#awinewith Kate Toon

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MEET Kate, Founder of Stay Tooned Inc.

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Transcript

Danielle Lewis (00:07):

Kate, welcome to Spark tv. Woo,

Kate Toon (00:11):

Good to be here.

Danielle Lewis (00:12):

I'm so excited to have you on the show. You are. So who knows when anybody will be listening to this, but you are the first recording for the year. It's the 2nd of January. It's 10 o'clock in the morning for me. So we are first cabs off the rank. I'm excited to chat.

Kate Toon (00:30):

This is my first conversation with another business human this year, so it's pretty excited. Thanks.

Danielle Lewis (00:36):

Well, I'm very honored that it's us.

Kate Toon (00:38):

Awesome.

Danielle Lewis (00:40):

So let's start just by telling everyone who you are and what you do.

Kate Toon (00:43):

So my name is Kate Toon and I would call myself a business mentor and a digital marketing coach. I've evolved over the years, I've done many different things, but that's kind of where I'm sitting right now.

Danielle Lewis (00:58):

Amazing. Now what does that mean exactly? So who are your customers? How do you help them? I can see you have a book behind you, which I need to add to my stack of books behind me.

Kate Toon (01:10):

Huge stack. Yeah. Yeah. So look, over the years, I've done lots of different things. I've been a copywriter, an SEO consultant, but in the time of running my business, I've done pretty much everything, memberships and masterminds. I've written books, I've got podcasts, I've done conferences. I've overcome big money hurdles and productivity hurdles, but a profile, yada, yada, yada. So after so many years, I wanted to move into more of a generalist mentoring approach. Don't really like calling myself a coach, and that's a whole different conversation. I feel coaches have a bit of a bad rep, nearly as bad as SEO consultants. So it's more about being a cheerleader, leading by example. So I'm still very much in the arena doing the things. And I guess my superpower or my area expertise is digital marketing, really learning how to use all the different channels, all the opportunities in an efficient way and not becoming totally overwhelmed by it.

Danielle Lewis (02:08):

I love it. And that's so easy to be overwhelmed by all of the things, isn't it?

Kate Toon (02:13):

Yes, absolutely.

Danielle Lewis (02:14):

And I note you've got in your book title, it seems to be specifically targeted towards women moms. Do you serve everybody or do you particularly focus on women in business?

Kate Toon (02:28):

No, absolutely not. I mean, I actually made a choice for the title to say how to be a successful parent rather than be a successful mom. No, I actually am not a fan. I mean, I understand why there are female only spaces, but I find we get a lot of great energy in my membership in my communities, from the men, gay, straight, whatever. They bring a different vibe, and I like to have a kind of inclusive and diverse range of customers. So no, definitely not just moms. I mean, I think I speak from the experience of being a mom, but I know for that particular book, six figures in School Hours, I really wanted to acknowledge that there's a lot of dads doing a lot of hard work as well. I would say that more of the load seems to fall on moms, but there are some good dads out there too.

Danielle Lewis (03:15):

Yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting, isn't it? I think that we've kind of flip flop a little bit between being super focused on women's only groups and then having the diverse, it's really interesting. I'm kind of hopeful that there are enough things out there that we can satisfy all needs at the moment.

Kate Toon (03:35):

I think it's interesting because I think the pendulum has to swing, right? So for a long time there were no spaces for women at all, and we didn't have a voice and we didn't have communities, and it was very male dominated, and now it's swung to the other side where there are lots of places for women and to a degree men are almost excluded from them and maybe it'll end up somewhere in the middle. I totally see the value of having women's only groups, but for me especially, I think because I've come from very male dominated industries, SEO often, I was the only woman in a room, so I'm kind of comfortable around that male energy. I think males benefit from females in business and vice versa, and we're moving into a bit of a gender fluid environment anyway, so it all becomes a bit moot.

Danielle Lewis (04:17):

Yeah, that's actually such an interesting point. I remember I was trying to buy the Scrunch team, so Scrunch is my other business gifts one year, and I was like, oh, for the girls, it's so easy. Business chicks, memberships, easy peasy. And the guy's like, what do you guys have now? It was quite funny that their pendulum has swung a little bit.

Kate Toon (04:37):

Absolutely.

Danielle Lewis (04:38):

Well, and actually in fact, the boys get in trouble now if there's boys only groups. So it's It's a funny time. Literal we live, isn't it? Yeah.

Kate Toon (04:48):

And I think, as I said, I think the pendulum needed to swing that way because women have had a nose face for so long. So if we've got a few spaces of our own right now, we'll just get over it. Totally.

Danielle Lewis (05:00):

No, I love it. I love it. So now you mentioned being copywriter, SEO specialist. Were you working for other people or have you always been in your own business? Talk me through career here.

Kate Toon (05:12):

Yeah. Oh God, no. I took a very traditional route of getting a proper job. I worked in events and then I worked in advertising agencies for a long time. The big ones like Ogilvy advertising.com, generally as a producer, project manager, running big projects. I moved into copywriting while at Ogilvy working for Amex and Telstra, and then back to a managerial role in a digital marketing agency, which was horrific. Sorry to my old boss, Steve. It was great. And then I got pregnant and I knew it had taken me a long time to get pregnant, and I didn't think it was going to happen. So I felt like it was a sign from the gods that I should take a different path. So when I was about five months pregnant, I set up my own business doing everything. I had no idea what I was doing, and the rest is history. So I took the leap there, not because I was brave or because I had a plan, but because I was up the duff and needed to earn some money. And I've kind of built the bicycle as I've ridden it, worked it out as I've gone along.

Danielle Lewis (06:15):

And do you think that, I guess having that background, that skillset sort of made the process slightly easier, sort of being able to pick a path? Or do you think it was just as difficult?

Kate Toon (06:26):

Yeah, I think, look, we all leave our real life jobs if we have them with skills. I definitely had some great soft skills in terms of diplomacy and project management and relationship building, and I had some firm marketing skills in terms of writing and creativity and briefing, and I think really a work ethic because in agency world, you work very, very hard long hours. So I think I definitely left with skills. Did they make starting a business easy? Absolutely not. I mean, a lot of them were actually useless. I had no idea how to manage my money, how to self-promote as a person, how to build a website, how I didn't have the skills, the basics to run a small business, but I learned them along the way.

Danielle Lewis (07:12):

And did you have a strategy around that? Was it just literally, oh shit, I need to do this now, or how did you learn those skills?

Kate Toon (07:19):

Yeah, I mean, I've never had a strategy. I'm not a planner, which is very counter to what a lot of business coaches would say. Have a plan, have a business plan, have a strategy, work out who your ideal customer avatar is, all that kind of stuff. I never did any of that, and I still don't to this day. I still don't. I've done a rough outline of what's going to happen in 2024, but I don't know. And I think plans give you the illusion of control and people get very attached to them. And for me, most of the best things in my business were not planned. They were the shiny objects, they were the road less traveled. And if I'd been so stuck with a plan, I think I would've missed them. But that approach, that iterative experimental approach means it takes a bit longer and you make a few more mistakes. So I've never had a business coach. I've never read really a business book, although I've got a big stack of them. I don't like them. I like reading novels. I was in one membership for about six months, nine years ago. I'm not someone that likes to be told what to do even by myself,

(08:23):

Which can be problematic. But it's modeled along all right so far.

Danielle Lewis (08:29):

Well, and that's interesting, isn't it? I'm just more and more leaning into do it your own way. I just feel like if you look around or look hard enough, there is an example of somebody who has been a success in every different way, shape, or form the person. There's six figures in school hours, or the annoying people that wake up at 5:00 AM every day and journal and do they do, or the people that work late at night, there is always an example of somebody that's been a success. So I think you're right. Having that tie down to something that is, unless you do X, Y, and Z, you are not going to be a success. It's probably a little bit dangerous.

Kate Toon (09:11):

Well, I think, yeah, it's so funny because I'm literally writing my next book in the middle of writing it when we called and I'm having a bit of imposter syndrome at the moment and wondering, and I sort of had a bit of a Google to see what else is out there and I wish I hadn't because obviously my book, my idea has been written before. And then if you go and look at the table of contents, you're like, oh no, they've covered the same points as I've covered before. And that actually stymies your creativity sometimes looking to others, because actually what that has done is made me stop and go, oh, I can't write that because it's been done. Whereas of course I can because I'll be doing it my way with my voice. I'm obviously far funnier than anybody else who's ever

Danielle Lewis (09:53):

Absolutely, obviously.

Kate Toon (09:55):

But of course everything has been done before. And of course there's someone out there doing a way better job than you are, but if you thought about that, you'd never do anything which you. So I find we talk about staying in your lane and being yourself. It's really hard. It's really hard because you open any kind of app and there's 17 ads popped up to totally feed you stuff that's going to mess with your nogging. And so we need to go and live in a hut in the middle of nowhere and never talk to anybody and we'll just work on our ideas. It's very

Danielle Lewis (10:24):

Hard. Oh my God. It is such an interesting thought though. You're right. If you think about every industry, every solution to every problem, if there was only one business doing it, we'd have what? A handful of businesses that owned all of the customers and all of the money in the world, but no, people resonate with people and that's kind of the magic sometimes. Yes, you're solving the same problem as somebody else, probably in a very similar way, but you've got your lens, it's

Kate Toon (10:52):

Your spark. It's like the very name of your show. Some people, for some reason, I just don't like the cut of their jib, they just irritate me. I dunno what it is. And the next person's selling the exact same thing and I love them. But also people will buy multiple things. I mean, look at your bookshelf, you've got multiple books there. And let's be honest, especially in the 500

Danielle Lewis (11:14):

Half are the same, half are the same.

Kate Toon (11:18):

A new book pops out how to pay your mortgage off or how to invest in shares. It's been written about a thousand times, but we sometimes need to read it six or seven times from different angles for it to click. So especially in the world of books, it's like you need to have an original idea, but it can't be too original because you need to have a proven market. And one of the things you're forced to do when you submit a book is tell them what other books are exactly the same as yours out there that have already sold. And you're like, I don't want to do that. Like they'll know that my book isn't original. But it needs to be original but not too original. It's a weird thing.

Danielle Lewis (11:53):

So are your books published via a publisher? Not,

Kate Toon (11:59):

Yeah, I've done a couple of self-published in the early days, but yes, my last one was a proper, I'm doing Air Fingers Publisher.

Danielle Lewis (12:08):

Talk to me about the difference between that process. I'm fascinated. I have a small book, but it's more like a gift book rather than a novel book. So it's on Amazon and that process was so easy. I dunno why people wouldn't do that every day of the week other than the fact that writing a book is fucking hard. That's very hard. But talk to me about the two differences and how you found that. I'm always fascinated by this,

Kate Toon (12:36):

Nick. I mean, I have been on both sides of it, and I think both have their pros and cons of publishing is cheaper, it's easier, you have more control, you have final say. The publishing through publisher has more kudos, I would say more gravitas. The process is harder and there's more rigor around the product that you produce because someone else is reading it and editing it. And you can't just say, well, I want to write that. That sounds like crap. And the cost is not dissimilar. Most smaller publishers will ask you to buy a number of copies to mitigate their risk. So you probably end up paying a similar amount, whether you hybrid publish self-publish, or go through a publisher. But the biggest difference for me, and the reason why I do it is number one, that kind of slight kudos of a real publisher. And number two, distribution. It's very hard to get yourself published book into bookshops, into airport bookshops. Anything beyond Amazon is a bit hard. So that's why I think, and also a really great publisher knows what book will work and what won't work, and they'll give you advice around that as well. My publisher, Leslie, is very wise and will give me direction, which even at this stage I need. I find it hard to take, but I do need it.

Danielle Lewis (13:56):

Yeah, that's a really interesting point, isn't it? I find that account, not accountability, but sometimes just somebody to say words at you, someone for you to say words back at sometimes helps clarify things. And I find as a small business owner, sometimes it's difficult to find those people.

Kate Toon (14:14):

That's it, isn't it? You mean that's why people pay fortune for business coaches. They think they're going to tell them what to do, but a lot of business coaches will just come back to you and say, well, how do you feel? What do you think is the next step? And you're like, oh my God,

Danielle Lewis (14:26):

Tell me what am I paying you for?

Kate Toon (14:29):

Or they'll go the other way and say, this is the only route, and if you're not doing it, there's something wrong with you. You don't want it enough, you're not trying hard enough and you're like, oh my God, I don't want, that doesn't fit me. So it is really hard to have, and that's why for me, what's always worked really, really well is not memberships and masterminds and expensive coaches and whatever. It's having a peer group of people that I can just maybe ask one today, you're probably struggling with a million things at the back of your mind, but there's maybe one thing that you're struggling with. I am going to ask Danielle about my thing after this. Get an opinion. You see, and having a chat with someone else who gets it is often enough to just let you take the next step and then the next one and the next one. My business has not ever been about big moves. It's been about small, iterative, tiny steps that have eventually got me there day by day. And I think your peers are often better placed to give you that advice than some guru or great business entity on a hill because your situations are so different. You bring in education, gender, generational wealth opportunity. No two people are the same. So what worked for them highly likely isn't going to work for you.

Danielle Lewis (15:42):

Yeah, I could not agree with you more. So then you are saying at the start, you are now a business mentor. What is your approach if somebody came to you?

Kate Toon (15:51):

I think I'm very honest. I used to say brutally honest, but taking the brutal out. So I think my real goal for 2024 is to be kind, but to be firm and to tell people the hard truths in a gentle way that they need to be told because there's a lot of business coaches selling a dream, knowing full well that the person who's bought it will never succeed. I mean, most of the time within five minutes of talking to someone, I know I, whether they're going to do it or not, you just know. And I would therefore not take their money

Danielle Lewis (16:28):

Because

Kate Toon (16:28):

It wouldn't morally sit well with me and that would give me the icks. So I think it's very reality based. I don't like ongoing coaching. I'm kind of like, we need a session. You'd go away and do the thing and then let's have another chat to say how it went. Don't talk to me every week for months and months because if you haven't done it by month six, you're never going to do it. You know it and I know it, so I'm sure sharp, realistic, honest, but I really want to be kind. Sometimes you do have to poo on someone's bonfire and it's awful, but it's better. It's better. That happens earlier on then after they spent thousands of their family's money on something that was never going to work, and then they feel like a bigger failure than they did at the beginning.

Danielle Lewis (17:11):

I love it. No, and it's such an interesting approach. I think you're right. I think the world of, I mean, it's not just business coaching. I just feel like anything online business at the moment, you've really got to be a little discerning about where you spend, not just your money, but your time as well,

Kate Toon (17:28):

Who you surround yourself with. I've got some weird algorithm on Instagram where pretty much everything that's coming up is giving me the massive X and I'm pressing hide, hide, hide. I'm,

Danielle Lewis (17:39):

Because it's like how to be a seven figure earner in two seconds flat.

Kate Toon (17:44):

And I mean, ironically, the titles of my book are ironic. Six figures in school hours. What does six figures even mean? It's nonsense. Is that revenue or after tax take home pay before tax, take home pay of a hundred K in this economy isn't earth shattering. It is good, but it's not going to change your life. So my next type book has an even more ironic title. I can't share it yet. It's the sort of title that would make you go, but I hope that people will see that I'm to a degree taking the piss. But we'll see.

Danielle Lewis (18:18):

I love it. And it is, look, as we said, I think it's just about being a little bit more discerning. And I feel like if it's too good to be true, it probably is. That's probably the biggest lesson I've learned over the last, I don't know, over a decade in business, is it just doesn't happen quickly. There's the word viral and the word hustle and the headlines and all the things. It's just the 1%, this minority of people that land on that happening. And you don't see the backstory ever.

Kate Toon (18:51):

You don't. And also, would you want that? Would you really want to be Amy Porterfield with everything she has going on in a team and the commitment she has to make and the pressure to keep that appearance up? And maybe, maybe that's what people want. You might not know who Amy Porterfield is, or we could say Gary Van Chuck or Pat Flynn, or I can see you've got a diary of a CEO behind you, Steven, Barb.

Danielle Lewis (19:17):

I haven't read that one yet, but yes.

Kate Toon (19:19):

But these people are amazing. Really want to do what they had to do to get where they are and then keep doing it. I think you have to be careful what you wish for. I went viral while I was on holiday in Bali. One of my Instagrams went viral. It was an absolute nightmare because as what happened, I did a video and it got millions and millions of views and hundreds of thousands of likes. But as the circle went further and further away from me, it went further and further away from my core audience. What is the point of having a thousand followers who are never going to buy from me? Well, just that's the final point, who are never going to buy For me, my business account on Instagram isn't there for fun. It's a mechanism to sell, to make money. And so viral is often a lot about ego. Yes, it's awareness, but it could be the wrong kind of awareness and attract the wrong kind of customers. So careful what you wish for, I think.

Danielle Lewis (20:17):

Yeah, and it does raise an interesting point as well about vanity metrics. So not only is it these words, six figures, seven figures, eight figures. Now I'm seeing that is oftentimes a revenue number, which is not the profit number, which okay, how much did they spend to get there if we want to go there, but also the yes, how many thousand followers, how many hundreds of thousands or millions of followers do I have? How many views has my TikTok gotten? But it's like at the end of the day, that's not going to pay the bills. Your rent, your landlord isn't going to accept TikTok views as payment for the month. So if that stuff isn't actually driving sales in your business, what is the bloody point?

Kate Toon (21:03):

And how many sales, when is enough, enough? Maybe six figures after tax revenue is amazing and that's all you want. We are fed this line that we need to constantly uplevel and dream big and get bigger and why we're all going to end up in an old people's home dribbling porridge down our vests. I can't wait. Yeah, me either, but you know what I mean? To what end, to what end. I see a lot of people saying, oh, I like earning money and I like nice things. I like nice things too. But that does come a point where it's like, I've got enough nice things. Things aren't that important, even experiences. I want to be able to travel the world and I want to be able to go here. Why? Just be happy where you are. There's this constant drive. I think we see a lot of these big entrepreneurs and they're driven to the point where they can't stop. And that isn't something we should Lord and put on a platter and go, wow, that's so impressive. It's actually not impressive. The ability to do nothing and be content is far better. So listen at me. I'm all philosophical. I've had a break. I've come back all I've come back all, woo,

Danielle Lewis (22:13):

I love it. I love a bit of woo woo in the morning. No, but it is really interesting because I find even myself, I'm hyper aware that I am in this world of social media and all these things and I should be a little bit more skeptical. And it's funny you say, okay, at the start of the year, what would my dream life look like, right? If I could spend my days doing anything I wanted, money's not an object, what would it be? And it's so funny because my answers are things like, I would do yoga every day. I would read every day. I was like, none of that shit costs money. No,

Kate Toon (22:45):

And you're probably already doing it. You just want to dial it up a little bit more. This the last couple of weeks I've worked from nine till one, then I've done whatever I want the rest of the day. And I would like to do that day after day after day after day forever and not have too much stress and not be under financial duress and not have to deal with too many people. That's all I want. But we're not allowed to just want that because that's not ambitious enough. And you should be pushing yourself. And why six figures? Oh God, it's the thing that we're fed as women that we're never enough. And so we have to buy this and that. This cream that whatever business has done the same thing. And unfortunately it's women doing it to other women, which is, I'm getting on the soapbox now I get off.

Danielle Lewis (23:34):

No, look, I think it is a really important discussion because I know, so the audience here for Spark are women in business, and I know starting out the year we are all writing down those to-do lists, the New Year's resolutions, even the word of the year, right? What's your word? Can you share

Kate Toon (23:54):

It? My word this year actually is recovery, which doesn't sound very positive and in reality it isn't. 2023 was very hard year for me. I kind of played in my business. I had my book launches, I traveled a lot and it took my eye off the ball. And now I want to have a really solid year of just staying at home, earning some decent money and spending time with my family and recovering mentally, spiritually, financially from the previous years. I think we've all struggled the last few years. So what's yours?

Danielle Lewis (24:24):

I love that so much. I haven't got it yet. So what I've decided, so last year mine was overflow and it's really interesting because careful what you wish for. What does that

Kate Toon (24:35):

Mean?

Danielle Lewis (24:36):

Well, so it was another take on abundance. So overflow as in I kind of visualized a river. So many opportunities, so much happening. And unfortunately I finished the year feeling exactly fucking like that. I couldn't,

Kate Toon (24:52):

The first thought that came in my mouth mind was drowning.

Danielle Lewis (24:57):

Yeah, be careful what word you'd pick people pick people. So I don't know. So this year for me, and look, it sounds so cliche, I know, but I kind of looked at my life at the end of the year and I thought, I have definitely not looked after myself. My health took a real hit in 2023. And again, the type of business that I created was very service-based business I really want to focus in on. And that just kills you sometimes. Currently chasing invoices as we speak. I really wanted to move back to more scalable membership, community driven products.

Kate Toon (25:36):

You're going to love my next book then because that's what it's, yes.

Danielle Lewis (25:41):

And I kind of thought I'm the type of person that's like vision board, want this, want that, here's a hundred things to focus on. And then so overwhelmed and I went, you know what if I just focus on this and this, so health and wealth, the rest is going to fucking happen. I don't have to have a list of a hundred thousand things that I have to tick off every day, week, month. If I just put those two values at the core of what I focus on and make sure that every day I'm doing something that contributes to my health or wealth, then that at the end of the year I've got to be in a better position. So I haven't quite picked the word yet, but I've picked two core pillars of focus.

Kate Toon (26:21):

Well, that's good enough in the word. I'll have forgotten my word by the 5th of January. Don't worry about it. But I think it's also one of the hardest things about having a business, especially as a woman, is the ability to turn up every day to do stuff regardless of what's going on with your family life, your health, your hormones. We're all over the shop, let's be honest, a lot of the time, some days I'm on top of the world and the next day I can barely get out of bed. And to year after year do that. That's a lot. So being able to turn up and feel good about what you're doing doesn't sound like a lofty goal, but it's enough. It's enough.

Danielle Lewis (27:00):

Exactly. And enough, maybe enough is that, no, I don't want enough is my word. But yes, it is interesting, isn't it? It's this the funny time of year where it's like you feel like you are ripping a bandaid off the last year. You want all of this invigoration and inspiration. And I must admit, I sat down at my desk this morning and went, holy shit, I don't even know where to start again. Oh my

Kate Toon (27:25):

Goodness. Second. And I've got speak up second,

Danielle Lewis (27:26):

Kate,

Kate Toon (27:27):

Two woman at 10 o'clock as well. Yeah, it's really hard. And the truth is what I think it was, it may have been Picasso, I dunno, but it was inspiration finds you working. Inspiration literally means the breath of the gods. It's elusive and fleeting and rare. And so most of it comes from just plodding on, it's not sexy, but a boring business, a business which is kind of formulaic and systemized is generally a successful business. So yeah, constantly seeking the highs and low the highs means you're going to have lows. I kind of seek the middle nine, which makes me sound very dull, but it's easier and better on the adrenals and the emotions as well.

Danielle Lewis (28:06):

And look, I love the word boring and that sometimes there's a great, I don't even know who it was, but it is that just this idea of putting in the reps. It's the boring stuff. It's no one wants to show up and record a podcast or post a reel on whatever. And yet sometimes it's almost like the more you can sit in boredom, the more successful you'll actually be.

Kate Toon (28:30):

Boom. There's the quote for this podcast. It's sitting in the discomfort of tedium. That is really hard. And the gym analogy is one that I love. I use that all the time. You think you need a sexy new routine and a new app and you need to be doing this new thing with the cable that you're not quite sure how to do. You could go to the gym and do pretty much the same exercises every day for a month, increase the reps, increase the weight, change it up. But you don't need some innovative, wacky, new thing. You already know what you need to do. You just need to do it for probably longer than you feel comfortable doing it for. And that's where success comes from. It's so annoying, but it's true.

Danielle Lewis (29:07):

Yeah, it's annoying, isn't it? I remember when I first started my business, oh God, it's over a decade now and you read all of the books and you find Tony Robbins and the Four Hour Work Week and all these things, and I just remember this, oh my God, the world of possibilities, everything was shiny. And I'm like, I'm never going to get that feeling back, am I?

Kate Toon (29:32):

It's the first glass of champagne. It's always good that after that you're just desperate for that dopamine high that you got with the first glass and it doesn't come. That makes it sound really depressing. There is a lot of pleasure and comfort in just knowing that things are going good and you're content and you have people around you that you enjoy working with and great members and listeners to this part. That's a lovely feeling. I think we misconstrue stress for excitement often, and instead we need to settle with contentment. We think it is boring, but contentment is really good. That's where the serotonin comes from. We need to have serotonin businesses, not dopamine businesses. So steady, slow release contentment rather than constant highs and then the inevitable lows.

Danielle Lewis (30:20):

No, I love it so much. I couldn't agree more. And you've given me, I'm so glad we had this one scheduled today because you've given me life for my 2024 planning. So good. So good. Now I always like to leave our fabulous listeners with one last piece of advice. So reflecting on your journey in business, if you could offer a piece of advice to a woman who is on her business journey, what would that be?

Kate Toon (30:49):

I think we've kind of covered it, but I think it's look within rather than look without, which is incredibly hard. Think about all the, we talked right at the beginning of the episode about what skills I'd bought. I think we underestimate our soft skills, the ability to talk to people, be organized, plan, help people, and we're constantly thinking we need to be experts at this. So look within, find your soft skills and try and lean into those people. Say good things happen out of your comfort zone. A lot of really good things happen in your comfort zone and it's a great place to start.

Danielle Lewis (31:22):

Oh, I love that. Here's cheers to staying in your comfort zone and regulating our nervous system in 2024. Yes, you are absolutely incredible. Kate, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom, spending your time with us. I appreciate you.

Kate Toon (31:40):

Thank you very much.

✨ Thank you to IP Australia for supporting the SPARK podcast and women in business ✨

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