Relationship Marketing with Sophie Musumeci

On Episode 77 of the Paper Planes Podcast, Simon chats with Sophie Musumeci, CEO and Founder of Real Entrepreneur Women.

Show Notes

Real Entrepreneur Women is an in person and online networking group for women to share their business.

You can contact Sophie Musumeci on LinkedIn.


Transcript

Simon Dell: Okay, so welcome to the Paper Planes podcast, Sophie Musumeci. Did I get that right?

Sophie: You nailed it. Well done.

Simon Dell: Wonderful Italian name there. Thank you for coming on the show.

Sophie: Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited for today.

Simon Dell: Let’s get straight into it and find out a little bit about you, your background. You’re down in Sydney at the moment. Talk to me about what you’re currently doing at the moment.

Sophie: I’m CEO and founder of Real Entrepreneur Women. We’re a real deal in person and online mastermind networking community. We have local groups all across Sydney and Melbourne, and then we run online communities where women get together, they get to support each other, pitch their business to each other, and just get support. Like, really having someone in their corner backing them, that accountability. Yeah, so we just had our third birthday in the community which is exciting. And in the last few months, we’ve branched out and grown into more of a mastermind higher-end offering which has been very exciting, and the reason why I’ve been able to leave my corporate job, finally.

Simon Dell: I did see that. I saw a lot of the stuff that you were doing, you’re running in parallel with a corporate job. I guess that kind of kept you fairly busy doing both of those things.

Sophie: Absolutely, and then adding a couple of kids. I didn’t realize actually how stressed I was until the day after I finally had ended my contract. And I enjoyed the work that I did in my corporate career. I loved it. I was doing leadership, and coaching, and they were listening to be, and we were doing some really fun, innovative stuff. But at the end of the day, trying to juggle it all and trying to switch my head from the role of being that leadership person in that environment and then running a business, and being on the ground with my clients and my members, and then being a mum and a wife, it was a lot.

Simon Dell: I can imagine. Your background is in change management and you’ve obviously done a lot of that through Westpac, CommBank, and IAG. Explain to everyone, for the non-corporate people out there, exactly what a change management person does on a day-to-day basis.

Sophie: Well, hopefully, my husband’s listening to this because after 10 years in change management, he still doesn’t know how to explain it. So, we predominantly work on projects where a company wants to change. They might want to implement a new system. They might want to outsource. They might want to restructure. And a change manager looks at the people impact of that change. Because normally a company will, they’ll build a fabulous system, they’ll throw it over the fence and expect people to use it.

But then the people haven’t been brought along the journey and they don’t understand why they need to use this new system, and the benefits, and how it links in with all of their other processes and stuff. A change manager really looks at that strategy from a people view and helps people to adapt to the changes. And so, it just becomes part of how we do things. And from a business perspective, why that’s really important is, you just get the benefits because the benefits are actually linked to people using the system because it’s faster or whatever that might be. It’s quite in-depth, but I loved it. It was great for that time.

Simon Dell: And a lot of the stuff you did was in banking. There’s been a fair bit of change in banking in the past ten odd years or so. So I suspect that was in challenge internally with the banks. They always strike me as being not the most flexible organizations in the world.

Sophie: No. This is why I did leave at the end. I was doing a fabulous job. We had really great results, but from an income perspective, and then I live in Sydney, and then once we started to have kids, it became very difficult for me to be able to earn that money as a permanent employee and put my child in child care where child care was like $140 a day. That’s where the entrepreneur burner came inside, and we just knew we had to find a different way. Because two corporate parents didn’t really fit for the, I suppose, the families that we wanted to create.

Simon Dell: Yeah, childcare is just a ridiculous cost. I wish we could just leave them in a field and let them run wild for eight hours. That would be fun for me. I’ve got no problems with that whatsoever.

Sophie: It’s funny. I’ve got Toby who is 7 and Stella who just turned 5. And so, she’ll start school next year. And there’s this conversation with all the parents whose kids are leaving childcare for the last year, and they’re like, “Oh my god, the money we’ll have back.”

Simon Dell: Do you know what? I said the exact same thing to my wife the other week. I said… Because we’re just in the process of building a house. We’re going to start building a house soon. We’ve done all the budgets. We’re looking at the cost of childcare and I said, “But you realize in about four years’ time, we’ll actually have all of that money to spend?” And the way my wife’s eyes lit up at that point, it was beautiful.

Sophie: Funny, because now we’re looking at for high school, or do we go private? What are our options? And I’m like, well, it’s actually probably the same price as what we were paying for childcare. But we think about it so differently.

Simon Dell: Yeah, you’re back into it again, just bleeding money into their education.

Sophie: I know. Bring on the international holidays again, and the extension on the house. I can’t wait.

Simon Dell: Anyway, let’s not whinge about our kids and how much money they drain out of us. Talk to me about the — first of all, it was Real Entrepreneur Mums and then it sort of became Real Entrepreneur Women. What sort of…?

Sophie: Back to the kids part of it, we’ve had Toby and we had got a nanny because we couldn’t get enough childcare days. And I came home and realized that Toby had picked up more of his Polish nanny’s his mannerisms than he had of mine or Daniel’s. It was a real massive slap in the face. I mean, my mom was a stay-at-home mom, and I think we just missed the importance of that. So I didn’t know that people did this. I didn’t know that you could just go and start a business and…

So, I initially got started in network marketing. That was great. I learned a lot around how to grow a business and how to grow your network and relationships. But the thing was that I’d be going to these networking events that were all around. And some of them are fantastic. But the thing is that all of these fabulous women who had taken the plunge and created their own business, they have corporate jobs, high paying jobs, they were all alone.

And family and friends are great, but they just don’t understand what it’s like to grow a business, why you have this desire inside of you that you want to go and create something. You have your family saying, “Why don’t you just go back and get a job?” We had a look at this now and my old business partner who’s moved on now. We were like, “What if we were to create something of our own?” And so, we kind of tested it with 20 women. We tapped them on the shoulder and were like, “This is what we’re thinking. This is how the structure would work.”

You get to pitch your business and focus on referrals, but at the end of the day, we’d have each other’s back, and we’d be there, and we’d support each other. And they all just jumped in on the spot. I remember bringing them all over to my kitchen table, and we’re going through this little pamphlet that we’d made. There’s one page on our vision. And it kind of morphed from there. And initially, we based it around real entrepreneur mums. The word real is because we’re real. No one has all this shit together, you know, like Instagram filters make it look like oh my god, everyone lives the most amazing glammed-up life. But in reality, that’s just bullshit.

I mean, no one has their shit together. Not even me. I mean, I’m getting better but that’s just not reality and that’s unattainable, and no one wants to be part of something that you feel like shit because you don’t feel like you can. You don’t feel like you’re part of it. So the word real was super important to me. Entrepreneur was ridiculous because every time we then wrote the word, we would have to stop and figure out how the hell to spell it.

Simon Dell: Do you know what? I still do that when I type it. I’m like, E-U, or E-U-R? Where’s the U go? Or is it how many E’s?

Sophie: It is. I mean, we’d look at each other and go, “Why don’t you do this?” And then mums because that related to us. But then over time as we grew, and we grew really quick, we started to realize that we were attracting a lot of hobbyists, and the word mum and mumpreneur can sometimes come with a bit of a stigma that we’re not serious.

And one of the big things I’m really passionate, about one of the things I’ve done in my corporate career, is a lot of customer stuff. So, you know, net promoter score, listen to your customer getting feedback and then implementing changes in the organization based on what they think and feel. And so, I surveyed all of my members. We had over 100 and really tried to understand, “What are we doing that’s great, and what can we keep growing and improve on?” But what’s really not working? And one of the big questions for me was: What resonates better with you and why? Real Entrepreneur Mums or Real Entrepreneur Women?

And it was over 85% who said women, and the reasonings were that they viewed themselves as a serious businesswoman. And the word mum to them kind of felt like they were just kind of hobbying, looking for a few clients and just happy growing their business at a certain level. Whereas these women had big friggin plans for themselves. So, that was all the validation that I needed. And so, we announced it at our end of year celebration of it last year, and everyone was so excited.

And I can’t tell you, we did the rebrand, the photoshoot, and the energy, and the change in the colours, and everything is just absolutely magnifi — it’s incredible how one word can have a huge switch in how people relate to your business.

Simon Dell: That mumpreneur now has got a bit of stigma attached to it. It’s not nice, but it’s bit of a joke tag. It’s like perhaps people aren’t taking it necessarily as seriously as they should, if that makes sense.

Sophie: Yeah.

Simon Dell: There was someone that I used to follow who labelled herself a single mumpreneur. And I went, “What? That’s even more awkward. As soon as you get yourself a boyfriend or a husband, that’s your whole brand gone out the window. I completely understand where you come from. It’s a shame that has generated that stigma. But talk to me. One of your key focuses was relationship marketing. It’s explain to me what you see relationship marketing as.

Sophie: For me, I mean, if you think about how most people do business — I’m saying most, but generally — we love to talk about a business that we love. For instance, I love Mr Lid. The owner is one of my clients but I just can’t help talking about it everywhere I go. And it’s like a tupperware container, but the lids are attached and they stack in each other, so you never lose the lid. It’s fabulous. I’m a massive raving fan for that business, not because they pay me, because I genuinely love the product and they give me great customer service.

We do this all the time. You’re at a barbecue and you talk around, “Oh my god, your hair looks great.” “Oh, I’ve got my hairdresser.” or “I saw this movie the other day.” So, word-of-mouth is nothing new. But what we can do is if we can create a cultured environment, which again I’m super passionate about that, coming from my corporate career, if we can create the right cultured environment where people can build genuine, real relationships where they support each other, back each other, and we are deeply understanding about each other’s business and where we want to go compared to some of the other referral networking groups out there where you are kind of pressured to refer or you are asked to leave, we knew that if women have the right relationships with someone where they know, like, and trust you, then they’ll do anything for you.

And we’ve seen this. I see this every single day in my community, and we’re not just talking about the referrals, and being the raving fans, but also, when times are tough — and some of these women get to a breaking point because things just aren’t going right. What they thought they wanted to do just doesn’t end up becoming because of a number of reasons, or they don’t have the support… And it’s not just women that go through this. Everyone goes through this.

But because we focus on building the strong relationships with each other, these women are deeply there for them. Like, they back them, they pick them up. They toss them off. What’s going on? They’ll help each other out. They’ll learn from each other. They’ll share ideas from each other. We don’t hold our cards close to our chest, like we’re not about, “Oh, well, you can’t see what I’m doing because maybe you stole my ideas.” We’re all about abundance.

Relationship marketing keeps blossoming for us because the deeper and stronger connection our members can get in that right cultured environment… And it comes from the top, right? It comes from my leadership team, and we don’t put up with anything that’s less than that. So, I have asked a few people to leave in the past because they just weren’t aligned to it. That’s fine. 

Through that, though the structure and the strategy that we have, we partner everyone. So every month, they get a business partner where they keep each other accountable during the month. But then they also get to know each other. How can they refer to each other? How can they support each other better? So, we encourage collaboration? We also you know monitor and track referrals. So, there’s a whole heap of different levels within that, but it all comes down to, if you don’t have a relationship with someone, we will never pressure you ever to refer to them because that just doesn’t fit with me.

Simon Dell: I guess what you’re doing there is an evolution of other business networking or relationship marketing models that have existed in the past whose names I won’t mention, that you’ve perhaps framed much better. Is that fair to say?

Sophie: Yeah, and those models are very successful. When you’re starting out in any business, you definitely look at what everyone else is doing. What do you like about what others are doing? What don’t you like? And one of the big things that I find when people come to us is that they may have been to one of those groups. And you know, I’ve had some people that had to go to therapy afterwards. I kid you not. That’s how bad the experience was.

And what I found is that for women, generally, we are very good at relationships. So we generally want to do business with people we know, like, and trust. You don’t need to pressure people if you create the right environment for them and you support them. Because I tell you what: Anyone who’s ever had my back, I would have their back tenfold. You just do that law of reciprocation. It’s so evident. If you come from that place of wanting to help someone else first, that comes back to you all the time. And that’s not just for business, that’s in everything.

Simon Dell: I did one of those groups for about 18 months. I don’t think I needed therapy as I came out of it, but it was… The funny thing is, they’re quite cult-like, and I guess that’s what you’re building as well. You’re building a cult. You’re not going to camp out in a house with lots of guns and defend yourselves, but what you might do, if that’s what — you guys do the Christmas party or something.

Sophie: We call it a community because it takes a community to raise a family. It takes a community to raise a business.

Simon Dell: Yeah, but there’s a lot of cult-like behaviour in these kind of things which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Because you know, where you see really successful brands, what they’ve done is they’ve created a cult behind them. You only got to look at Apple. There’s people that would die for Apple out there. That’s the sort of thing that they’ve done. I guess one of the questions I was going to ask you in that is: With relationship marketing, there’s obviously a massive element of trust involved in that.

You’ve got to trust that when you refer someone or you pass on someone’s details, that they’re going to almost deliver a level of service and a level of engagement that you would have delivered if it would have been your business. How do you grow that trust? I mean, that’s got to happen over a fair amount of time. Is there a risk that you’re damaging your own reputation by passing on another business details, if that makes sense?

Sophie: Yeah. I mean, that’s always the case. I could refer my sister and she could do a shitty job. There’s always that thing that you don’t have control over. And I suppose the only thing that — what we do is, by putting the structure in place where people get to know each other… Ultimately, it’s up to the individual whether they choose to or not. And we do have a contract that when people come in that they sign that says that they will — if they are referred by anyone in the group, that they would deliver extremely high quality and all of that as well.

We’ve really only had a couple of cases in the three years where that’s happened. We have a process in place. But yeah, it’s like with anything. I can recommend someone to go watch a movie and they could hate it. Ultimately, you can only share your experience, if that person chooses to work with them or not is really up to that other person.

Simon Dell: If you’re one of those people that are in a networking situation or a group situation tends to clam up, hide in the corner, not talk to anyone, what are some of the — and I suspect you get some of those within your groups. How do you help them break the ice and settle in?

Sophie: That’s a really great question. I hated going to other networking events. Sometimes, I would even sit in the car just like, “Oh my god.” Because you don’t know anyone and you’re walking into this room of complete strangers. And then I would always just hang out at the bar and hope that I found someone that had similar wine tasters with me, and then you can just randomly talk about nothing.

Simon Dell: Someone that wanted to drink as heavily as you?

Sophie: Pretty much. Right, enough that you are still OK to drive home. It’s awkward. It’s uncomfortable. So, how our community works is so — our members are like a member for a year. They sign up for a year. And we do allow guests to come to any of the events and they can try it out and see what they think. So we know the people that are coming. And so what happens, we have a very high touch process before they even get there.

So, they’ll get a phone call from us, or from myself, or from one of my leadership team. They’ll also get a series of countdown emails, which really explains how things work, what they need to prepare to come. The community leader will text them before the meeting to personally introduce themselves, to say that this is my number, park here, and so they really feel warmly welcomed before they even get there.

And then when I walk in the room, literally, they are met by the highest-energy big arms. We’re big huggers. So, you know, those berries get dropped pretty quickly. It’s part of the leadership training. One of the key modules is, and I say, “I never want to walk into one of your meetings and see — I guess sitting by themselves. It’s just not all we do because I remember that feeling, and it’s a horrible feeling of isolation, and not fitting in, and we are not clicky group, we are not a bitchy group, we don’t complain. Culture is so important for me. So when that guest walks in the door, the leader knows exactly who’s coming, who’s expecting. The other members know how many guests are coming and to keep an eye out for them. They get welcomed in so warmly, there is no sitting in the corner. No one puts my guests in a corner.

Simon Dell: It’s great when you get to slip a Dirty Dancing reference into a podcast? I actually did a mentoring session the other day for government, and one of the guys around the table slipped in some 50 Cent lyrics to his mentoring. Hats off when you can do that. That kind of leads me nicely to the second thing we were going to talk about with you, the personal branding thing, which is obviously another passion of yours. Explain to me why personal branding is so important for people. 

Sophie: I mean, there are so many businesses being started all the time. Now, does that mean that you have heaps of competition, and no one’s going to know who you are? Absolutely not, but you need to be able to stand out from the crowd. I mean, the younger generation especially are wanting to get behind a brand that stands for something.

There’s a really cool business called Thankyou. They do the soaps. Corporations have got behind them. They’re all in my bath. Every time you’re on the toilet, you can read what the organization is about. There’s a little that you can track your impact in wells sanitation and whatever their cause is. So, standing out is really important and having a cause.

And one of the things that — there’s a whole heap of different people that I love, but it’s always for different reasons. Some people could be — you’ve got to be super aligned to what your message is, with who you are, that congruency. I remember after I bought out my business partner at the end of last year and did the rebrand, it really allowed me to step into who the hell I am.

Because when you run a business with someone else, I mean, she’s fabulous, but you’re trying to meet somewhere in the middle. Real Entrepreneur Women has allowed me to just go, hang on, who am I? What do I believe in? What do I stand for? And what am I just not okay with anymore? And by getting really clear on that, it’s allowed me to go in a very strong direction in my message, in my copying, in my videos I put out, even in the brand images and stuff.

And that’s how you standout. People want to get behind something. If you’re a coach, or a strategist, or any kind of company where you’re helping them, people want to know that if they turn to you, that you’re going to be the right person. You’re going to have the solid foundation. You’re going to have that fire in your belly that you’re going to do whatever it takes to help them get the transformation that they want.

So if you just want to be a coach or any product, and you’re like, “Oh, you know, my product is great.” But your product has to stand for something. You have to stand for something. You have to have a voice, because the voice is what’s going to attract like-minded people to you. Like if you think about who your dream client is, you have to know who they are, what keeps them up at night. What did they desperately desire when no one else is looking? What are they crying about? What are they praying over? All of that.

If you can deeply understand them and you know what you stand for and how you can help them, then you’re just talking directly to that person, creating a following, and creating all of these people around you who are your dream clients. It becomes so much easier, but you have to know who you are. And that comes over time.

Simon Dell: 100% agree with everything you’re saying there. A lot of people are sitting there going, “Right, I want to sort my brand out.” I think the big challenge is, where do you start? What would you suggest that — if someone sat down to you and says, “Sophie, I need to sort out my personal brand.” What are the first couple of things that they could be looking at?

Sophie: The first thing I talk to someone about — brand is like a really big umbrella, right? So there’s the personal brand, the business brand. But ultimately it’s like, what is the problem that you solve, and why can you solve it better than anyone else? If you can clearly identify what that is… I mean, if you look at like — just thinking about Janine Allis from Boost Juice, I’ve seen her talk many times. I’ve seen her on so many different things but she’s always her. She’s got a great story. She can connect with people through her story how she overcome, how she got started.

Her personal brand, it stays really consistent no matter where she shows up. And so, that getting really clear on who you are and what you stand for, those key questions… Like, I’m not okay that there are women out there who are growing their business. They are completely isolated. They’re frustrated and they don’t have the support around them that they need or the strategy to make the money and to grow the business that they deeply desire. Like, I’m just not okay with that.

So now that I know that I’m not okay with that, I talk about that and I create my content, and my trainings, and my modules, and my membership all around that. So when you’re looking at creating a brand, it’s like your personal brand, “Well, who the fuck are you? Why would someone want to work with you over Simon?” And it comes down to the relatability. That word ‘real’, and sorry for swearing, but I say that to my members but some people probably don’t like that I swear, whereas others, they fucking love it.

Simon Dell: It’s a sign of being trustworthy, Sophie. Everyone says the more you swear, the more trustworthy you are. You said at the start of this podcast, you were going to swear.

Sophie: Yeah, you’ve got me talking about the fire in my belly. That’s what attracts people to me, but it also repels some people from me, but that’s okay because I’m not for everyone. So, when you’re talking about a brand… I mean, Ingrid Arna’s one of the coaches I’ve worked with before. Now,  she is — I mean, she drops the F-bomb all the time, but she puts herself out there in all of her glory and she doesn’t give a fuck what anyone thinks about her.

And that to me, it’s her congruency with her brand and who she is that has attracted me to her. Because I wanted that congruency within my life and within my business, and that’s what I teach with my clients. It’s like there is no one else like you, so you need to figure out the supercharged version of you, and get really clear, and get the language and the messaging around that that allows you to communicate who you are and what you stand for with power. And then that’s what you base your brand around. The colours and everything, that all comes after you create that.

Simon Dell: This leads me nicely to one of my final three questions. You must hear a lot of people talk — you just mentioned Janine Allis and so one and so forth. Who do you enjoy listening to or reading? Who gets Sophie inspired every morning?

Sophie: That’s a really great question. For me, I’ve worked with — I’m also mentored by Mark Bilton. He used to be the CEO of Gloria Jean’s Global and now the owner of Thought Patrol. I’ve worked with him now for a few years. One of the things my members always ask, “Who is your favorite? What books are you reading and podcasts?” And all of that, which is awesome. But I pick a couple and then listen with that.

Because one of the things that I find really distracting for me is trying to listen to all of these different things, and then you have all different voices in your head. And I want to pay for like — I want to work with the best in the world, right? So if I’m going to work with a marketing company, or if I’m going to work with a coach, or a strategist, or a mentor, whatever, then I’m paying to listen to them. And I want to get their message, and their strategy, and their thoughts really ingrained in myself, I suppose. So at the moment, I am definitely listening to a lot of Ingrid Arna because I’m loving a lot of that.

I have read lots of books. I’m actually not a massive reader, so I prefer to do the podcasts or the audiobooks and stuff. And I find that I’ve done a lot. For me, it’s all about implementing and now teaching as well.

Simon Dell: What about some other things that you like? Things that you buy all the time. You mentioned Thankyou, Thankyou water and all those kind of things. But other things that you look at, even if there’s some niche ones that you know of that other people don’t know of?

Sophie: There’s one that always comes to mind. Again, I’m a massive raving fan because of what they stand for, but it’s Dinner On The Table. It’s a social enterprise. They’re based in Sydney but they are expanding across Australia. And they cook fabulous meals, home-cooked meals, for you, and then have them delivered to your door for the week or ongoing.

But the money goes into putting dinner on the table for families with disabilities. So the okay Rachel Golding is the founder. She’s got a lot of the university background. They’re looking at: What impact does it have when you bring the whole family together and they are eating healthy every day? That really inspires me , one, because my kids will always eat Rachel’s dinner probably over mine.

But also, it’s guilt-free because you also know that this is actually helping someone. And she looks at the whole family as opposed to — there’s a lot of support out there for the disabled person, but there’s not for the carers and the people that are around them. So, the difference that just having dinner cooked for you and not having to think about it every day has had a massive impact on a lot of people that she’s been able to help.

The other one, which isn’t really a niche one, but one of the brands that really impressed me is the Domino’s comeback story. Do you know about that?

Simon Dell: No, go for it.

Sophie: Domino’s, nearly 10 years ago, their pizzas were terrible. Their share price plummeted to about $9. They ended up bringing in a new CEO and he did a massive customer feedback project where they did a lot of — what’s it called when you people into a room and they ask some questions?

Simon Dell: Focus group.

Sophie: Heaps of focus groups and stuff like that to really understand what’s wrong with the pizza and listening to the customer, and putting the customer at the centre of your organization is one of the smartest things you can do. And so, what they did was they got all these focus groups and people were telling them, “Your pizza tastes like cardboard and it’s terrible.” But what they did was they used that then to improve.

I remember they would have big things up in Times Square of real live verbatims that their customers were telling them on shit their pizza was. So, they made it hugely public, but that they made their turnaround massively public. So, they made sure everyone knew how bad their pizzas were and then they turned it around, and then they — there’s some videos on YouTube you can have a look at, like Domino’s come back.

And then they even went back and door knocked on the people who came into the focus groups with the fresh pizza with the head chef. “Hey, did you say that our pizza crust tasted like cardboard?” And the poor people are like, “Oh my god, yes.” And they said, “Try this.” They really turned around their company simply by listening to what their customers thought and then improved on it. I mean, that’s something that we teach, and I know it’s something that IAG, but listening to the voice of the customer, and innovating, and growing, rather than just trying to hide.

Most people don’t ask for feedback because they don’t want to know yeah. They take it so personally. They forget that, “How can you improve if you actually don’t know?” And then when you know, if you’re going to ask, make sure you do something with it. So, one of the things I think is? If you fuck up, you just need to own it, learn from it, improve, and let your clients know that you’ve been able to do so with their help.

If someone was a ranting customer and they gave you feedback, but then because of that feedback you’re able to do something about it, go back to that customer and say, “Hey, I know you thought I was shit, but thank you for telling me, because now I’ve done this and I wouldn’t have been able to if you didn’t tell me.”

Simon Dell: That’s a great story. I didn’t actually know that about Domino’s in the US.

Sophie: $160, their share price went up to from $9.

Simon Dell: And all from sitting there and actually listening to your customers?

Sophie: Yep, and taking action. 

Simon Dell: Who’d have thought that that was the solution?

Sophie: Right? Crazy.

Simon Dell: We’re winding this up now. Otherwise, you and I — I suspect you could probably talk for a lot longer. And you promised me you wouldn’t swear at the start, and there’s just been f-bombs left, right, and centre. I’m going to wind this up because I’m absolutely disgusted, Sophie. At least we didn’t do the word that you had to explain to your husband that we weren’t allowed to do on here.

Sophie: Oh, yeah. What is that word? Well, I have a saying, right? Well, it’s not my saying. I stole it from someone I know who said it. But it’s like I don’t care what you think of me, Simon, unless you think I’m fabulous. And in that case, thank you, because you’re right.

Simon Dell: Brilliant. The last thing I was going to ask you: If someone wants to get a hold of you, if they want to ask you a question, if they want to come along to one of your events, what’s the best way of them reaching out to you?

Sophie: You can go to rewomen.com.au. Our website has been beautifully redesigned, which is great. Or you can just connect with us on Facebook. You can connect with me individually or we have a free support group there called Real Entrepreneur Women. So, if you’re a woman in business or wanting to start a business, then you can join that free group, and get some support, and make sure you jump in and say hi to me when you do.

Simon Dell: Awesome. Look, thank you very much for being on the show today. It has been highly entertaining and I hope we get to do this again very soon as well.

Sophie: That would be great. Thanks so much, Simon. Bye.

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