Welcome to eMpowered! What’s to come, who you’ll hear from and why you will love this series of poddies!

In Episode 01 of EMpowered, your host, Emma Herbert, unpacks the intention of the series of Empowered and what the guests will bring to this series of poddies!

Emma covers a little of her story to date, some of the guests’ stories to come, and overall sets the tone for what’s ahead!

Stay tuned for the series of Empowered there are amazing guests on their way!

Recorded Thursday, 19^th of December 2023

If you would like to discuss any of the topics discussed in this episode or if you would like to be a guest on the show, please get in touch either via our website, [email protected] or through any of the links below.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmaherbie/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/redd-digital/

Thanks for watching!

You are amazing and you are loved!

You can find the full transcript below!

(00:20):

Hi, I’m Emma Herbert and welcome to Empowered. Before we kick off, I’d like to acknowledge and pay my respect to the past, present, and future traditional custodians and elders of this nation and their continuation of cultural, spiritual, and educational practices of both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. I’d like to further acknowledge the land on which we work here and that’s the Land of the Terrible and Yuga Peoples. My name’s Emma Herbert. I’m many things in this land. I am the chief of happiness here at REDD. I’d like to thank immensely the team at REDD, in particular, our CEO, Brad Ferris, for allowing me to occupy both time and in this space here in our professional podcasting studio. If you’d like to jump over to our main LinkedIn, page four REDD we do have a Brother podcast, and this is the Sister podcast to that.

(01:20):

So mine will be very different to the REDD podcast. My guests will be predominantly female, not exclusively female, but predominantly female. And REDD’s The Brother Podcast is all about everything techy, very techy. It’s very cool. The beautiful brains that we have here at REDD are exceptional but as I said, mine’s born of a heartfelt plight for me, giving back to the community. I have an amazing life. I love my life, but it hasn’t been easy getting to this point to say that I love my life. So I, I’d like to unpack the intention for Empowered, and I really hope that you enjoy every series, every episode of this podcast. And some may resonate with you, some may not. But I want to cross over a lot of different topics with a lot of different humans that I have in my world. So let’s get into it with a bit of an introduction and an intention of what empowered will be about.

(02:25):

As I said, my name is Emma Herbert. I have a very unhealthy obsession with coriander, sorry, not sorry. I’m nicknamed Mrs. Sparkles, both for my aesthetics and my attire, but also to my attitude to life. I am very loud, in fact, the loudest human at REDD that’s constantly a Emma, Emma, Emma. But I’ve had that all my life and they can just suck it up. But with that loud comes a tremendous amount of love as well. I’ve got the kindness of Alan and Oprah, the absolute sass of Pink and the confidence of Beyonce. But sadly, I don’t yet share their bank account size. At the end of the day, we all have a story to tell, and we all have a story that we need to hear. Your story is going to save a soul or make a soul shine, and for this reason, empowered was born, be it your career success, your fitness achievement, finding your personal balance with that elusive work life balance selling a business that you started from scratch decades ago, and the struggles that you had along the way to get you to that success.

(03:38):

No matter how big or small, your story is going to save a soul. And I can guarantee that there is a queen out there right now who is struggling to stay above water and needs to hear what you have to say. If you had the cure to cancer, you would share it, right? So your cure is the story that you hold and the story that you’re going to share. The struggle that you’ve overcome might be a struggle that another queen, either a little junior queen or an elder queen is currently sinking in. And so we’re going to share those on this platform here. You might be receiving this story and hearing it, or you might be sharing it. So either way, thank you in advance and welcome to Empowered Here. You’re going to be surrounded in a safe space, a absolute safe space. No judgment is allowed of a community of queens who have conquered their own world.

(04:33):

I’m incredibly blessed to have a village of people in my corner who lead with love. They share their success tips, and this platform is for these stories. The intention for these potties is to host guests with topics and tricks shared with the listener to help them with a life, to live a life full of love, happiness, and success. So come and be surrounded by queens who have walked your path and resonate with their stories. What do you know now that has helped your journey that you wished that you heard when you were younger? Because that’s your story and that’s what goes into your toolbox for success, and that’s what we’re going to unpack. So today’s queen is actually me, and I’m going to give you a really T L D R of what’s to come. So I’m actually not going to unpack all of my stories today, but give you a bit of background as to who I am, where I’ve come from.

(05:34):

I know I have a lot of followers who’ve been following me for some time and have probably privy to the shit storm that was my life and is my life. It’s not perfect that it’s imperfectly perfect and I’ve been told that I need to write a book on some of the stories that I have because it’s almost like that can’t be true. That can’t happen, Emma. But it has, and it’s made me who I am today. And some of the topics that I’ll unpack later on is I’m very vocal with some of the trauma that I’ve faced in my life and I’ve spent thousands, tens of thousands of dollars unpacking the therapy there. But if anyone needs to know my trauma and unpack that, I will tell you every ounce of detail, and I’m okay with it. In fact, I’m actually grateful for my trauma, which is an insane moment to come to in your life.

(06:29):

Being okay with my trauma has meant that I can help other people in my community get to that point as well. And every single day, I strive to help people become happier, become more successful, to be more them because I hadn’t felt like me for a long time in my life. I had a late in life diagnosis for being adhd. And again, I’m grateful for that diagnosis but I had to refine myself. I had to repack my toolbox because what I had in my toolbox prior doesn’t fit me. Now I am loud. I am too much. I am bright, I am colorful. I do hug strangers. I do connect on an empathic level that n not a lot of people can do, and those are my gifts. However, when I was younger, I felt like a monster. I felt completely out of this world. I felt like I never fit.

(07:28):

I was constantly in trouble at school, even though I would not be involved in the scuffle, they would pull me apart and I’d be in the principal’s office for talking too loud, being too much, being a nuisance. And sometimes I still get that in my work work life, and that’s okay. I don’t take it on board. I know that I interrupt. I know that I’m disruptive. I know that I can start a conversation in my head and only give you the last four words of the conversation. But being imperfectly perfect, having that late in life diagnosis, unpacking my toolbox and repacking, it means I really, really, really know who I am now. And I’m grateful for that. I choose happiness every day because in the past, I hadn’t because I didn’t know who I was. Whereas now, I absolutely with uncertainty can tell you, I know, oh, sorry.

(08:23):

With all certainty, <laugh> not uncertainty. My brain works faster than my mouth can keep up. You’ll get to know that I know who I am and I know my space, and I know that I am loved and loving, and I know that I can help other people. I have with that empathetic lens, I have the ability to connect with people with neurodivergency, with massive ptsd, trauma with people tell me stories that I’ve just met them, and I just have this ability for people to feel safe in my space to just unload. And for these reasons, I’m so grateful because prior to that diagnosis, I don’t think I would understand how to have that power. So yeah, I am very loud. I do hug. I have to hold back from hugging a lot, but I’m very affectionate because I love that connection with people. But yeah, so previous to being happy in this space after our first born when Rafael was born, I had tremendous postnatal depression.

(09:24):

Chris and I, my beautiful husband who’s also the GM at REDD. And yes, we work daily, and yes, we don’t kill each other. I’ll unpack that a lot later. But we had our first born and we were both running businesses, very successful businesses, and decided that I better hurry up and have babies because I was 31 when I had Raphael, he’s now 10. But back then I had insane postnatal depression to the point that I almost took Raphael and myself out of this world. Chris didn’t believe me. He probably didn’t realize how crucial it was at that time. But I also too, I didn’t express it. I knew I wasn’t struggling, but I didn’t realize to the point that I was an alcoholic, I was suicidal and to the point that I almost took Raphael with me. But I have absolutely dug deep to be the woman I am now.

(10:18):

And we now have a beautiful second baby, which she’s not a baby anymore, she’s five and a SAS queen, she’ll be on this podcast before. I know it name’s Willow and she’s incredible. But it took me a while to be okay with having that second baby. And then as life would have its journey, we couldn’t fall pregnant or had miscarriages in between the two. So I’ll unpack that a lot more later on. But I also, yeah, it was a juggle that I just shouldn’t have signed up for. I should have asked for more help. I should have accepted support when I didn’t. I shouldn’t have be been as stoic as I was. I shouldn’t have been as fucking stubborn stew, sorry, the fbo. Apologies. That’ll happen. But yeah, we’ve had businesses, we’ve had close to bankruptcy. We now have adult money, which is a beautiful thing.

(11:11):

So nice to be on the other side of all our struggles, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not going to come. But what it does mean is that we’ve got the foresight and the tools in our toolbox to be able to cope with or whatever gets thrown at us. My mom constantly is like, how do you do this? Your life is so chaotic. Can you keep just coming up with hurdle after hurdle after hurdle? But I once heard that you only get given what you can handle, be it from God or whoever else. And I take it as a compliment. But some days it’s like, okay, enough. But I’ll tell you what doesn’t break you, makes you stronger. And I’m grateful for the journey of that hardship. But as I said before, I choose happiness every day. And that’s not an easy feat. It’s that I genuinely choose to strive for.

(11:56):

So whether it be in the mummy guilt of not being enough, not playing enough, not being creative enough, not doing crafts, I’m not a play on the floor kind of mom. I really struggle with that. But take them for a day out for an adventure somewhere. Sign me up. I choose for happiness in every component of my life, be it my mental safety, my mental boundaries, and my mental health. I take a little white insurance pill every day and I check in with myself very regularly. I will never not be on some sort of antidepressant right now. It’s the right fit for me and I’m thrilled that I’ve got a really neutral baseline. My emotions are a bipolar emotion without that is, my highs are extremely high, but my lows are crashing down complete opposites. So that little wide insurance every day just allows me to have a really beautiful, neutral baseline, and I’ll never not be on that, and I really don’t care.

(12:54):

There’s the stigma that I think is subsiding and it’s here to stay. So that’s my story, that’s my journey, and I’m sticking to it and loving it every day in my marriage as well. We fight every day for happiness. It’s not easy. We’ve been together married for 12 years together, 17 but we choose each other every single day. We fight hard for our love, and it’s not perfect. Some days I want to poke him in the eye with a blunt stick but always we come back to being in love. I don’t like him some days, but I’m always in love with him. And we always choose to come back to that baseline of being in love. Obviously, being in a business together people thought we were mad doing it again. We’ve done it a number of times and probably in the past, not well. So again, what we didn’t work do well in the past, we’ve changed but we’re an absolute powerhouse team, and I believe that we’re a massive asset to the business and the substantial growth that we’re experiencing.

(13:53):

And at the end of the day, it’s because we choose that happiness. We love people and we believe that they are the gift to our success of life and business and we choose to be better for each other. We’re probably harder on each other than anybody else in the organization because we know what each other is capable of. And that solidarity of it. It’s like having your best friend, and he is a comrade. Every day. You’re putting your boots on to go into the trenches to fight for what’s right for customers, for staff, and we are just constantly on the same page. So I love that. I love him. I love you, Chris. And I love our marriage. I’m so grateful. It’s one of the proudest things in my life is our longevity is quite rare nowadays. What we were all getting together at 25, it was like insane.

(14:45):

We settled on our first house when we were three months in <laugh>, which is just absurd looking back. And we’ve just sold that property, which was a bit emotional, but it’s done us favors and it allowed us to buy the next and next and so on and so forth. And obviously businesses. And we are so grateful for those early on decisions because man, they were audacious but we said, I love yous. Within two weeks. I couldn’t get him out of my apartment. I, but yeah, it was amazing, amazing, amazing. Settled on our first house when we were three months in, and my parents were very dubious on that decision. And I said, look, at the end of the day, if it doesn’t work out, then we, I’ll just treat him as a business partner and we’ll just keep it and use it for whatever it is, or we sell it, or hopefully we start it an empire off that.

(15:31):

And thankfully, it was the latter. So it does get continued to get better every single day, and I’m just so grateful of what we have done and what we continue to do. I am guilty of babbling, and for that reason, I’m going to bid you a Jew now. Hopefully it gives you enough of a taste teaser, taste teaser, whatever, teaser, taster, <laugh> enough to want you to come back for more and more and more. My guests, as I said, are plentiful, but they’re across a range of different industries. Some will be tech based especially wicked Queens in tech. Women in tech are amazing. So I’ve got some amazing, amazing guests, but then there’s others as well who have insane stories to tell, and I’m just so excited to share these with you. So as I said, I’m going to cut this short. I hope you join me for this journey, and I can’t wait to see where this leads us. But again, thank you. Goodbye. You are awesome. You’re also loved, and you are safe. Welcome to Empowered. I’m Emma Herbert, the chief of Happiness at REDD, and I’m so excited to share this journey with you.