saying to the audience when I was presented with the Telecom Australian Executive Woman of the Year Award in Sydney in November 1992, “if my former husband could see me now!”
That awareness had slipped into my consciousness just as I was finishing my acceptance speech. There it was, one of those memorable and electrically-charged thoughts that stay forever. I immediately tracked back in time to the end of my marriage ten years before, when I said to him, “what will I do for a job?” “Go back to teaching, it’s the job you’re trained for,” he replied.
•I really began my working career at 12. My mother had decided that I could be a photographic model and so together we went to June Dally Watkins in Sydney. She put me on her books and before I knew it, I as making good pocket money advertising school uniforms and other clothes. Looking over people’s shoulders in the bus going home from school I had so much pleasure seeing myself in a full-page spread in the evening newspaper. When my mother told me I had to make the phone calls to the agency, to see if there was any work, my introduction to selling had begun. Mum told me that they were far more likely to give me work and remember me if I made the call myself. I‘m sure that was good advice. How many 12-year-olds do you get phoning you for work?
That career was a reasonably successful one until I was 14 when it became clear that I was not going to be a 5 feet 7 inch teenager.
My next training for life was a series of holiday jobs until I went to university to study for a Bachelor of Arts degree and obtain a diploma in education: I worked in a department store, selling gloves and lace collars; a potato chip factory feeding potatoes through a slicing machine and being saturated with wet potato starch; and moving to a cleaner, drier job, a clerk in a large office.
In hindsight the main benefit of these holiday jobs was discovering what I didn’t want to do in life.
High school teaching was interesting, challenging and frustrating. I knew I was good at it, but didn’t enjoy the disciplinary role forced upon me. At the same time, married, I had a baby and supported my husband financially and emotionally for years while he was at University. Those days were full. We had very little spare money yet they were probably some of the best years of our marriage. When he finished his degree, I achieved my next goal: having another child and giving up work.
For a few years I was the mum I’d dreamed about: I had time to spend with friends enjoy tennis afternoons, and had lots of social involvement with the families living in our small community. However, by the time my youngest was ready for school, I was restless.
I was able to rope in some of this restlessness by being part of my husband’s business. I learnt a lot about running a small business and dealing with customers in a very hands-on way. It was probably this face-to-face exposure to the public that taught me most. It was so different from teaching.
My husband was always supportive of my abilities. He never suggested that I wouldn’t be able to achieve whatever I wanted. Looking back, I was the person who limited my development in those 20 years of marriage.
In 1982 I became a single woman once again.
In the following year, while on a trip to USA, I discovered my new direction. I understood now, and didn’t fully appreciate then, that if I feel lost or faced with a dilemma all I have to do is say to the Universe, “Lead me to where I need to be. Show me the way.” Then I release the problem, stand back and watch the doors open.
Although I didn’t understand those simple rules in 1983, what I did understand was the powerful instinct that made me literally sit up and listen when I found myself on a San Francisco ferry next to the woman who was about to change my life. “Have you heard about colour analysis?” Ellen Hecht asked. By the time I stepped off the ferry I knew what I had to do. Here was a business opportunity that would satisfy my need for creativity and provide an income.
I don’t know about you, but I can make up my mind quickly. There are times, just like that moment on the ferry when the great surges of knowingness, rightness and simple gut feeling are so powerful that I must act on them. I don’t tell anyone else, for that would diminish the power. I do something about them.
At times like this I’m moved by my heart not my head. Almost invariably, everything fell into place just like magic. And so it was in San Francisco.
I had the time and more surprisingly the money, to take part in a colour and image training, before flying back to Sydney scared about my future yet determined to be successful. It wasn’t long before I set up business as a colour and image consultant in my lounge room.
Not having any packets of colour fabrics to give away to customers, I decided to make my own. I learnt that buying 100 colours to make up 4 different swatch packets, having them cut by machine, ordering plastic wallets to contain them, writing useful information to be put on cards in the wallets and then stuffing 25 colours into a packet before I could sell one with a consultation was inordinately time-consuming and left me with 22,000 small squares of fabric taking up most of the cupboard space under the stairs.
I longed for the day when the colour company I’d trained with in the USA, Beauty for all Seasons, would come to Australia. In the meantime I was busy practising: practising my skills as a colour consultant, practising my skills to learn to enable me to sell extra products.
Those were anxious days.
In February 1984, Beauty for all Seasons set up in Australia and I was their first consultant. The company was involved in multi-level-marketing and so began a new phase of my business and social life.
It was about this time that I heard the phrase passive income and fell in love with the concept. What a joy! To think someone else would be working for me while I was cleaning the house or at a party. Wow! I began recruiting, eventually having 125 in my consultant down-line, and organising monthly meetings and newsletters. I’d also set my sights on progressing within the company ad very soon became one of three national trainers to reach the status of executive director in terms of my selling. By 1987 I was running my own image consultant business, working with companies on the image of their staff and also accepting the position of Business Development Manager for the colour company.
Isn’t it interesting how life leads you from one path to the next; the professional image part of my work had slowly evolved. I remember so clearly being on a plane travelling from United States back home after a conference in 1984 and reading from cover to cover John Molloy’s book Dress for Success, heavily underlining sentence after sentence. The concept that there was a psychology behind the message we give others at conscious and subconscious levels, fascinated me.
That book began my quest for the meaning of image.
Looking back it’s easy to see now that what I was doing was allowing my interest in anthropology to surface. At university I’d majored in that subject, as well as history, but had never thought that it would be useful in my career. Now in hindsight I can see that this was exactly my fascination. Body language, communication skills, personal presentation even self-esteem all reflect our social upbringing and cultural expectations. I was involved in my own anthropological discovery of our 20th century western society!
By establishing my own company, Image Communications, I was able to follow that fascination. I read voraciously. I attended seminars and workshops, searching for my own personal path and honing my speaking skills along the way. Now when others ask me how I market myself, I tell them about my public exposure. You see, I decided at the very beginning of my image career that the way for me to sell my services, is to be seen to be out there. By speaking at SWAP, Rotary, Apex and women’s clubs, I practised my presentation skills and became known. I never turned down an opportunity to present before the public.
It was after one very successful SWAP club speaking presentation that a member said, “you should join National speakers” and so began the next and very significant chapter of my speaking and communication career. Nine months before this I’d resigned from Beauty for All Seasons as Business Manager and had been spending 6 days a week and often 12 hours a day working my own image and colour business.
Joining the National Speakers Association of Australia and almost immediately becoming