[00:00:19] Emma: [00:00:00] I've got a secret. I have never felt smart. I mean, you might look at me and think beautiful blonde hair and gorgeous woman, and looks like success on Instagram. And you know, maybe that is true, probably not. But I have never felt smart. Let me just tell you a little story to back this up. When my parents split, which is on another episode, go listen to that one.
I repeated year 10. Because I didn't feel smart. Actually it was 'cause my grades were so bad. and I put that down to my parents' divorce, but that's just really an excuse. Anyway, I repeated year 10 and my grandfather, bless his soul, would pay me for a's. And I can tell you I didn't get [00:01:00] paid very much money.
I wish that he had paid me for a C 'cause CS were good. I was good at cs. I've just never been academically bright. You know the ones where you have a a high a task score, you got your head in the book all the time and that's how you learn. That is not how I learn, but for my entire childhood. From grade, probably four through till 12.
I never felt smart and I feel a bit sad saying that actually because I'm very street smart. I'm very street wise, but that is not what you get graded on at school. Our society gives you grades based on if you are book smart or not, and I was not. I had this conversation with my dad when I was in grade 10.
I remember it very clearly. It was work experience time. What are you going to do? I wanted to be two things. One, I wanted to be a social worker. I. Two. I wanted to be a mechanic. I loved pulling stuff [00:02:00] apart and putting it back together. I loved getting my hands dirty and feeling my way through a puzzle. I loved looking at an engine and thinking, could I put that together?
it sounds random, doesn't it? But anyway, and my dad thought in his wisdom, social work might be nice. And also I was a chatter box, so that might actually work, even though that's not anything to do with social work. Anyway, another day and over his dead body would I become a mechanic? His words not mine.
Anyway, so I went on with life. I have to tell you a story about this. At our dad's 70th birthday, which was five years ago, he told this story about how he, when he was in grade 10. He went to his mum and dad and said, I'd like to leave school. I'd like to become a mechanic. And his parents said, sure, go do that some.
No, they did not. They said,
"Over my dead body will [00:03:00] you go and be a mechanic."
Now, I was like, I never knew that story. No wonder you had that response to me because that's what you wanted to do. Anyway, we had words, I can tell you right now, because I was like, I would've not only been a mechanic one, I would've been a short blonde mechanic, differentiation plus, and I wouldn't have stopped at being a mechanic.
I would've owned. Some mechanic shops for sure. maybe I still wanna be a mechanic anyway, so I am what I would call street smart, and it's taken me years. Years to own this and even to this day, some days, ladies, I like everyone else, fall into that trap of comparison. They seem smarter than me. They seem to be able to do it.
I don't have those smarts. I can't push out content as quickly. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I have to actively [00:04:00] work on my mindset to go, no, no, no. I'm street smart. I know what to do. I know how to run a business, which by the way, everyone in my life bar my immediately find me are so surprised about because I'm not book smart.
I went to uni, yes, but I also went to uni and I worked full time. I did both loads at the same time, and I literally just went to uni to get that piece of paper. That was it. Now I have a Bachelor of Commerce. I've never pulled that piece of paper out. I've never put it on a wall actually. It doesn't actually mean anything to me.
And also because I was a mature age, full-time student at the ripe old age of 25, I kind of sat in the back and went, Hmm, that doesn't actually happen in real life. Oh, in a work context, that doesn't actually happen. Anyway. And yet here I am saying to my daughter, what would you like to be when you grow up, honey?
You can be anything you wanna be. And the other day she said to me, mom, I need some help with maths. My biggest nightmare. And she's grade six. [00:05:00] And I'm like, okay. And she said, but you are not very good at maths, so I'm going to go to dad. I'm like, cool, cool. and. Our other daughter was sitting there at the time, she said.
Hey, iffy. Um, mom actually runs a business and so she must be okay at maths because her business is successful. I'm just curious what you mean about that. And I thought, oh, that's very nice. Anyway, iffy was like, oh, I know you run a business and you deal with lots of money, but you don't understand this six maths.
You know what? She's blowing, right? So annoying. I don't understand it, and I'm okay with that. So, you know, dad's the teacher, she goes off to dad and I'll go print some money somewhere else, shall I? So what I wanna say to you is just because you are one thing. It's important to everyone else. Doesn't mean you have to be defined by that thing.
I had to redefine what I thought was smart. I had to [00:06:00] redefine what it meant to me to be smart. I have business smarts. I have entrepreneurial smarts. I have smarts with people. You give me a test, I'll fail that. I'm okay with that. But I am almost at the age of 50, only now coming to terms with the fact that Books and me academic me is probably not where I wanna go.
Having said that, I've written my own book. I have so much intellectual property content, I run my own business. I do my own thing. I read books. I have at least three on the go at any point in time. So I am a avid reader, but I don't value the academics of learning for learning's sake. That's just who I am, and that's okay.
Now, I'm gonna be nervous if Evie ever repeats these words back to me. So she's not allowed to listen to this podcast episode because I want her to feel [00:07:00] like she can go and be a mechanic if she wants to. She can. Have a business if she wants to. She can go to uni if she wants to, and she's academically bright and we always say, thank goodness she got her father's brain from an academic perspective.
He's awesome and I think she's going to be that way inclined as well. That's not the only way. So I wanna encourage you that if you feel like, yeah, I'm not academic bright, but you are running a business, it's almost like having a different side of your brain to use to build and grow a business.
Being an entrepreneur, you have to take all these risks. You have to show up as yourself. You have to manage your own finances, you have to manage your own time. Business it, all the things. And if you are not smart, you can't do that. So I know that the smart situation, it's just a narrative I need to leave behind and I work on that every single day.
But [00:08:00] I'm street smart. I'm street wise, I know how to get a result when I need it. And that doesn't necessarily fall out of academia, right. So if you're sitting there and you're going, yeah, I felt the same way. I wanted to do all these things, but I wasn't smart enough, let's get rid of that.
Let's reframe that to say, I'm smart in this way. I'm smart as I run my business, I make smart decisions. I can do hard things. That's what smart's all about. It's not just about not being able to read a text in a textbook, not being able to take a test, all those things. None of those things actually matter when you get through high school.
I think when we have kids that are in high school and ATAR is everything and all the things, I think it's really hard for them to see past that. But now I've got a bit of hindsight, a bit of wisdom behind me, a bit of lived experience. I know that I can sit opposite someone who's academically bright and we can both be smart together and isn't that lovely?
So if you are [00:09:00] feeling like you're not smart enough, all the things, just think about What narrative are you telling yourself? Are you telling yourself that you're not smart and therefore you can't? Or are you saying, "I'm smart in a different way and therefore I can"? I would love you to take that away and I'd love you to share this episode with someone who you think needs it.
