Top Tips from Debra:
1. Life is Too Short:
“Life is too short. We need to live in the present moment, we need to make sure that we’re thoroughly enjoying every single day, every single moment, because there may not be another one.”
2. Don’t Take Things for Granted:
“Don’t take things for granted. You take for granted you’ll have money, you’ll take for granted you’ll have a home, you’ll take for granted you’ll have health. And yet, none of these things, unfortunately, come as an absolute give.”
3. Have Gratitude:
“Every day I fill in my gratitude journal and I kind of go, Yep, I’m not exactly the healthiest, but I’m really grateful that I’m alive. Because, let’s face it, I could well not be alive… that is my gratitude every day.”
“So I have huge gratitude for the things that are there. And I think it’s really important sometimes when things don’t feel quite so good, just be able to look and reflect on the things that you should you know that you can be grateful for.”
4. Know Your Why:
“My why is to help entrepreneurs live a life they love. I know that’s what I exist for. I know that’s why I come into work every single day. I know that I can help them. I know that I can help them with the EOS tools, and I can help them with my experiences, and I can help them because I’ve been there, I’ve done that, I’ve got the t-shirt. I’m still doing that. I’m still going through it. I’m still getting the t-shirt. So I know that is why I exist. And if I keep hooking back into that, being focused on making a real difference, then I will get to help entrepreneurs live a life they love. We’re going to make, I’m going to leave this planet in a better place than how I found it.”
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
work, people, love, day, years, role, businesses, realised, new zealand, business, learned, thought, EOS, sales, started, life, manage, clients, passions, framework
Debra Chantry-Taylor 00:33
Hello and welcome to another episode of Better Business, Better Life. I’m your host, Debra Chantry Taylor, and I’m passionate about helping entrepreneurs lead their ideal lives by creating better businesses.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 00:52
For those who’ve been following the show, you will know that I’m a certified EOS implementer, an FBA accredited family business advisor and a business owner myself with several business interests. I work with established business owners and their leadership teams to help their ideal life using EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 01:16
Usually, I have guests on this show, but today is an extra special edition. So tomorrow is actually my 54th birthday, and so I thought it’d be a great opportunity to just talk to you a little bit about some of my things that I’ve learned in that time. And originally I thought I would do 54 tips. I thought, oh, 54 tips. That’s great. It’s 54th birthday. And then I thought, no, that’s actually quite self indulgent, and I’m probably sure it wouldn’t be all that interesting, and you’ll probably get bored quite easily. So I thought, okay, let’s split it into five and four. So 54th birthday, five tips, four tips. And the first five tips I’m going to share are about living the EOS life, and the second four tips are probably my four most important tips that I think I’ve learned from my 54 years of living on this planet, the things that I have been through with my family, with my businesses, etc. So what I thought I would do is I just set the scene first and just give you a little bit of background. So for those of you who don’t know me, I’m actually a biochemist and food technologist by trade. I went in to do this these degrees because my parents said I should be well educated enough to find myself a decent husband. And if I was to get myself a science degree, I would be a good enough wife. I’d be able to have, you know, conversations with an intelligent husband, and I would help me find the best husband. So don’t know how good that advice really was, but what I did learn was that I’m really not a scientist. I love the principles of science, but in reality, I get much more excited by business.
So I have been running businesses since I was at school. My first business was at school. We used to make little plasticine badges and printed T shirts and also little stationery. Back in the days, we actually used to write letters to each other, and so we used to make these little stationary sets that were little envelopes and little notepads that you could write little notes to each other and seal them. We used to actually put the glue on the envelopes the whole work. So that was my first businesses at school. I did not make huge amounts of money, sadly, but I had a lot of fun doing that, and I learned very quickly, you know that you’ve got to have a market for the stuff that you’re selling. And everything you do is actually about sort of selling what you do as products and services.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 03:29
So because I went and did my degrees in biochemistry and food technology, that my first role was actually as a laboratory technician in a pathology lab. And in that first role, I realised I didn’t like science all that much. It was really very boring. But I had a team of people, and I had this team of people whose entire responsibility was making sure that the samples that came in were correctly labeled, so we didn’t give somebody a pregnancy result test who was a male, or somebody who you know wasn’t pregnant, or that we didn’t tell them they had a urinary tract infection, when, in actual fact, it was somebody else’s specimen. And so you might think that surely that doesn’t get mixed up too often.
But when I first joined that organisation, we were getting two or three errors a day. Now they were being picked up, so they weren’t necessarily getting to the end user. But you imagine, you know, that is a huge rate of error, and so I decided it was my challenge was to try and stop these errors from happening. And the way that I did this was I realised I had to motivate the team to actually not want to make errors. So not entirely sure how I did a lot of it, but, but the first thing I kind of introduced was explaining why it was important. And then I introduced a system where they would actually get a paddle pop, which, for those of you aren’t Australian, that is a frozen ice block if they were actually able to do a day with no errors. And so that was my first kind of experience of actually managing people. And I did that. And we got down to zero errors on a regular basis. And it was really just about bringing them on the journey as to why it was important, rewarding them for the correct behavior, and of course, measuring some measuring every single day to see how we were going to make sure we’re getting the right outcomes.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 05:15
That was my first job out of uni. It was certainly quite an interesting one. It did make me realise that I love people way more than I actually love science. And it was after probably about six months of being there, I realised I couldn’t do this, and I got approached by the opposition company, who actually asked me if I would go and work for their laboratory, because they’d seen what I’d done in this laboratory. Could I go and work for their laboratory and manage their people? And I remember at the time going to my boss. And my boss was a beautiful man. His name was Jeff. And I went to Jeff, I said, Jeff, look, I’m really sorry. I’ve really enjoyed working here, but I’m actually going to be leaving. He’s like, why Debra, why are you leaving?
When I said, Well, I’ve been offered this other job where I’m going to be paid more money for doing a similar kind of role, but with the opposition. And I think Jeff was probably one of the most instrumental people in my career. Because he actually said to me, Debra, do you actually enjoy what you do? And I went, No, not really. He said, Well, why would you go and do that for somebody else? And remembering, in my early 20s at this point, I said, Jeff, they’re going to pay me more money. He’s like, Yeah, I get that, Debra. But honestly, if you don’t enjoy it. Why would you go and do it? And I said to him, Jeff, you don’t seem to understand. I’m going to get paid more money. And I think at this point in my life, that was all that I knew. And so having more money potentially coming my way and managing more staff seemed like a really great idea. And he said to me, Debra, I don’t think this is the right career choice for you. I don’t think you enjoy what you do, and I actually think that you love people, and I think there’s something in it for you in terms of people, maybe you’d like to go into what we call a liaison officer role. And a liaison officer role is somebody who goes out and visits our doctors and talks to them and make sure we’re solving their issues as they occur, talks about using our services, promotes the services we actually offer, basically a sales rep type role, but also an account management role in terms of managing these people. And so I was like, oh, okay, that sounds pretty cool.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 07:08
And so I remember going home and telling my parents that I was going to quit what I was doing and go off and go into sales and liaison. And my parents were horrified, because, you know, I was supposed to be a scientist. I wasn’t meant to have a career as such. I was just meant to be well educated enough to attract a good husband. So anyway, I upset my parents. I went into that role, and I found that I absolutely loved it. So I spent my time literally working with doctors, with the team, internally and externally, to help solve problems, help solve issues. I went around and talked to them about what we could do for them. You know, it got them excited about using a full range of services, and solved any issues as they actually arose. And it was from that rather, I actually got headhunted again into a pharmaceutical sales role.
So for seven years, I sold drugs. I sold all manner of legal drugs, from antidepressants to antibiotics, both at the general practitioner level and also at a specialist level, and realised I had a real knack for for selling, but not selling in the true sense of the word. I just loved helping people. I loved kind of working with them and getting them excited about what we were doing. But I actually realised I didn’t enjoy the day to day, trudging around trying to visit doctors in Doctor surgeries. You know, we had a role. You had to see eight doctors a day. You had to go around and visit these doctors. And they saw lots of other reps. And so they were always not in particularly enthused about seeing you. So in the end, I kind of worked different ways that I could actually get in front of them. So I’d take along little gifts. I’d take along a basket full of goodies, and I started to pick a goodie from the basket. I talked about what that meant from our drug perspective, and from their customer being their patients perspective, and created a lot more buzz around the work that I was doing, and just a lot more fun with it. But I realised that, you know, this wasn’t pure selling as in the way pharmaceutical sales like things done. And if I’m really honest, I actually got sacked from that role because I wasn’t doing what they expected of me, and as a consequence, I was fudging the figures a little bit. I was still achieving the sales results, but I wasn’t doing those eight calls per day.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 09:13
So I got sacked at the ripe old age of I think I was only 23 years old. I’d been earning really, really good money. I had a company car. I was one of the top sales people, so I got lots of bonuses and good salary. And I remember having to go home to my husband at the time and sort of saying, I don’t have a job anymore. I’ve been sacked. And as you can imagine, that was horrifying for my parents, for my husband. I wasn’t too horrified by it, because I realised I didn’t enjoy what I was doing anyway. So I was quite happy to not continue doing it, and I started looking for something else. And so I ended up going to an agency, and they managed to get me a sales and marketing assistant role in a full wheel driving company. And this role was pretty much just doing all the shitty jobs that nobody else wanted to do around sales and marketing, supporting the sales team, sending out. Promotional material to the clients who were interested in forward driving accessories, really, really basic stuff.
But my, my entire work ethic had always been like, you know, how do I make things better? How do I improve the process? How can I make this stuff work a whole lot in a much easier way? And so I approached this job with exactly the same mentality. You know, this seems really odd that we’re doing this this way. Why wouldn’t we do it this way? It’s it’s quicker, it’s more cost effective, it delivers better results. And literally, within about two months of being there, the sales and marketing manager of this company actually resigned. And I remember going to my boss at the time, it’s a privately owned business. I remember going to my boss, Russell at the time, and saying, Hey, Russell, I think I could do this sales and marketing management role. You know, I’ve been a sales rep. I understand what sales is about. I love CRMs. I really understand, you know, how we have to generate interest in what we’re doing. I love marketing. I’ve actually gone back and done a marketing diploma at tech at this point. And so I said, I think I could do it. And he said to me, that sounds okay, you know, why do you think you could do it? He said, Would you mind putting together a weed paper for me? And so I put together this paper, and I basically convinced him I was the right person for the job. He said, Yep, okay, I will take you on as that role. You know, what do you want for it? And this was back in the early days. I had no idea about negotiating, and so I just said, Hey, if I can get a company car, plus my current salary, I’ll be happy.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 11:19
So within two months of being that, I had a company car, which was actually a four wheel drive, great because we lived on a farm. We had horses, and it was great to have a big sort of our forward drive. We could put all of the bales of hay and stuff in, and I got to suddenly manage a sales team and the marketing and all the things that went on this business. And it was a job that I genuinely loved. I enjoyed the people I was working with. I loved the team that I had. I loved the people we were dealing with as a company, we’d actually still look after the main accounts, like your repcos and your kmarts and those things, both throughout Australia and New Zealand. And so I finally found a role that I really excelled in and really enjoyed using all the skills that I’d kind of naturally picked up through my various roles in the past. And then one day, my husband came home, he said to me, oh, you know, how do you feel about moving to a much bigger property where we can have more land and more horses and all these things? I went, that sounds fantastic. You know, where, where is this role? Where is this website? Where, where are we going to have this? And he said, Oh, it’s in a it’s in a place called Auckland. And I went, Okay, Auckland, where’s that? He said, It’s in New Zealand.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 12:25
Okay, I know roughly where New Zealand is, but I know nothing about it. So he said that they’re going to fly us over for an interview and a weekend to so that we can see what New Zealand is like, and then we can make a decision. So we flew over the weekend, and we spent the weekend here in Auckland and traveled around a wee bit, and I completely fell in love with New Zealand. I love the fact that it had green grass, it had green trees. It felt a little bit more British. And I just really enjoyed, I guess, the slower pace of life, the more countryside that we had. And so we went home after that weekend, and we made the decision to actually move from Australia to New Zealand, which meant that I had to give up the job that I loved, and so I gave my notice. I stayed for six months while we sorted everything out, and then I moved over to New Zealand. That was back. I don’t know how many years ago now.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 13:14
I’m going to say 30 years ago, not probably 34 years ago since I actually moved to New Zealand. And without going into boring details, I literally went from I took on a role in an engineering firm where I was head of sales and marketing. I learned that sales people did not have the training, the skill, so we used to have within the pharmaceutical industry, and I realised it was a huge amount of work that could be done to actually improve it. So we’re very fortunate in pharmaceutical land. We had lots of money. So we had laptops, way back when laptops went a thing. We had CRMs, way back when CRMs went a thing. And we had all this structure around how you could manage your relationship with clients. And so I brought all of that knowledge with me into the forward driving company.
And then again, when I came over to New Zealand, into the engineering firm, and I kind of realised that actually this was something quite I was quite fortunate to have had this experience and learn about how to use these tools as I started applying them with with the work I was doing the engineering firm. I remember going out on my first day with a sales rep, and we went around visiting clients. And I remember we would go into this client meeting, and he would talk about the weather, and he talk about the rugby. And now I understand how important that is for Kiwis, but back then, it was like, Okay, this is interesting. And we talk about the weather, the rugby, we talk about their children, everything else, and we come out of the meeting and I’d say, what’s the purpose of that call? And he said, What do you mean? I said, Well, why did we go in to see that person? Well, he’s one of our top customers. We see him every month. I was like, Yeah, but surely he must have had some reason for wanting to go in and speak with him. Did you want to get an order out of them? Did you want to talk to about a new range of products? Did you want to talk about what problems they were having and how we could help them resolve that? And all of this just went way over his head, and he’s like, no, no, I just come and visit them once a month. That’s what I. Do? It was like, Okay, this is really odd.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 15:01
And so I started realising that actually a lot of people in sales don’t have that discipline that I had learned through my various sales roles and through working with very multinational, you know, big companies that had this structure, and I worked my way in that company to get the sales team to have a CRM system. Because I also asked, you know, how do you keep record of what you’re doing and what your next steps are? They’re like, What do you mean? I said, Well, where do you record what you just discussed in there and what you’re going to do to follow up and why you’d be in contact next time? It’s like, we don’t have any of that. We’re not even, not even a piece of paper, not even a card system. They’re like, No, we don’t, we don’t do that. So I started instigating a CRM system. I started looking at the way we were selling. I said, Look at the way we’re marketing things. Did a huge amount of work launching new products. We launched welding equipment, we launched new building products, we launched architectural architectural products, whole range of things.
And it just really, you know, got me into these, this sales and marketing environment within New Zealand, and I’ll never forget it was really tough to get that first job, because every time I went for an interview, I would always be told, Oh yeah, but you’ve got no experience working in New Zealand. And I’d say, but I’ve come from the UK, and I’ve I’ve lived in in Australia for 10 years, and I’ve worked for these really huge organisations, like, oh yeah, but it’s not New Zealand. You don’t know New Zealand. And so getting that first job was really, really hard, and then working in an environment where actually some of the stuff that I knew was really helpful for that environment. So again, not going to go into huge detail, but I went from from being, you know, Head of Sales and Marketing, and then I moved up into general management roles, and then I grew up, went, moved up into CEO roles, and really at the height of my, height of my career, I mean in terms of number of staff, I used to manage the national coach network here in New Zealand. I was a general manager there. We had about 220 staff. We ran busses and coaches all around New Zealand, both from a tourist point of view, but also from a point to point intercity.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 16:57
So into in in between cities, and I learned a huge amount about how being a GM of that size business means that you have to, you know, inspire and motivate your staff. You have to measure what they’re doing. You have to bring them on the journey so with your vision and what you’re trying to do, I had to work between the board of directors who are five independent, four independent, family owned businesses, and five people in total. And so, you know how we had to work with that family business environment, and how we could actually work that into the day to day business I learned about, you know, things like so bring them on, on the journey, measuring them, keeping them inspired, having the difficult conversations. You know, and you manage a call center full of staff that are probably not highly motivated, not highly paid, sometimes you have to have difficult conversations about what’s not really going well with the call center manager, with the individual staff. And I just was very fortunate to be exposed to all kinds of things without really any formal training.
So I did go back and I did my MBA, because I thought I’ve got to have a piece of paper that shows that I can do all this stuff and realise that actually the MBA was really was great, but it wasn’t the be all and end all. And it just helped me realise that, you know, there’s a real skill to actually running business. And it was something that I think I did intuitively, but I never really had a true framework to do that. So run these businesses for many years, got great results, took flatlining businesses back up to growth, learnt how to manage people, learnt how to have difficult conversations, learnt how to get the best from your team, and it was only really five years ago. So after working with the Ice House for seven years, running my own event center and entrepreneurs playground for a number for about three years that I actually came across EOS. And EOS used my event center in Auckland to launch into New Zealand. And it was when I saw what they were doing and what EOS was the Entrepreneurial Operating System, I realised this was finally the framework that I actually had been needing for most of my life. I’d kind of made up my own framework. I was trying to go with the bits and pieces I picked up the stuff I’d learned from my MBA, the stuff I’d learned from managing multiple businesses, but there was no really strong framework that I could actually use, even at the Ice House, really, as coaches there.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 19:20
Even though I was one of the top performing coaches there, we didn’t actually have a framework to manage these people. We did with market validation. But when it came to business planning, it was pretty much we as coaches were just left to our own devices. And so EOS came, launched into New Zealand using my event center, read the books, fell in love with it, just thought, this is absolutely everything I’ve been doing, naturally and intuitively, and this gives me the framework that can now start to use with other businesses as well. I started using it in my event center business, started using it in my coaching business, and signed up to go and do the actual EOS training, and that was five years ago into. December, and now I have to say, best decision ever. I love being able to share the knowledge that I have from the running the businesses, but also from EOS. I forgot to mention, there’s a few steps I’ve missed out on my journey there, where I actually had a couple of my own businesses, couple that did really, really well we did. We did text messaging and text marketing and website development.
And we had some great years where the money was good. We had great clients. We had, you know, 14 staff. We had all the toys. Everything was going really well. And then we had a couple of pretty massive train wrecks where we lost all of that, once with the text messaging and web development company, and then a second time with the Event Center, which closed due to covid. So I had been through running big businesses, running big family businesses, running my own business, having the high life, living, you know, the high life with all the toys crashing, not once, but twice. And I wanted to start to give back some of this stuff that I had actually learnt from all these experiences. And EOS just gave me the framework and the tools to do that. So that’s a very potted history, probably lots of things missing from there. And I have no doubt if somebody was asking me questions, there’d be a lot of things we could delve deeper into. But that is my kind of story. So Young, Young Entrepreneur didn’t make the money, went to do a serious career, because that’s what my parents wanted. Of me got up really high, up in bigger family businesses, and did a great job of actually running those, went out on my own, had a couple of successes, couple of failures.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 21:27
Now I’m very fortunate. We have three businesses that I’m involved in, EOS being the main one, but a couple of other businesses as well. And I use the EOS principles, you know, in everything that I do. So this whole podcast is about how you use those EOS tools. But I wanted to come back to that 54 right? So five plus four, the first five tips are living the EOS life. And the EOS life basically has these five things that it says about so do what you love with people you love, making a huge difference, being compensated appropriately with time for other passions. I just wanted to go a little bit into each of those and how I’ve actually brought those into my life, probably more recently in the last couple of years. The first three years doing EOS was quite tough with covid and everything else going on. But I’ve now got to the point where I’m running these, these three businesses, I genuinely am following this EOS life. I’m sure it will get better as time goes on, but I want to explain what these five things mean to me.
So number one, do what you love. I think this, for me is really important. It’s like if you love what you do, it just means that every day is a joy. You wake up, you’re excited, you’re passionate. And I think my passion shines through in everything that I do, because I genuinely love what I do. I love the fact that I’m able to share with clients. I love the fact you give them a framework. I love that I can help make their business better. And I think that you know doing what you love, it doesn’t mean that this is your passion, in terms of your hobby. I’m not saying that. You know, I quite enjoyed music. It doesn’t mean I want to create a business out of music, but if you genuinely love what you do, and for me, loving what I do is loving business, then I think every day becomes a whole lot easier.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 23:10
The second point is about with people you love, and I suppose this has been a bit of a learning for me. In all the various businesses that I’ve run, I’ve had people who I’ve genuinely just love being around people who may not necessarily be the same as me, but we share the same values. And I think this is what, to me, is what with people you love, means they share the same values, they share the same kind of work ethic, they they want to come on that journey with you. And I think in all my businesses, what I’ve realised is, you know, you can, people will always interview well, they’ll always come across as as sharing the core values.
But when they actually work with you, and you see them day in day out, that’s when you get a sense of whether or not they really do share those core values. And so with people you love, it is the people you work with in your business. It’s the clients that you work with. You know, I’ve got to the point now where I have clients sometimes where I say I just can’t work with you. It’s not that you’re not a great person. It’s not that you’re not a great team, but it’s just I need to work with people who genuinely want to make changes, who don’t look for that magic silver bullet and want things to happen. They are prepared to put the hard work in. And for me, that is what I mean by people you love, in terms of clients. If you try to work with a client who doesn’t really want to put the effort in, who doesn’t want to share the values that you work by, no matter what you do, they will never get the results. Sorry, never get the results. And then, as a consequence, that means that, you know, it’s not a joy to work with them. So it’s sometimes hard, because, you know, you can see, especially me, I can see the opportunities, the potential in everybody, in every team. But the reality is that you can only lead a horse to water. You cannot make it drink. So for me, you know, doing what you love with people you love. It’s the people in your business, the people in your environment, but it’s also the clients that you’re choosing to work with as well.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 25:02
Number three, make a huge difference. So this is always been my thing. And I don’t know if I was born this way or whatever it might be, I’ve always wanting to help the injured animals. I’ve always wanted to help people, but I’ve also just known that I don’t need to win awards. I don’t need to be recognised for what I do, but I do want to leave this planet in a better place than where I found it. And so if that means that I can work with, you know, a handful of businesses every year and make that difference for them, that to me, is making a huge difference. I’m looking now to help 1000 businesses every year that because I’ve changed my thinking, I want to 10x my thinking, 10 times my thinking and go, How do I actually help more people? Because I just know that if we can help businesses create a better business, they will have that better life. And life is just too short. You are talking about that in a moment. So making a huge difference to me, it’s about for me, it’s about helping other business owners create a better business. For you, it might be something different, but it really is about leaving the world in a better place than you found it, in my opinion.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 26:06
Being compensated appropriately, number four, this is one of those things that I think that we forget that as business owners, you know, we love what we do. We are making a huge difference. We’re wanting to help people, but it’s important that actually, we look after ourselves as well. And so that whole oxygen mask concept, the idea of putting the oxygen mask on first before you help others. If you’re not being compensated appropriately for what you do, if you’re always worrying about the money, if you’re always worrying about the profitability of the business, then it’s really hard to be in the right space to help others. And so, you know, I’ve done a lot of work around, you know, I’ve read profit first. I’ve done work around how you make sure that the business is profitable, work around pricing strategies, working around commercial models.
And really, you’ve just got to make sure that the business you’re creating offers enough value that people want to pay you for it, and they want to pay you for it in a way that will enable you to make profit, and when you are being compensated appropriately for the things that you’re doing, it just makes life easier all around so for me, it is about value. You know, is what you’re doing adding real value. And if it is adding real value, don’t be afraid to ask for the value in payment, in terms of being paid what you’re actually worth, and this should be for all your team as well, right? It’s not just for you, but it’s actually for your whole team. So how do you ensure that not just you as a business owner, but everybody is actually being compensated appropriately? I’m a big fan of people having a profit share arrangement in your business based on profitability, not nothing more. So it has to be based around profitability. But if we’re winning and we’re making profit, everybody should actually, you know, be rewarded appropriately as well.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 27:49
Number five is with time for other passions, and this is, if I’m really honest, the area I struggle with the most for quite some time, when you are not earning the money you expect to earn when you’re building a new business. I’ve done many, many new businesses now, you know, often you your whole life, becomes completely obsessed with the work that you’re doing. And I know that I do love what I do, so it’s very easy to get caught up in that, and to just work and work harder and work harder, and to the point where everything you do is based around the business. And what I’ve realised is that that’s not healthy. As much as I love what I do, it’s not healthy for us to spend so much time, so much energy, focus on that. You know, I’m very fortunate to have a husband. I’ve got some fur babies, and I have real children, but I have fur babies. It’s great to be able to spend time with them. It’s great to be able to be able to spend time with friends.
Unfortunately, my whole family have passed away now, so I haven’t really got family apart from my gorgeous niece and her mother over in Australia, all the rest of my close family are no longer around. There are some over in Germany and South Africa. But, you know, there’s nobody really close to me anymore. They don’t have family I can spend time. I do have my husband, I do have my fur babies, and I’ve certainly got friends, and in the past, they would all come second. Business was everything. I would spend every waking hour thinking about business, working in the business, working long hours, and it wasn’t a healthy version of me, because if you’re a healthy version, you have time for your family, you have time for your friends, you have time for your fitness, you have time for other things. And, you know, my other passions, I love to walk. I love nature. I love photography. I’m a bit of a tennis player from way back, and I really want to get back into that. I play music. I you know, I’ve played the flute for many, many years. Haven’t played that for ages. I recently bought a saxophone. I’m going to get back into having saxophone lessons.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 29:43
So it’s really about just making sure that, as a fully rounded person, you have the time for that. We love to cycle. Steve and I and the dogs love to go a cycling. We love to travel. We love to we love good food, we love good wine. And so these days, what I’m really trying to ensure is that I have time to actually. Pursue those other passions. When I travel for work, I try to make sure that I actually have a day either side to do something for myself. If it’s catching up with friends, it was just time to to take some some relaxing time. I make sure that in my calendar, which you can probably see behind me, I’m blocking out time throughout the year that I want to spend on holiday. We always plan out four weeks of holiday that we actually got a big holiday. We plan out five long weekends every year. We make sure that we have an overseas holiday. We make sure we’re traveling regularly for business and fun. We take our holidays off. I make sure that all those really important things are actually in my calendar way before I plan business. And it’s not just because I’m, you know, in EOS, I’m pretty much a three person band.
So it’s not a huge business. It’s more than that. Even in the other business, it’s no business. Should not be able to operate fully without you. You should be able to go away for three or four weeks at a time. You should be able to finish on time most days, swings and roundabouts, for sure. There are times when you have to work more, but in reality, you want to make sure you’ve got that time to actually do those other passions. I’m back studying again at the moment. I should probably do some more study in the future. I read lots of books. There’s still other passions outside of work. So that is my five versions of the EOS life in my own words, that’s what it means for me. And again, if you’re doing what you love with people you love, you’re getting to make a huge difference in the world. You’re being compensated appropriately with time for other passions. There’s probably not much better life than that.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 31:35
But here are my four top tips. My four top tips, personally, things that I have realised are really important for me, and then they’re not rocket science. You know, I wish I could be a guru that’s going to give you some amazing information. Not at all. They’re pretty basic. They’re pretty simple. But I’ve realised in my life, number one life is too short. I didn’t talk about my family in my introduction, but I will share it now. So I had a younger brother. He was two and a half years younger than me. We were very close. We were taught regularly. We’d go on holidays together. He’d been there for me through the tough times, for the good times. We were just a really, really close brother and sister. And at the age of 44 sadly, he passed away very unexpectedly. And at the time, I was in the middle of launching a brand new business, and that was the Event Center, and it was just really, really hard, because suddenly my brother was no longer there, and we never expected that he also had a wife and a daughter who obviously were hugely affected, and then my parents were hugely affected. I don’t think that any parent expects that their son or daughter or yeah, would their children will pass away before them. So, you know, that was that in itself, was was a huge shock. It was, it was pretty awful. I miss him to this day. I still wish I could pick up the phone and talk to him. But then, within 10 months of that, my mum, who’d actually been reasonably unwell anywhere on dialysis for many, many years, diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 33:01
She had terminal bowel cancer, and so that, combined with the fact that Marcus had passed away, she, you know, that way, he was her her life. She loved him dearly. He would spend a lot of time with him, because he lived in Australia, so he could go and visit them regularly. I couldn’t, because I lived in New Zealand, but I went back, yeah, fairly regularly, at least four or five times a year, but not as often as he could. And so mum, Mom decided that life wasn’t really worth continuing on without my brother and with the illness that she had. So she, she chose to take her own life medically, not not in a you know, she chose it in a way that it was controlled. It was in hospital. It was with all of us around her, but it was probably one of the most difficult things I’ve ever been through, because it was, it was two weeks of spending time with her, first of all, at her home, then hospital, and then just watching her pass away.
And my mum had always been my rock. She was amazing lady. She was super smart. I think I got my smarts from her. She super kind and super loving. She was German, so often misunderstood. People thought she was very blunt, like, I guess I get a bit of that from her. But in all reality, like she would do anything for her friends, she would do anything for her family. She was honest. Sometimes the point of being a little bit too honest. But you know, you always knew where you stood with mum. There was no there was no bullshit, there was no pretense. It was like mum was just mum. And so living through her passing away, and choosing to pass away, I think, was one of the most awful times. Yeah, so that that in itself, was hard. And then a couple of years ago, my father suddenly got a brain tumor, and within a week of being diagnosed with the brain tumor, he was dead. And that was the last of our very small family. There’s only four of us in the immediate family. And so I’m not telling this to get sympathy. I’m not telling I’m sharing it to hopefully help you understand why I truly believe that life is too short. We don’t know what will happen. We don’t know you know that some of these things were just complete. They were all completely unexpected. My dad was only 77 when he passed away, so he certainly wasn’t. It wasn’t his time in terms of age.
So I suppose Life is too short. We need to live in the present moment, we need to make sure that we’re thoroughly enjoying every single day, every single moment, because there may not be another one. I sincerely hope I get to live a bit longer than the rest of my family. But who knows. You just never know.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 35:30
Which comes to my tip number two, you know, so don’t take things for granted. I think that I assumed that I would always be super well, super healthy, live a really good life. And in my various business ventures, I have been to the just about the pits of hell. In some respects, I’ve lost everything. In one of my business ventures, I lost my house, I lost my car. These days, health is more of an issue for me. I mean, I’ve got turning 54 tomorrow, and I have just recently been diagnosed with two skin cancers. I have been diagnosed with potential osteoarthritis. We currently do some tests to work out what that means. And I’m 54 and it’s like actually I thought I would be super well. And maybe life has other plans for me. Maybe I won’t live too much longer, but taking things for granted, you take for granted. You’ll have money, you’ll take for granted, you’ll have a home, you’ll take for granted, you’ll have health. And yet, none of these things, unfortunately, come as an absolute given.
So I’m now, you know, I do, I do try to look after my health. I go to the gym three times a week. I walk every day. We’re getting back into cycling, and then I have to, obviously make some changes to my eating habits. I think I eat reasonably healthy, but obviously not healthy enough. I’ve certainly cut back on my drinking in recent times. I used to drink every single day, and I don’t do that anymore, which is great.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 36:55
So I suppose if you don’t take things for granted, it leads into my next tip, which is having gratitude for those things that you do, do have. So you know, every day I fill in my gratitude journal and I kind of go, Yep, I’m not exactly the healthiest, but I’m really grateful that I’m alive. Because, let’s face it, I could well not be alive my family aren’t it could be my day sometime soon. So I’m grateful for that. I’m grateful for the fact that I have a husband who’s, you know, loving and supportive. I’m grateful that I have a home that is. It’s not huge. We live in this tiny, little house, but we love we love it. We love where it is. We love what it does for our supervisors with a home, and I have gratitude for that every day.
And sometimes, you know, things get really tough, and you kind of go, how, how can I have gratitude for anything but just being alive, if we if nothing else, that is my gratitude every day. I’m grateful that I have amazing clients. I’m grateful I get to do podcasts. I mean, who would have thought, you know, back in I started in December 2020 as a hobby, and I thought it would just be for a bit of fun, a little bit of, you know, repositioning in my business. And I thought it would just be a way to have a bit of a chat to people. And now, four years later, I’ve now got I’ve had some most amazing guests in my podcast. I’ve had people from all around the world. I’ve had people who are, you know, super business what do you call them celebrities? I’ve actually come onto my podcast. I’ve got to learn from all these amazing people that have actually come onto the show when I work with my clients a day in, day out. I mean, I hope I help them, but I also get to learn from them every day as well. So I have huge gratitude for the things that are there. And I think it’s really important sometimes when things don’t feel quite so good, just be able to look and reflect on the things that you should you know that you can be grateful for.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 38:43
And my very thought last tip, the fourth tip, is knowing your why. So I know that the life of an entrepreneur, it is certainly a roller coaster. And I’ve always joked that, you know, I’d quite like roller coasters. I love the UPS. I don’t so much like the downs, but without the downs, you wouldn’t have the UPS. And so I’ve always said I’m much more of a roller coaster girl than a plane or train ride girl. But I have to say that there have been times, you know, when you’ve had a lot of loss in your life, a lot of grief, when you’ve when things haven’t gone the way that you had hoped, when things are starting to you know, you seem to get something on track and then something else falls off track. I often find that when I focus so much on one thing, I tend to lose focus on others. And so it’s you have tough days, and you have days we kind of go, you know, when you get diagnosed with osteoarthritis, when you get diagnosed skin cancer, all these things can really bring you down.
But if you know why you exist and why you’re here on this planet and why your business exists of why your relationship exists. It’s like, if you can keep hooking back into that why it’s what keeps me going, I can’t say it will work for everybody, but I know that I’m here to make a difference. I know that I get such joy out of helping businesses and business owners. And so when I’m having those really tough days, do I have moments where I cry abs? Absolutely. Do I have moments where I just throw things around, where I get really frustrated and really angry? Yeah, absolutely. But I would hope that I take the time these days to kind of go, Okay, what’s really going on here? Is this something I can control?
Debra Chantry-Taylor 40:13
Because I think in life, there’s lots of things we just cannot control, and we have to learn to let go and go I can’t control that. Let’s focus on the things I actually can control, and going off on a tangent here, it’s one of the reasons I stopped watching the news 10 years ago. I kind of went, you know what the news, apart from the fact it’s doom and gloom, they’re things that are completely beyond my control, I can’t change it. And so as a consequence, I would be getting upset by it, but I can’t change it. And so now I focus on those things that I know that I can change, and I hook back into my why. My why is to help entrepreneurs live a life they love. I know that’s what I exist for. I know that’s why I come into work every single day. I know that I can help them. I know that I can help them with the EOS tools, and I can help them with my experiences, and I can help them because I’ve been there, I’ve done that, I’ve got the t shirt. I’m still doing that. I’m still going through it. I still getting the t shirt. So I know that is why I exist. And if I keep looking back into that, being focused on making a real difference, then I will get to help entrepreneurs live a life they love. We’re going to make I’m going to leave this planet in a better place than how I found it.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 41:22
So that is my ramblings, my musings, whatever you want to call it, for my 54th birthday, the five tips for living the EOS life, my four tips, or what I think helps you in a better life. I hope it has been fun and in some way, shape or form, I hope you’ve got something from it. I sometimes wonder, with these podcasts, I don’t get an awful lot of feedback.
So if you have listened to this, and you’ve got to the end, and you wouldn’t mind just dropping me a little note to say, Yep, I really love that, or I didn’t love it, or it would be good if you could do this any kind of feedback. It’s not about ego. I don’t care. I do this because I actually want to help for no other reason, but it’s just nice. It’ll be nice to know if there’s something else I can do that can actually help as well. So thank you.
Thank you for listening. Thank you for being with me throughout this, this journey of 54 years.
Thank you for the clients that I work with, the people that I work with, the people I love.
Thank you to everybody, better business, better life.
=======================================================================================================================================================
Debra Chantry-Taylor
Certified EOS Implementer | Entrepreneurial Leadership & Business Coach | Business Owner
#betterbusinessbetterlife #entrepreneur #leadership #eosimplementer #professionaleosimplementer #entrepreneurialbusinesscoach
Certified EOS Implementer New Zealand
Certified EOS Implementer Australia
Certified EOS Implementer UK
Certified EOS Implementer NZ
