also there's the cost. As women, we don't get paid as much, which means that our income needs to be stretched further. And then if you add on insurances, it just has to get stretched even further. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

Okay. And can we just, I guess, very quickly dispel some myths around how hard it is to go through the process with you. So potentially it is not hours and hours and hours. It is a meeting with you, and how does that process play out? Just so that people hopefully, if that's the one hurdle of I don't have time, it's going to take me forever to put this in place. Yeah. How can you dispel that for them?

SPEAKER_00 10:27

We do try to keep it as minimal as possible because we know that it's not the most exciting thing for people, although I love it. Not a lot of other people do. Our process specifically is that we have an hour meeting, uh, and it's all remote, so you don't need to stress about where you are or what you're wearing or who you're breastfeeding or any of that sort of stuff. Don't care. So it's an hour meeting to sort of get all of the information because it is personal financial advice, it is understanding your situation and then what is appropriate for you, rather than saying, Oh, here's two million dollars of life insurance, you should have an ask that's two million. Exactly. That's right. And so it's a one-hour meeting, then it's like a half-hour meeting to sort of confirm we like our clients to we like to give them options. So if say all of the insurance, if we at tally everything up that you would need if you were to pass away, or your partner would need if you were to pass away, and it comes to two million dollars of life insurance. Well, we'll show you quotes for like two million and then 1.5 million and 1 million so that you can figure out what's right for you on a cost versus benefit scenario and deciding what you're going to insure yourself or not worry about. Because I think everyone needs to be um empowered to make their own decisions. Ultimately, it's you and your life and your protection. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

And then from an advice, you provide the guidance, and I think that's one of the things that's really important from an advice perspective is traditionally it used to be you will do this, and this is what I'm telling you to do. And if you don't, there is no options. Where from what you're saying is that you're collaborative in that here's the guidance that I'm providing you, here's the parameters. Yeah, you get a say in what this looks like for you. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 12:13

That's right. And some people say, look, it's just too expensive, which is totally fine. Some people say, Oh my gosh, it's so cheap. Let's get it all. It kind of depends on your, again, your personal scenario. And then the final meeting is the statement of advice, so the formal advice and recommendations and the application. So all of that we can control. We do the pre-assessment, which is assessing medically what the scenarios would be, whether you'd have exclusions, which means you're not covered for something, most common being a mental health exclusion. Or a loading, which just means it's going to cost more than someone who doesn't have a loading. So higher risk, yeah. Yes, exactly. So we're figuring all that out well before in advance. And so the application is actually really simple because we already know your medical scenario. We already know what we're expecting, unless something pops up that you forgot to tell us, which does happen. Um, an application for insurance can be as quick as half an hour. It can take an hour and a half if you have like a bunch of medical things because there's more questions to answer and those sorts of things. That's all the stuff we can control. Then it goes to the insurer and that can take a bit more time. It can be instant. I had an instant one yesterday. They said yes, accept it on the spot. Or they might have to go to your doctor or your specialist and get reports, get a blood test from you, urine test from you, those sorts of things. So that can be like a week or two weeks. That can be, gosh, three months, six months, if your doctor is really annoying and doesn't give us the insurer the information that they need.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

But I guess ultimately that's not the time commitment from your client. So correct, correct. That's just uh setting an expectation as opposed to, and as I said, it's trying to take away potentially those hurdles because we, you know, and we'll talk about women in business in a minute, but they are super busy competing priorities, and if it's only going to take a short period of their time, the rest is, you know, like anything we outsource. Exactly. That's right. 100%. So, and as I alluded to, for women in business, obviously insurance becomes even more important because they're not underpinned by sick pay, holiday pay, work cover often, you know. When your income depends on you, the risk is obviously a whole lot greater. What are you seeing when it comes to women in business about being underinsured or not protected? When come to you, are you seeing that this is a common theme or yes.

SPEAKER_00 14:39

Yes. Unless they already have an advisor or they're within a group that, you know, points out the importance of it, they're usually very underinsured and it can be quite scary. So what I try to help people understand is so there's two different things. If you're in a business where the income could continue for quite a while without you, say you're a co-owner, you've got multiple staff that are income producing, that's a different story to a sole trader or someone who's, you know, in a business like a company structure still, but it's all on you. Yes. The insurers look at it differently. And so we need to have a think about what is your structure within the business, how tenuous is that income and how tied is it to your personal exertions, and then figure out what's going to be best for you. So it may be that if you're a sole trader or you have a company structure, but it's just you or you and an admin support member or something like that, it might be that we go down the traditional route of income protection, TPD, trauma, and life insurance. If you have a business that where income can manage, go on an ongoing basis or for a significant amount of time without you, then we may be limited to what we can get from an income protection perspective. So we also need to take into consideration if the business, say there's more than one person, we also want to look at if you're unable to work for a period of time, there's things like, are you the key person in the business? Because you can get key person insurance. Do you need sometimes so that the business expenses can continue to be paid? Business expense insurance. So we have all of those as well that we need to take into consideration. But most people in business are underinsured. However, we do take into account if they have buy-sell agreements, for example. That was a question. Yeah. Jump the gun for you. That's okay. No, that's fabulous. If you do have a good buy-sell agreement, then you're out of the business for six months and still unable to work. So this buy-sell agreement comes into place. So the co-owners can take over the business and you can go on your merry little way with the money. Again, that's a different scenario and how the insurer would look at you and assess your situation of what you can and can't get.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

Yeah. Okay. And what about things like key person insurance? So often a business may actually have the business owner working in it, but there is a role, you know, whether that be a business manager or something else, or, you know, they have a national business and they have other people in there. Can you talk us through how that potentially could look and feel and where that might be underdone as well?

SPEAKER_00 17:19

Yes. So when we're thinking about a business where someone will, if they left, they would take so much information with them. And they would take so much knowledge, or you know, if they were injured or something like that, they would take so much knowledge and the business would struggle to run without them, as opposed to them being easily replaced with another person who knows how to do the job. We want to have something called key person insurance in place. And really that is an injection of money into the business in order to compensate for the loss of knowledge, the loss of that expertise so that the business will probably lose some money by losing that person if you know they get cancer, they pass away or things like that. And so it's just to compensate for knowing that the business will lose revenue or will you lose value because that person has left.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

I guess it also gives you the capital to be able to bring in maybe somebody to hold the fort until you find the right person. Or so there's lots of options around that. And I think it's really important. One of the things that I think people do confuse, and I'm sure you see this time and time again, is personal insurance that they have through their superannuation and business insurance. So can you talk to that? Do you have any thoughts around, I guess, how we can position that differently so that people really understand what you've got in your super is not going to help you. Well, potentially if it's you, but is not going to necessarily help you with your business.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

Absolutely. And I think the key thing is you have to think about the scenario of if this were to happen, right? Because we can talk about hypotheticals. Oh, of course I would. But if you think I'm never working again in any job, I'm so injured or ill that I cannot work even in my own job. And we know that business owners will work through a lot more and do a lot more even when injured, or try and find ways around. So when we're thinking about personal insurance, you're going, well, this is just for you and your life to pay your bills, to make sure you've got medical treatment, to pay off your mortgage so that you have more cash flow coming through. And it's really if you were to become unable to work, you want that money for you. You want to be very precious of it. You're like, this is just me. I need to look after me. This is my future. Yes, exactly. That's right. Whereas the business insurance is about the business's future and making sure that that business can continue to run. So if it is one and the same and your business is more a job that you do for yourself rather than an asset that you're building, personal insurance may be enough. Potentially you might say, Well, if I had to, I could sort of walk away from my business. If I still had income coming in, you know, that's the worst case scenario and that's fine. Whereas if it's a business where maybe the business is part of your retirement plan, being able to sell that business, or there's significant people that you need to pay, the business insurance is where that protects the business and protects the people that you're paying and protects the running of that business either until you can get better and supporting you to put someone in place to continue that business to run if that's necessary. And then also potentially keeping that business running until you can get a buyer to be able to exit the business and take your capital.

SPEAKER_01 20:38

Great, great. So realize that investment that you've placed into the business. So that's a great explanation. Thank you. And I think that hopefully clears up, but I have it in my super argument. So okay, so without sharing anything confidential, have you seen a time where somebody hasn't had insurance and it's all come undone? Can you give us an example of that?

SPEAKER_00 21:02

Yeah, absolutely. So the most common time that people think about their insurance is when they need to claim, which is the absolute worst time to go and look at your insurance. And I have. I had a lovely lady who got cancer, breast cancer, it was pretty severe, but she beat the cancer. She went through treatment. So her income protection started. She went through the treatment. Unfortunately, even though actually she worked in sort of the insurance world, I think in a slightly different insurance, and she had gotten the policy well before I uh got her. She only had a two-year benefit period for her income protection. And so unfortunately for her, it meant that yep, her income went for two years, but she recovered from the cancer. She didn't recover from the cancer treatment. Okay. Which is actually quite a common thing. And so then she didn't have the proper coverage for herself. So after two years, that income stopped. And it took quite a while for her to have the the total and permanent disability paid out. And even then it was some money, like it was a good I think it was six or seven hundred thousand dollars. When you're thinking about you're in your forties and that's the rest of your life and you don't have an income, it suddenly becomes very little. Very little. That's right. And that is it just really puts the pressure on it, puts the stress on you. From a business perspective, I have also seen that. And the worst case scenario is that you just have to shut the business down and you get no money for it, essentially, or very little money for it. Definitely not what you're expecting. And then you have no asset, and then you potentially have no income, and there's nothing you can do about it.

SPEAKER_01 22:37

No, no, the other thing is with that, and you're talking about the two-year benefit period, is often the default income protection insurances that you do get through, you know, whether that be through super or different mechanisms, they are short. Yes. So it is really important to understand that, yes, two years may seem like a wonderful amount of income protection, but the reality of it is, is if it's a long-term condition, that's just not going to cut it for exactly the reasons that you've said that. So, which is you know, again, critical why you need to review these things. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

And it's not to say that you won't recover, like most people recover within two years. It's about 94% of people are on claim for less than two years. Those people that claim. So it's not a high percentage. But the issue is again, we hope no one claims. That would be amazing because it means you're never sick enough to claim. That's the goal. However, if you are one of those unfortunate people that do, like my partner, 10 years before you went back into the workforce, if you get beyond two years, you're probably on a policy for a while. And if you hit two years and that money disappears, just adds so much stress to your life. Yes. When if you're still not able to work after two years, you're probably pretty sick. Yes. And then to have that layer added on, and then you're going to Senlink and saying, hey, Senlink, I need some money. That is a lot less than you were earning.

SPEAKER_01 24:05

Before we jump back in, if you know you need more support in your business, but you are not ready to commit to one-on-one coaching, the FemPyr Academy is your next step. This is our stepping stone program for women who know they need more guidance, more structure, and better support as they grow. Inside, you'll have access to thousands of dollars worth of business training, a monthly QA session with one of our coaches and our sisterhood Facebook group, where we share exclusive content, insight, and support for women building serious businesses. And because you're a podcast listener, you can join with 25% off using the code RISING. You'll find the link in the show notes. Now let's get back to the episode. So for the businesswoman who's listening today and she's now sitting back going, okay, I need to deal with this. I want to make it simple and achievable. We've talked about the process, but they've been putting it off. Where do they start? What do they do?

SPEAKER_00 25:03

They number one should have a look at what they already have. If it's nothing, okay, well, you're underinsured. If it's default, okay, you're most likely underinsured. If you have gone to see a financial advisor or an insurance specialist, or even a general insurance specialist, you might have some insurance and it may be appropriate. If you haven't reviewed it for a while, you might have too much. You might have too little. So this is something that does need to be reviewed every couple of years. It's not like a six-month or a yearly review. So if you need to sort this out but you haven't yet, reach out to an insurance specialist. If you have a financial advisor that does insurance, go and talk to your financial advisor. If you know your family has someone that they're like, oh my God, we love this person and they've got our insurance. Perfect, go and see them. I'm not telling you to come and see me. I'll tell you to come and see me because I love helping them find people. However, you don't need to. I would say I get a lot of people that come to me after they try and do it themselves. And they try to do it themselves either through their industry super fund or directly through an insurer, and then they get knocked back for a variety of reasons that I could have solved for them. So I would much prefer you go to a specialist that charges very little. So I charge $330. That's it. And then we take commissions. Most in advisors will take commission on the insurance. And it's like our mortgage, you know, you sort of get paid the same way. It's just built into it, exactly. So I would say go and see a specialist. It doesn't take too much of your time, it doesn't cost you very much, and then you can know that whatever happens, you can sleep soundly. And the whatever happens is also really important because it can mean things like your family history. So if your sibling gets cancer or your sibling has a heart attack, that may affect your ability to get insurance. If you, like one of my recent clients, got an MS diagnosis at 30 out of the blue, or if you all of a sudden had a blood testing, like, oh my gosh, I'm diabetic or pre-diabetic, that changes the scenario completely for you and what we're actually able to get you. So we want to make sure that if it's on your to-do list, if you haven't done it, if it's something that you think, yes, I would be screwed if I didn't have insurance because you don't have a trust fund or you haven't already built your wealth, just get it sorted. Just do it. Just do it. You know, I'm one of the advisors through the collective and very happy to help you out. Fabulous.

SPEAKER_01 27:29

And I think, yeah, one of the other things that again coming from that place of experience is if you've been somewhere and been knocked back, then you have to disclose that on future applications. So by you trying to do it yourself, you can do yourself a huge disservice. You are much better off talking to a specialist so they can at least then pre-underwrite that and choose the insurance company that's going to potentially view that condition more favorably. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 28:02

That's right. Because for some, like a real life example is I have one insurer, if your mother has had breast cancer at 50, one insurer will say, We're going to have a breast and ovarian cancer exclusion. And another insurer will say, fine, no issue, no exclusion. That's a big exclusion.

SPEAKER_01 28:20

And that's good, right? That's a huge difference between just understanding those two insurance companies. And that probably brings me to my next point, which is if you are trying to do that through your industry superfund and getting advice through there, they are only looking at one insurance company. One company that is underwritten by one other company. So you lose the scope of being able to have not only choice, but the benefit of who may view your situation a little bit more favorably. Exactly. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 28:58

And probably one thing to add on that, so exclusions, which is things that you can't claim on because you have a history of it or whatever. Some of those are reviewable. And if you don't know, reviewable means we can in the future, if you don't need treatment, don't need to continue to see people for this issue, after a certain period of time, we may be able to get those exclusions removed. Fabulous. Like, for example, if you've hurt your knee and go into the physio within the last two years, you'll get a knee exclusion. But after two years, if it's all fine and good, we can get that knee exclusion removed. If you don't know that, if you are only dealing with your own things, you may have a knee exclusion forever. Forever. And if you injure injure your knee again and you can't work, you're like, well, I could have got rid of that for you. And then you could have claimed on it.

SPEAKER_01 29:41

Yeah, yeah. And which again just all comes down to why you need advice and you need advice tailored to your particular circumstances. So it's so personal. Okay. Thank you very much. I think that that really encapsulates the message that I wanted to get across about insurance. One of the things we're focusing on this season is also on what it takes to build a strong, sustainable business. And I'm so I'm going to ask you a few questions that we're asking all of our guests in season three. From your perspective, what is one thing women in business need to understand earlier if they want to build something strong and sustainable?

SPEAKER_00 30:18

Oh, you can't go it alone. It takes a village. It really takes a village. I think you can do it alone. You'll just get the faster if you do it with other people because we don't know what our blind spots are. And being around other amazing people in business, you can have a whinge about something to them and they might say, Oh, we can solve that. Yes. That's an easy fix. And you're like, oh my God, I've been stressing over this for months. And someone who has experienced that before will be able to help you to just solve it easy as pie. That's why.

SPEAKER_01 30:50

You might find that your business yin to your yang. Exactly. That's right. What a great way to put it. Exactly. I think so many women would benefit from hearing that earlier in their journey.

SPEAKER_00 31:04

And I think an important thing is we love to help. I know I personally love to talk to people who are, you know, starting in the financial advice industry and tell them some of the things that I've learned, some of the bad things, a bunch of the good things, being able to help them understand their scenario. And so I I get great joy from that. So you may think, oh, well, I don't want to bother these people, but actually they might be feeling really chuffed that you've asked them questions and they're feeling, oh, I'm very much an expert. I know a lot. It feats our ego. It's great. You're blowing up their ego a little. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:41

And getting help too. It's a win-win. Correct, correct. So in your field, what's one mistake you see business owners make time and time again?

SPEAKER_00 31:51

Oh, the value of the business or how long income will last. Okay. Because if we think about the scenario of you all of a sudden something happens, you have a heart attack, you have a severe cancer, you need to drop everything and stop. What is your business actually worth in essentially a fire sale? Or how long will the income actually continue if you are genuinely at zero? Yes. Exactly. That's right. I was talking with some people the other day and they said in one of the European countries, it's mandatory for the people in the business to take a minimum of a two-week block at once every year of leave because it can help you find fraud or it can help you realize that this person is just managing everything and things would fall apart without them. So you can try and solve that problem.

SPEAKER_01 32:47

That does. Okay. That's actually really great advice, isn't it? In that if you yes, you know, sometimes you you can't see the forest for the trees, and so it creates that opportunity. Okay. What separates the women who build lasting businesses from those who struggle to gain traction?

SPEAKER_00 33:05

Humility, I think, like accepting that you don't know everything. That's the one. Because I f I find it as well. I'm like, oh yeah, I can learn this and I can do this and I can do that and I can do this. And I'm like, no, Trish, you just have to focus. We definitely have shiny thing syndrome. Shiny distraction syndrome. 100%. So I think the focusing on what is it, the minimum viable product to start with, right? Rather than trying to do everything for everyone. It comes down back to that niching that I talked about. Correct. Correct.

SPEAKER_01 33:40

And I think it's not rocket science a lot of the time. The core fundamentals are exactly that. And I hear it with women I talk to across lots of different industries. The core messages are the same. So I I think that's fascinating. What's the one decision or shift that had the biggest impact on your own professional journey? Oh, you know what? I've already said it. Nishing.

SPEAKER_00 34:04

Nishing. Niching. Absolutely niching. Just reinforcing that. Reinforcing that. It literally has not only is it beneficial from a business perspective, so I'm able to know more about my topic and get to know the people in my industry, you know, sort of in this specific world much better. But it also has an impact on my life because I'm not running to a million different things. I don't need to know everything about everything. Everything. You know, I need to have an overview of financial advice. I still love full financial advice. And I still am very much um involved in understanding it all. Of course. And then actually personal. Yeah, exactly. But being able to just focus entirely on this very narrow subset and get really, really good at it. Being great at it. Has been amazing and incredible and impactful.

SPEAKER_01 34:58

Fabulous. So let's zoom out a little and look forward. When you look at the future of women in business, what gives you the most optimism?

SPEAKER_00 35:06

Oh, I think just how far we have come and how we're really only get just getting started. So the conversations that are continuing to happen with, you know, what is it, only 2% of women getting VC funding, it's just becoming louder and louder, which means that people are going to be forced to change and forced to pay attention. You know, I I love how the scales as well are tipping from a part, like the woman doesn't need to stay at home and look after her children. No. I know so many people where the in a heterosexual relationship where the guy is the primary carer.

SPEAKER_01 35:43

So it's giving choice to both parties as to where they want to be and what's going to fulfill their mission in life, I guess, isn't it? Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 35:53

That's right. And like for my family, it was right, you've had your turn. I've been a stay-at-home parent. Now it's my turn. You go be the stay-at-home parent. And now we're both employed. Thankfully, the kids are a tiny bit older, but it's still chaos. So I think that flexibility much more gives me a lot of optimism and the change in the way people perceive who's responsible for what. And therefore, what are we able to do? Because at the end of the day, we all have 24 hours. We all have life to do. I always struggle to read those things where some dude bro is like, we all have 24 hours in the day, and I wake up and I do all these things and I have a nice bath and I go and work and then I meditate. And you're like, take time for night. Yeah. When do you owning? Who buys your onions? Who cleans your house? Who cooks your food? You haven't factored in that. No, no.

SPEAKER_01 36:44

Clearly, you outsource every piece of that.

SPEAKER_00 36:48

Or you have a wife. You have children. Oh yeah, you see them on the weekend for sort of five hours once every weekend. Time block your family in. Yeah. Exactly. Whereas, yeah, you know, women, I mean, I work from home, which means that I get washing done in my breaks. I'll I'll put a load of washing on and then I'll hang it up. And then I'm like, oh my God, it's going to rain. I'd better get them in before I uh Do my next appointment. Before I do my next appointment. You know, it was sort of quite flexible. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:12

And I love that perspective because I think one of the things I truly believe is that when women build strong businesses and protect what they're building, that ripple effect allows them to live the life that they want, need, desire. And it impacts families and communities and generations because our daughters, and you know, in my case, my granddaughters, are seeing that you don't need to go to work in a traditional way. You can meet your passions, but still have time to do these other things. So I think that's critical. Before we wrap up, if there is a woman listening right now who needs to protect herself, her income, or her family, but has not taken action yet, what are you going to say to her?

SPEAKER_00 37:57

It's a hard one because I don't want to scare people. No. Uh, but the reality is if I need to say to women like you are important, your income and what you bring to the table in a relationship or for yourself is really important. You insure your car, you insure your contents, you might insure your pet. Do you know how much money you're missing out on if you can't work and you don't insure your biggest asset, which is your ability to earn an income. It's millions of dollars. Millions of dollars that you miss out on. So you need to protect yourself over the house, the car, the pet. You need to make sure you're protecting yourself because living on Centlink or setting up a GoFundMe is not the vibe that we want for women in 2026.

SPEAKER_01 38:46

Absolutely. Thank you so much for joining me today and for sharing your perspective. This has been such an important conversation because protection is one of those things that does not always feel urgent until it is. And to everyone listening, if this episode has resonated, share it with another woman in business who needs to hear it. Because the stronger and better protected we are, the more powerfully we can lead. Thank you for it. Thank you. Bye. Thanks for being here for another episode of Vampire Rising. If this conversation gave you value, challenged your thinking, or helped you see your next move more clearly, share this episode with another woman in business who needs to hear it. We'll include the links to our guest in the show notes so you can connect with them directly and learn more about their work. Make sure you're following the podcast, and I'll see you in the next episode.