Janine Garner: success is different things to different people.
Janine Garner: Ambition is different things to different people. There is no right or wrong at all, but what I do know to be true is that every single person is watching you. Every single person, your kids, your nieces, your nephews, your team, the Uber driver, the person that you’re ordering the coffee off, how you answer the phone.
Janine Garner: Every single person is watching you. And my question to you and your listeners is if you were to walk away for tomorrow, is the impact that you’ve left on that person? I. The impact that you want to leave on that person
Renata Bernarde: so, I think the best place for us to start is for us to, you know, find out more about you and what led you to become such
Renata Bernarde: a well-known leadership and business coach in
Renata Bernarde: Australia.
Janine Garner: That’s a great question. Um, all very accidental if I’m honest with you. Um, if I track back, I was. Um, I’m from the north of England originally. Um, I followed the traditional career route of going to school, getting what were A levels, and then going straight off to uni and then getting the graduate job and working my way up the corporate ladder.
Janine Garner: And I guess I’ve got 20, about 21 years of. Corporate experience, uh, operating at a very senior level. So I, my last former job was group marketing director at Orton Group, so I was looking after two very high profile brands, the Orton brand and the Ralph Lauren brand, and really responsible for building those brands.
Janine Garner: Uh, throughout Asia. So my background corporately is very much in marketing, in business development, in launching brands, in rejuvenating brands. Um, but what happened for me is I hit this point in my career where I started looking around and going, I. Is, is this it, is, is, is this what it’s all about? Is is there something else out there?
Janine Garner: At the time I had three children. Um, I’ve still got them actually, but they’re a little bit older now. But at the time they were seven, five, and three. Um, life for us was pretty mental. My husband was also working corporately. Neither of us had family living near us, so we had had. Raised our family and managed senior corporate jobs with absolutely no support around us whatsoever.
Janine Garner: And I started looking around and started these questions of, of what is next. Um, what was interesting for me was I’d, um, Had was having some amazing conversations with incredible women in business who had this like fire in their belly. And I was like, where’s my fire gone? Like I was great at my job, I could do it standing on my head, but I’d lost this fire in my belly and life was frantic, life was crazy, and I felt like I’d really.
Janine Garner: Lost myself, to be honest with you. And so what I did is I decided that there had to be more women out there, like me, women that had, uh, educated themselves, that had built a solid corporate career that were, uh, May or may not be raising families. But the difference was these women, I believe there had to be more women out there like me, that were still wanting to make a contribution that still felt that they had more to give and they felt that there was more that they wanted to give.
Janine Garner: Um, for me it was about continuing to develop my thinking and, and explore how I was going to contribute. And to be honest with you, I felt like I’d lost. That because I was busy running my team reporting into Mr. Lauren in the US looking after the media reporting into the board, coming home, making dinner, running around like crazy.
Janine Garner: I’d lost myself in the mix and I truly believe there were more women out there like me that wanted to have smart conversations. And so what I did is I booked a dinner, a, a table for dinner. And I reached out to women that I admired in Sydney. Um, I didn’t necessarily know them, and I invited them to dinner and that conversation essentially initiated me leaving corporate and setting up my own business because what became apparent was that absolutely were more women out there just like me.
Janine Garner: And what I ended up doing, I mean, there’s a whole story behind it, but I ended up leaving my corporate job, um, and started my own business. I bootstrapped my own business, which was at the time called the Little Black Dress Group. It became L B D Group, uh, which was a col, a collection, a collective of incredible smart women that really wanted to contribute more.
Janine Garner: They wanted to have more impact. They wanted to really lead in their way, and that network grew. Over the next eight years, we had a, uh, platform in our footprint in Australia. We were starting to test in Singapore and in London. And, um, what had happened also throughout that, this is why I say it was totally accidental.
Janine Garner: I was starting to get asked to write, I was starting to get asked for commentary. I was starting to get asked to speak. Um, over that eight years, I wrote, uh, uh, two bestselling books. I was traveling the world speaking. I was starting to do loads of corporate work in terms of developing, uh, leadership internally.
Janine Garner: Excuse me, got a bit of a cough. Um, and in 2019, I decided to actually sell the L B D group. And actually really doubled down on my thought leadership and really doubled down on working closely with, uh, people running their own businesses or leaders in organizations to really cement their growth and their, their brilliance.
Janine Garner: So, What happened next was I took myself off to Harvard. Uh, I did a leadership course at Harvard. I wrote my third bestselling book, be Brilliant. We launched a podcast. Uh, we’ve done a non-for-profit for five years supporting women and kids in Grassroots Australia. Um, I actually got invited back to my university in the uk.
Janine Garner: I was given an honorary doctorate of science for the work that I do. Um, and essentially my work continues. I’m absolutely passionate about unleashing the brilliance in people. I believe too many of us. Are not, uh, fulfilling our capability, our dreams, and the impact that we want to make. I believe that too many of us are boxed in either through the work that we’re doing in corporate, in organizations, or we’re both boxed in, in terms of believing that there is only one way to build businesses and build careers.
Janine Garner: And, and for me, I am debunking all of that. Um, for me it is about unlocking your brilliance. It’s about absolutely identifying who you are, who you are being, and who it is that you want to become, and then ensuring every single day that you are doing the work that you need to do to ensure that you are being the best version of yourself, either in your own business or in your career.
Janine Garner: Because quite frankly, we need you to step up. We need every single one of us to start questioning. What is, uh, the current rule book and developing a different way of working that will facilitate us into the future. So that’s the work that I do now. All totally accidental, all driven by passion. Um, and I absolutely love working with the people that I work with and to see the impact that they’re making.
Janine Garner: It just blows me away.
Renata Bernarde: Janine, that’s, that’s an amazing story. Uh, it’s unbelievable to me as a mother of two that you chose to go on this different path when your kids were so little. You know, I, I have stepped out of the corporate sector with adult children and I found that much easier, but I, so, you know, I take my hat off to you.
Renata Bernarde: Um, I agree that I think, um, we underestimate the power of being, um, in tune with your values and your brilliance. What do you think, um, propelled you to take this massive risk? Risk and start your own business. You must have an idea of your top strengths that allowed you to, you know, take that risk. You know, some, some people would feel okay doing that,
Renata Bernarde: whereas others I think will shy away.
Renata Bernarde: What is it about
Renata Bernarde: you
Renata Bernarde: that enabled you to do it?
Janine Garner: It’s a very interesting question, and it’s one that I’ve been very curious about myself for. Uh, one of my key strengths is connection. Um, it’s only in hindsight. I, I literally have just turned 52. Um, and it’s in hindsight on reflection where I go. I’ve always been. This person. I’ve always been an observer of what is going on and people in that, that mix.
Janine Garner: I’m curious it just in, in, in innately curious about human beings and how, uh, what, what helps propel us forward and what holds us back. Um, if I look at my career, um, looking back, I’ve always been a bit of a rule breaker. Uh, I’ve always seen Ryan Corners, um, and I’ve just always gone for it. I think, I think, you know, it’s.
Janine Garner: What if there’s, there’s nothing to lose. Um, and we’ve all got nothing to prove, but we’ve got absolutely everything to gain. And I think for me, when I feel the itchy jacket, I call it, when things just don’t feel right, I take that time to reflect on it and really get back in tune with what is it that I want to do, who is it that I want to become?
Janine Garner: And I am a massive believer. And we have to take ownership of our choices and our lives. And for me, um, there were moments where it was up to me to step away from the corporate bully. It was up to me to create the life that I wanted. It was up to me to put in the work that was needed to step forward. No one else was coming to rescue me.
Janine Garner: No one was going to do it for me. And I have absolute. Right to live the life that I want to live. Um, and too many people, I think, um, Either are blaming other people that they can’t. I’ve got a young family I can’t afford to this job, whatever it is. Um, and that’s okay, but own the fact that you are, you’re staying where you are and own the fact that that is your choice.
Janine Garner: I think for me it’s always been about why not What if, what could be. Um, and believe me, you know, there have been times where. I’ve been, uh, curled up in absolute tears because things aren’t working, um, because other story, we’ve got so many stories of failure and panic and worry and anxiety, but deep down surrounding myself with people that believed in me.
Janine Garner: With people that challenged me, with people that pushed me. That was my safety net. And I never, ever wanted to end my time on this planet with regret. Um, for me, my core driver is, is connecting. It’s connecting ideas, it’s connecting people, but also it’s about contributing. So I’ve now entered this stage of my life where.
Janine Garner: It’s actually not about me. It’s about how much I can help other people achieve their goals and their dreams. Um, and to me that is the biggest contribution I can make Now. It’s like, learn from me. Take all of these mistakes that I’ve made and don’t make them yourself. And if I can help one person unlock.
Janine Garner: Their potential and their plan to achieve their dreams, then my job is done. And you know, I often say to people, I’ve hit that sort of grumpy old woman age, where it’s like, you know, I’ll say what I think I will challenge what, what is really going on? Because someone has to, and, um, there are too many of us that are.
Janine Garner: Living robotic lives, it’s like we’re going through life like robots as opposed to unlocking this extraordinary potential, um, that every single one of us has to create the impact that we want to create for ourselves, for our children, for our community, for our teams, for for the world, and, and what else is there, quite frankly, apart from ensuring that your time here on this planet matters.
Renata Bernarde: Yeah. Well, you’re such a great speaker, Janine, I, you, you gave me a lot of food for thought and uh, I think people that are coming to you to get your advice and your mentoring and your coaching are really blessed. But what I also feel sorry for is when people are willing to make a change, but people around them.
Renata Bernarde: Um, don’t give them, you know, a lot of motivation and, and I can understand family and friends not wanting their loved ones to change or risk doing something that could potentially fail for all effects and purposes. For example, when you were, um, working at Orton, you. Very successful. And I imagine it must have been quite challenging to convince people around you, um, that you were going to all of a sudden give that up and pursue something,
Renata Bernarde: um, completely different.
Renata Bernarde: Is that a fair assumption or did it work
Renata Bernarde: quite
Renata Bernarde: well
Renata Bernarde: for you?
Janine Garner: Oh gosh, it’s an absolute fair assumption. My mother had, she couldn’t understand why I was throwing away a six figure salary and traveling to New York twice a year. Um, and I’ve still got friends that don’t understand. As sound, what it is that I do in my book, it’s who, you know, I call ’em the shadow archetypes.
Janine Garner: These people that take away your dreams, that, uh, squash your energy, that want to box you in. And the reality is the only reason they’re doing that is because. they they don’t understand what it is that you’re doing or why, and there’s a wonderful security in people knowing who you are. There’s a wonderful security for other people for you to stay exactly the same.
Janine Garner: So, absolutely, and in those early days, um, Renata you know, the. The about two years in 18 months into me bootstrapping this business from the very beginning. Uh, my husband lost his corporate job, so he was working for a company called Mothercare. And at the time, Mothercare went into receivership and he was at a senior level in that organization.
Janine Garner: As a result of that, um, he was last on the list to actually have all these payments and, and, and things paid salaries, et cetera. So essentially what happened is we had no income coming in, zero income coming in. Um, the business at the time was making zero cash and we had to. Start racking up our credit cards and um, at one stage we moved.
Janine Garner: We had to move house. We had to move into the shittiest house. The sh in the shittiest street. It was falling apart around us. Um, you know, not enough room for three crazy kids, two boys, one girl. Plus cats and animals and ours and trying to work from home. Uh, you know, I was pretty much working on top of a, of a, uh, a fish tank because there was nowhere else to work, but we had no money coming in.
Janine Garner: Absolutely zero. And I can remember at one stage, I, uh, one night I was, uh, working away and this real reality hit me that, oh my God, right. I question, what the hell am I doing? Like, what right do I have to put my family through this? To move house to say, at one stage we were saying to the kids, you know, whatever you do, don’t ask us for a milkshake.
Janine Garner: There’s not gonna be Christmas this year. There’s no birthdays this year. Just just don’t talk to us about anything because we had no cash coming in and Jason was finding it hard to find work and all this while I’m trying to build this dream. And at one stage he found me and I’m literally bawling my eyes out.
Janine Garner: I sat there, it was probably like one o’clock in the morning trying to make things work. Um, and he found me in tears and, and I said to him, Jace, I’m, I’ll go back. I’ll get a job. I know I can get a job. I know I can do this. I can get a job. What right do I have to put off my money through this? Because what had become apparent that day is we had $50 left in the bank.
Janine Garner: That was it, $50 of cash. And he turned around to me and he said, Janine, don’t you dare. Don’t you dare give up. I believe in you. Don’t you dare give up. And that was all I needed. This, this belief from one person in me. And it fired me up. It literally re litt this fire in me to do the work, to double down, to surround myself with people that could actually teach me stuff, to surround myself with cheerleaders, to surround myself with people who believed in this dream.
Janine Garner: And honestly, if it hadn’t have been for that moment, And from the intentional choice that I made around who I surrounded myself with, I wouldn’t be here right now. And I think this is, to your point, Renata, there are always gonna be doubters. There’s always going to be be people around you that don’t understand why you are doing what you are doing.
Janine Garner: And, and if we are. Going to be that little bit different. You know, reality is society loves conformity. Society loves status quo, and if you don’t fit in, and I see it in the playground now with my kids, if you don’t fit in, if you are just a little bit left of center, if you are deciding to change something, then.
Janine Garner: People don’t necessarily understand you. It doesn’t mean that they’re not gonna support you, but they don’t understand you. And so you’ve got a choice to make as to whether you move on from those people with love and surround yourself with people that are gonna help you grow. Um, and that’s something that I have.
Janine Garner: Always, always done. I’ve always made sure that it’s about having the right network of people around me who can stretch my thinking, who can encourage me to do more, who can unlock those dreams because I didn’t sign the contract when I was born that said, you’re gonna get born. Hopefully you’re gonna have an awesome childhood.
Janine Garner: You’re gonna do really well at school. You then might go on and do some further education. You may fall in love, you may get married, you may have children, you may become a grandparent, and you’re gonna hopefully be healthy enough to enjoy them and then you die. I did not sign that contract. Um, we are only here for such a short time, and I’m determined to make my time here better.
Renata Bernarde: You’re amazing, Janine. Um, I’m, I’m very interested in learning from you about how we have changed post pandemic. You see, because I was working in the corporate sector. Until just before the pandemic and I started this podcast and I started my coaching business. Uh, you know, during the pandemic, I basically signed up for it at the end of 2019.
Renata Bernarde: And, and I’ve been kind of slightly adjusting my plans as I go along, whereas you have been, um, working with your clients, you know, Corporate clients and individuals for much longer than I have. I have a feeling that ambitions are shifting, that people have different types of ambitions now than they.
Renata Bernarde: Would have had, had the pandemic not happened. You know, um, I, I can see people telling me that, you know, they were ambitious for their corporate careers and they wanted to go up and up in the corporate letter. And now that doesn’t seem to matter to them anymore. If the employer doesn’t offer the flexibility, they wanna walk out, if they, um, cannot live.
Renata Bernarde: In the, the, the town that they want to live, you know, in a farm or whatever, they will walk out and, and they have the, they feel empowered to make those choices, whereas before they didn’t. There’s
Renata Bernarde: definitely a shift in that balance of power. Have you
Renata Bernarde: noticed that as well?
Janine Garner: Yeah, and I think we’ve also gotta be careful about
Janine Garner: labeling everything. I think it’s a, a reset gr uh, an amazing reset that is going on, and it’s going to continue actually for the next two to three years. We are living through a period of what we call massive adaptive challenge, where nobody has lived through this.
Janine Garner: At all. There is no politician, no CEO no academic that has ever lived through the significant amount of change that we are experiencing right now. So there’s no rules. We think there’s rules, but there’s not, because never before have we had to navigate a life where there is significant economic challenge happening globally.
Janine Garner: There’s significant health challenge that’s happening globally. There’s significant uncertainty around. Uh, uh, what is going on around the globe. Um, and all of this is, is impacting us at a macro level, and it’s impacting us right down to a micro level. So, So there’s, there’s change going on and it’s gonna go on for a while.
Janine Garner: I think what we’re actually seeing is people starting to question, people starting to really question what ambition means to them. It doesn’t mean that they’re not ambitious. It doesn’t mean that they don’t want to build a life they want. It doesn’t mean that they are moving away from creating the impact that they want.
Janine Garner: What it does mean is that instead of fitting into the box of rules that we had before, People are actually taking ownership of the choices that they’re making and owning their ambition. And this is what for me, is really exciting because I think that a lot of our corporate organizations are doing, having a chasing, uh, And trying to work it out.
Janine Garner: Unfortunately, um, they’re also, well, all of us, it doesn’t matter whether you are a ceo, C-suite, middle manager, new graduate, every single one of us is trying to work out how to live in this world that we’re in right now. And so whether it’s about the great resignation, Is it the great resignation or is it actually people are going, Hmm, I’m not gonna work like that anymore?
Janine Garner: Is it about the multiple generations at work or actually is it about the culture at work isn’t currently set up? What new generations want? Is it about flexible working? Or actually is it more to do with the fact that family dynamics have changed and people are putting their families first? I think we’ve gotta be very, very careful that we don’t label and box in what is actually going on in society right now.
Janine Garner: Uh, because what I see in my world is huge amounts of ambition I see in my Elevate community and inner circle community incredibly. Ambitious women that are building businesses on their terms. Never before in our history have we had so many women running their own businesses. Never before in our history have we had so many women in corporate organizations, and yet we are still beating ourselves up because we’re trying to conform to an old way of running businesses, um, whether they are own or corporately.
Janine Garner: And this is really why we’ve gotta be very careful that we don’t get dragged back to an old way of thinking when actually I go, how awesome is this? That finally we’ve lit the fire, that finally people are starting to take control of their careers, that finally people are starting to take ownership of how they are going to work.
Janine Garner: That finally, Women and men are owning their ambition because the reality is when they own their ambition and they make the impact that they wanna make, that’s when we are giving the best lessons to our kids. What we see, what my generation had is we, we worked for the man. Now I had my biggest wake up call.
Janine Garner: When, uh, I’ve got three kids, as I said before, Jason and I were both working full-time. We were both rushing home. We were both, our kids were totally institutionalized. They were dropped at daycare when it opened, and we were rushing back before we had to sell a kidney because we were gonna be late to pick them up.
Janine Garner: It was mental. And there was one night where we were sat at dinner. And Taya would’ve been five, my daughter was five. Carter, three Flynn would’ve been seven. And we’d done all the reading of the parenting books about what we should be doing, about what it meant to be a working parent. All of the rules again that someone’s fed to us who says, right.
Janine Garner: And I said to her, I was, we were having a conversation over dinner, you know, how was your day? Who did you sit and have lunch with? What are you grateful for? All of those questions. And my daughter, Turned to me and she said, mommy, why are you so busy? And I said, darling, I’m so busy because, you know, I’ve worked really hard to, to get my degree and my qualification and build my career, and, and I’m now really responsible for X, Y, and Z.
Janine Garner: And, and it’s to bring money in so that we can buy your toys and go for holidays and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then she turned to me and she said, but mommy, why are you so unhappy
Renata Bernarde: O that
Janine Garner: now? It hurt a lot and it continues to hurt, and this is the driver, right for me
Janine Garner: because for my entire career. For my entire childhood, I wanted to prove that I was good enough.
Janine Garner: I wanted to prove that women could have it all, and I do believe we can, but we can’t. On the old paradigm of how we work now, what message was I sending to her? To my five-year-old daughter, there was nothing inspiring about her mom because all she saw was her mom’s exhausted. She’s always on the phone.
Janine Garner: She falls asleep on the sofa at the weekends. She can’t watch, uh, Barbie for the 100th time without multitasking. She gets annoyed with me. She gets grumpy.
Renata Bernarde: Yeah.
Janine Garner: what message will I send into the boys? There is nothing inspiring about that, and yet I continue to see Renata in my work. Honestly, in the last month, I reckon I’ve worked with thousands of women in organizations and men, and they are exhausted.
Janine Garner: They’re on the brink of burnout. Every single one of them is working for their family, and I go, really? Really, and so this is where we’ve gotta start questioning ourselves. We’ve gotta start questioning what is truly important, and then we’ve gotta actually start pushing, pushing back, and helping.
Janine Garner: Everyone reset how we work. It’s not up to the CEOs to work it out because they have never been here before. It’s not up to management to work it out because they have never been here before. It’s up to all of us to actually start being more curious than ever before and start questioning why, why, why, why.
Janine Garner: We’ve gotta start connecting dots differently because we’ve essentially come out of. A perfectly formed jigsaw puzzle and all Covid did is it threw that jigsaw puzzle up in the air. And where we’re at right now is we found the corners and we’ve got the outline. So like you, I found the corners of I’ve decided to be a coach and I’m not going back to corporate, and I’ve built the outside.
Janine Garner: But the inside is down to you. How you find those pieces, again to create that brand new puzzle is up to you. We’ve got to be brave enough to inspire the people around us to do the work that’s needed to be done, because there continues to be incredible amounts of confusion, and we’ve got to create a sense of calm.
Janine Garner: Every single one of us, there continues to be huge amounts of complexity. We’re seeing it every day, and our job is to simplify that. And at the moment, the amount of fear that’s infiltrating every single human being. stopping us from being brave enough to pursue our dreams, and our job is to inspire people to do the work that they need to do right now.
Janine Garner: Our job is to pave that path to the future, and we’ve also gotta trust our intuition.
Janine Garner: Because as I said at the beginning, there are no rules. There’s no rules.
Janine Garner: no one’s been here before. All we can do
Janine Garner: is learn and look to the past and do the research and do the reading, but we gotta trust our intuition over and above this of going, okay, what feels right, right now?
Janine Garner: And so I’m really, personally, I’m really excited about the next five to 10 years. I think if you sit in that place of fear, it’s gonna keep you stuck. And that place of fear fuels procrastination. That place of fear. Stops you from doing exactly what it is that you want to do. And that place of fear will absolutely put you into a place of comparisonitis, of struggling with your self-belief of not owning what it is that you wanna do.
Janine Garner: And we’ve gotta somehow get past that. And the only way I know to get past that is one, do what you know you need to do, do the work. And then secondly, this networking piece. Surround yourself with people that think like you. They see more in you than you see in yourself. People that will hold you accountable, people that are checking in on you, because to pursue this line of work, to pursue the career that you want to lead in, the way that you want to build the business, in the way that you want to inspire your family, in the way that you want is not what the majority of people are doing.
Janine Garner: And yet it’s exactly what society needs. If we’re gonna get change happening, generations are watching, they’re watching us, they’re watching, your kids are watching you, they’re getting their clues from you. And you’ve gotta ask yourself, is the message I’m sending how I hope they’re going to turn out as a, as an adult?
Renata Bernarde: Yeah, no, you’re absolutely right. And we can also learn so much from them. They’re so much smarter than us in so many aspects, so that’s also true. Um, Janine uh, if you, if you were to start your business again, let’s say, you know, you, you kept on going with your corporate career and you decided now in 2023, To start your business.
Renata Bernarde: I mean, I, I heard what you said before about having that amazing lunch with the women that you were, you know, keen to learn from, and it basically validated your proposition. It validated some assumptions that you had about things you, you could pursue as, um, as a business person and what you. You could, um, service them with.
Renata Bernarde: So that was a, a great way of doing it these days, you know, uh, communications are happening in a asynchronous way. Um, we, we have different tools that, you know, p people may be negative or positive about them, but we do have different channels that we can use. Like LinkedIn. You’re, you’re great at LinkedIn, you’re great on video.
Renata Bernarde: How would you advise somebody that wanted to. Give it a
Renata Bernarde: go now in 2023, what would be the best way
Renata Bernarde: the simplest way to go about it?
Janine Garner: Oh my gosh. That’s a, that’s a huge question. Um, I think there’s two things that you have to do. First of all, is you have to own your own positioning. You’ve gotta get very, very clear on who you are. Uh, what it is that you do and the problems that you can solve for other people. Um, and you know, this stuff, like I say to people, if I, if I think about yourself, you know, how many decades have you been working?
Janine Garner: How many years have you been working? Throw the question back to you, Ronald. How many years have you been
Janine Garner: working?
Renata Bernarde: Me, oh my gosh. I’ve been working since I was 14.
Janine Garner: Okay, so how many is that? Are we
Renata Bernarde: I’m 50. I’m 52
Renata Bernarde: as
Janine Garner: Ah,
Renata Bernarde: Yes.
Janine Garner: so you’re like me. So we’re talking
Janine Garner: 14, 24, 34, 44. So we’re talking about 35 years of experience, right? And anyone listening to this, I do the same.
Janine Garner: Just think back to when you first started work now 35 years. Renata you are telling me. In those 35 years, you have learned stuff. You have excelled at stuff. You have learned how to influence. You have acquired skills. You have celebrated amazing wins. You’ve picked yourself off the floor of failure. You’ve challenged yourself more than you could have ever thought was possible.
Janine Garner: In those 35 years, you have absolutely become more than you were 35 years ago. So the question to everyone listening is, what right do you have not to own the value that you have gained over your working life, whether that be 10 years, five years, 20 years, 30 years, in that period of time you have acquired incredible smarts and what you can tell I get, I get passionate about this stuff cuz I go in there.
Janine Garner: In there is what you have to be able to help other people with or to teach other people. You know it, right? Where social media lets us down is we fail to recognize that and we start comparing ourselves. We start watching what everyone else is doing. We start following a cookie cutter approach as to how to, how to build business.
Janine Garner: And by the way, a lot of those cookie cutter approach are developed by male marketeers just just. For the record, but, but we start like trying to follow A plus B, plus C plus D plus E. The biggest thing you can do is just get started going, okay, what am I all about and who do I serve? What’s my message?
Janine Garner: What’s my key message? Who is my target client and what problem am I solving? And then go out into the world and share that in my programs. I teach people how to unlock this stuff. I then teach people how to create content and build their positioning around that message. And it’s the consistent, consistent messaging, the frequency of messaging, the almost laser focused, talking to that target audience that eventually will get you noticed, but you’ve gotta keep going.
Janine Garner: I’ve been doing this for the last 12 years, I’ve been running my own business.
Janine Garner: But that on its own doesn’t work. This is where then this powerful network is absolutely key. So one of the things I teach people to do is I go, okay, let’s, let’s work out what is it that you wanna shift in the next 12 months?
Janine Garner: If you had to think about your business, what do you wanna achieve in your business in the next 12 months? What do you wanna achieve financially? What are some of the key projects? Um, and let’s not forget about what do you wanna achieve? For the stuff that feeds your soul, which is the family stuff, the relationship stuff, and the things for yourself.
Janine Garner: And then I hold that in front of people and I go, okay, who’s helping you get that? When people ask me, how do I build a network, Janine, that works for me? I go, it starts with you. It starts with you owning your goals and your dreams. It starts with you owning what you are good at and what you’re not so good at.
Janine Garner: And it starts with you literally locking in and being intentional about where it is that you wanna go over the next 12 months. I’m not talking about five years and 10 years, and the. The big vision piece I’m talking about, what do you wanna do that’s going to help your boat move quicker over these next 12 months?
Janine Garner: That’s gonna help you get there. And then you gotta find the people. They’re gonna help you get there. Now, for anyone listening, who’s going, who are those people? Um, first of all, grab a copy of, it’s Who you know, but, but secondly, let’s just talk about there’s four key people. There’s only four that you need as a minimum, and we need to get the promoters.
Janine Garner: The promoters are the people that are going to help us become more. They need to understand your goals and your dreams. They need to appreciate what success looks like for you. And these promoters are phenomenal because they are gonna move heaven and earth to help you unlock that. This is something that I’m often, uh, in my work, the role for other people.
Janine Garner: It’s like, These people, promoters see more in you than you will ever see in yourself. They unlock that possibility. They ask you why. They ask you, why not? They ask you what if. These are the people that are helping essentially create that plan to help you move forward. So you need to have promoters. The second group of people you need are what I call the pit crew.
Janine Garner: And these people help you Camel. These are the people that keep your feet well and truly on the ground. They keep you in the moment. They make sure that the cadence of your decision making is right for now. And they also, they don’t, they don’t take any glory out of your success cuz they know that this is a marathon you are running and the pit crew essentially are checking in on you.
Janine Garner: They wanna make sure you are okay. Are you okay? Um, and they, they connect you in with people. They really keep you balanced and they keep you in the moment. The third group of people that I say people must have around them are teachers. Teachers are absolutely key because, um, Richard Branson once said, the day we stopped learning is the day we stopped living.
Janine Garner: And he couldn’t be more true because too many of us think we know. Enough, or we think we should know the answer. And as you alluded to, the world’s evolved. The world’s changing, and it’s changing really quickly. And you know, as a 52 year old, there are things I know, but there’s also things that I don’t know that are 20 year old can teach me.
Janine Garner: And so we’ve gotta surround ourselves with teachers because teachers essentially, they want you to know more. The teacher knows that the biggest competitive advantage you have. Is what you think. What you think? There are hundreds of coaches out there. There are hundreds of speakers. There are hundreds of it.
Janine Garner: People of cybersecurity, people of HR professionals of marketing people of stylists, of lawyers, of accountants, hundreds of us with the job title that is the same as everybody else. You have to own your competitive advantage and that is what you think. And you cannot develop that in isolation. You need to surround yourself with amazing teachers that are stretching your thinking, that are getting you to think outside the box that are deepening.
Janine Garner: This you unique positioning in IP that you have, the stuff that you can write books about, write papers about, create content about. And the final group of people we need are butt kickers. We have to have someone that’s making sure we do the very thing that we’re doing. And the reason for that is we follow shiny stuff.
Janine Garner: We follow. We follow the next Great Butte thing. We follow the shiny thing that’s just turned up on Instagram. We look at somebody else’s post and suddenly before we know it, we’re off track. And then people say, my client say to me, oh Janine, I didn’t achieve it. So I go, well, did you do why? No. Well, that’s why like you’ve got to keep focus and you’ve gotta double down on the very work that’s gonna shift the dial for you.
Janine Garner: And we need butt kickers to do that. It doesn’t matter how smart you are. It doesn’t matter how much you’ve led teams before. Every single one of us needs a butt kicker. We need those people that tell us the truth, those people that accelerate our dreams, and those people that mentor us through the decision making.
Janine Garner: So, To set off, get clear on who you are, get clear on what your message is, get clear on who you are servicing, who you are looking after, and the problems that you’re solving. Uh, it’s one of the critical things that we do. As soon as I start working with clients, I’m like, what is the problem? What is the problem?
Janine Garner: What is the problem? Too many of us don’t understand. We think. We think we know what their problem is and we tell them what their problem is, but we don’t connect with what the real problem is, and then we wonder why we can’t sell or why we don’t get clients. So we, we’ve gotta get clear on that. And then it’s building this critical network around you, um, online and offline that will ensure that every single thing that you are putting out there is consistently talking to your target audience.
Janine Garner: Because ultimately we wanna. Drive leads into our business so that we can achieve the success that we want. And it’s, that’s, that’s the two critical things. Positioning and networking will create a as many opportunities as possible for you to make offers and grow your business.
Renata Bernarde: I love that what you’re saying is highly applicable both to people that are hoping to. Have their own businesses as well as corporate professionals. And you know, I think it’s important for corporate professionals to remember that, that, um, that focus that you’ve mentioned before and that consistency of messaging is what builds their professional reputation.
Renata Bernarde: So even if they’re not seeking clients, they are seeking opportunities for their careers to progress and. That is very counterintuitive. I have found, I don’t find it counterintuitive, but a lot of people do in the corporate sector be because they want to spread their, their risks and, and be and sprinkle their energies and say that they’re generalists or that, that they can, you know, work for every sector and do every job and, and that doesn’t stick.
Renata Bernarde: That message doesn’t stick. So thank you
Renata Bernarde: for reinforcing it cuz it is very
Renata Bernarde: important for everybody.
Janine Garner: It’s so true. Renata During, um, during Covid,
Janine Garner: um, my phone rang hot with corporate executives that had been made redundant
Renata Bernarde: Mm.
Janine Garner: and exactly what I’ve just spoken about. I shared with them who are, who are you and what value are you bringing and who do you know? And we had to go back to the basics because so many people, um, Essentially, I say to those people in corporate, I say companies own jobs.
Janine Garner: You own your career.
Janine Garner: The company owns the job. You own your career, you own your positioning. You own the exposure that you are getting in your industry, and you own the building of your own exposure, your own executive presence, your own positioning, and equally, it’s up to you to build this network around you and the network that you have internally.
Janine Garner: As well as externally is absolutely critical. It is a game changer for you and it is your asset. Um, it’s the biggest asset that you’ve got. What’s really interesting is every time, if, if I think about this last month of keynotes and workshops that I’ve done, those four people that I shared with you, and they’ve all been all of these workshops and this leadership training has been in organizations, every single time I’ve done this exercise, I can promise you zero.
Janine Garner: Individual when I get them to do the exercise based on what they’re trying to achieve, zero individual has all four.
Renata Bernarde: Okay.
Janine Garner: So we talk about networking, but we’ve actually got it all wrong. We’ve actually got it all wrong, and we’re not surrounding ourselves with the right people who are helping us achieve our goals and our dreams.
Janine Garner: Who are stretching our thinking, who are opening doors for us, who are actually holding us accountable? For that next stage in our career or that next stage in our business.
Renata Bernarde: Hmm, that’s, that’s interesting. It’s about being more strategic about your networking efforts. Right. Okay. Love it. This has been such a great conversation. I wish I could carry on, but you know, we need. We need to stop at some stage. Janine, do you have any final messages you want to share? Maybe you know, things that you are working on that you want to let
Renata Bernarde: people
Renata Bernarde: know?
Janine Garner: Um, so I think the final message I have to share with people is you have absolutely everything you need.
Janine Garner: You know, inside of your mind and body exist, the very ideas that you are looking for to build your career or your business. If you ha are a leader in an organization or you have teams and your teams.
Janine Garner: Exist, the innovations that you’re looking for to navigate these next few years of continued uncertainty and in every single organization exists. The competitive advantage, we’ve all just gotta be a little bit braver. And starts leaning in a bit more with our, our thoughts and our opinions and our questions.
Janine Garner: And it is up to each and every single one of us to reset our own boundaries. Um, you know, as I shared as I was talking, there’s significant amounts of burnout in the workplace. There’s significant amounts of fatigue. Um, But it’s up to us to reset our boundaries. It’s up to us to identify where we can perform at our best and to reset those boundaries.
Janine Garner: And I see a lot of blame out there that we’re blaming external environments, we’re blaming other people and we’re blaming ourself for our lack of, and that we have to replace with taking ownership. So we’ve gotta reset our boundaries and we’ve gotta take ownership of what it is that you want to achieve of where it is that you wanna go of the support that you need.
Janine Garner: Because what I know to be true through the clients that I work with, who every single one of them has, uh, stepped up in their careers. Every single one of them is making more money than they did pre covid. They’re successful because they are resetting their boundaries. They are taking ownership, and they’re doubling down on doing the very work that they want to do to step forward.
Janine Garner: And that is an opportunity for all of us of ensuring that we own who we are. We surround ourselves with people that see who we are and who we want to become, and then we do the work we take, we take ownership. And as I said at the beginning, you know, success is different things to different people.
Janine Garner: Ambition is different things to different people. There is no right or wrong at all, but what I do know to be true is that every single person is watching you. Every single person, your kids, your nieces, your nephews, your team, the Uber driver, the person that you’re ordering the coffee off, how you answer the phone.
Janine Garner: Every single person is watching you. And my question to you and your listeners is if you were to walk away for tomorrow, is the impact that you’ve left on that person? I. The impact that you want to leave on that person. And I reckon that the more of us that can take ownership of how we are being every single day on actually owning our dreams of being intentional with how we connect, that is how we will unlock the opportunity.
Janine Garner: In other people. That is how we not only allow ourselves to shine, but we allow others to shine too. And in this crazy world that we’re in right now, the only thing that we do have is our ability to transfer humanity and. I know from the last 12 years of building my business, which has been embedded in connection, that when we transfer intentional humanity, when we absolutely pursue our dreams and unlock the dreams in other people, when we collectively rise together.
Janine Garner: The results happen. And so my wish for your audience is to get curious about, uh, where they know that they can achieve more. I will send you a link, um, that you can put in the notes. Um, I currently have. An assessment tool called the Focus Finder, um, which any of it is a free assessment tool. Go for it. It takes less than five minutes to complete and it will identify for you, particularly if you’re in your own business, what the gaps are currently, and help you double down on the very actions to take, to shift your business forward.
Janine Garner: And you’ll see when you look at that, that it’s not just about sales and marketing, it is about. Connection. It is about the network. It is about your belief in yourself. Um, and I believe that, that there’s opportunity out there. There is so much opportunity out there if you can open your eyes and see it.
Renata Bernarde: Oh, I love it because as a business owner who is sort of like you bootstrapping and take it step by step, sometimes it’s hard to find a focus. So I think I need to go to that link and do it myself as well. I’ll definitely have it in the episode. Show notes. Together with all of your books, I want to link them below and, and your website.
Renata Bernarde: Janine, you know, I love your work. I’ve been following you for a long time. Andre my husband, has done your program, uh, when he was, um, working at Hewlett Packer. He loved it. So I think you’re a force of nature. Thank you so much for coming on board and being so generous with your ideas, and I’m sure you’re going to
Renata Bernarde: inspire a lot of people listening out there.
Renata Bernarde: So,
Renata Bernarde: Thanks again for joining us.
Janine Garner: Oh, thank you. And thank you for everything that you are doing and for being brave and for creating this opportunity to serve other people. So
Renata Bernarde: We’re both
Janine Garner: you know,
Renata Bernarde: We’re both
Renata Bernarde: the teachers, everybody needs, so it’s a great podcast to listen
Renata Bernarde: to.
Janine Garner: That’s all right.
Renata Bernarde: Thank you.
Renata: Ciao for now!.
