Ellie Austin-Williams: Has Parenthood Become a Luxury?

This transcript is auto-generated and lightly edited for readability, it may contain errors.

[0:00] Sammie Ellard-King: Hello and welcome back to the Money Gains Podcast. This is your host, Sammie Ellard-King, and my guest this week is Ellie Austin-Williams, founder of This Girl Talks Money and author of Money Talks, a lifestyle guide for financial wellbeing. Now, we unpack all about her new book and went pretty deep into childcare. Ellie is a new mother, and right now in the UK, we’re facing quite an I would say a little bit of a crisis with childcare. A lot of mothers are finding it very difficult to get back into the workplace. Costs are through the roof. And we discussed how it’s having effect not just on females and women in general, but the whole economy is how it’s affecting everything from the ground up. We discussed hustle culture, loads about that too. I absolutely love this chat. It was actually one of my favourite podcasts ever. So I hope you’re going to love this episode. And if you’re listening on Spotify or on Apple Podcasts, then hit that follow button. And now let’s get started on the Money Gains Podcast. So, Ellie, welcome to the Money Gains Podcast. How are you? You well?

[1:25] Ellie Austin-Williams: Yeah, good, thank you. And thank you so much for having me. I’m very excited to chat. Yeah, I’ve been following you for so long now, and your journey as a content creator is like amazing. You’ve been doing some fantastic work in the space, but I would love for you to bring the audience up to speed. Yeah, absolutely. So I’m Ellie, as you said, um, founder of This Girl Talks Money, which is a financial education platform and the relatively recent author of Money Talks, a lifestyle guide to financial well-being. Um, so yeah, I’m really all about trying to make money accessible, make it make sense, and really I focus on that financial well-being behavioural side of things in a way that is relatable and accessible.

[2:13] Sammie Ellard-King: And your content takes that very much that approach for me, like, and that’s one something that I really resonate with because it it is it can be quite overwhelming financial topics to some people, and I feel like you break that down really nicely in a lot of your content. Is is that an intentional thing? Yeah, it is, because that’s really where it all started from. Like my kind of quick backstory um is that I my career started off in corporate law, um, and I then went into marketing, and I kind of simultaneously had this interest in personal finance and starting to like figure it out for myself. But I really found that everything that was out there was so full of jargon and just really like dense and not very enjoyable, really. Um, and particularly for women, it was very male focused. And I thought, like, this like that I can’t be the only one out there that wants to learn this stuff, understand this stuff in a way that doesn’t really feel like I’m like wading through mud.

[3:21] Sammie Ellard-King: Yeah, that that’s what happened to me when I first started. It was like you had like five US people that everything was extremely like US centric, and you needed an encyclopedia with every single word on the page, and it wouldn’t really feel like and this is 10 years ago, it’s changed a lot now, but that’s how I felt when I first started. Totally, yeah. I mean, it was similar in the sense that yeah, there was a lot of stuff about the US, as of with everything, and I was just like, Well, this doesn’t work for me. Like, where is where are my people? Um, and they weren’t really there. And yeah, now, like you say, it’s great. There are loads of people in the space, and there’s so much more accessible, enjoyable ways of learning um about this stuff. But yeah, it’s a relatively recent phenomenon still, I think.

[4:13] Sammie Ellard-King: 100%. And things have changed for you recently. You’ve had uh you’ve had a little one. Yeah, I have. So I am the mum to a little boy. Um, he was born in September last year. Um, he was born a little bit early, so he wasn’t actually meant to be here till December, but he arrived in this in September. Um, so we are very much adjusting to life as parents, um, which, yeah, it’s a shock to the system. I can imagine, I can imagine. I uh I think we were chatting offline, like uh we haven’t had uh kids yet, but my my my sister has, and you know, just even like you know, being spending time with her and stuff like that has just been pretty wild. And I can only imagine how how it is. But one of the reasons I asked you that was because um I’ve been doing a lot of videos recently about budgeting, and one of the big things that seems to be coming back from it is about how your life changes financially as a when you become a parent versus when you’re uh you’re not, even if you’re a single person or in a couple and then you have a uh a child, things have changed enormously. So could you talk to us a little bit about that and the changes that you’ve seen there?

[5:24] Ellie Austin-Williams: Yeah, absolutely. So I guess there are various different stages of change that happen um and that different people experience. But the well, the very first one, which I think actually doesn’t really get talked about, and I’m guessing hasn’t been something that people have mentioned, but is actually during pregnancy for a lot of people, like your ability to work is inhibited because depending on how you feel, you either can feel great and full of life, or you can be like me, where you feel horrendous most of the time. Um, so it can actually start that early on, where you know, if you’re someone that’s self-employed, if you’re somebody who works shifts, um, someone that’s on like a zero hours contract or that doesn’t have any reasonable like pay from work, like sick pay, then you can find yourself already in a situation financially that you didn’t expect to be. And that’s before you’ve even got to talking about maternity leave or parental leave. Um, I think for most people, that’s the first part that they start thinking about when it comes to finances. And it’s a minefield, um, is what I would say. You know, there is such a spectrum of support depending on your employer. Um, in the UK, we have got statutory maternity pay. However, it’s not very much. Um, for most people, it is not enough money to survive off. However, some employers, lots of employers do enhance it. So you can have periods of leave where you’re on your full pay or 90% pay, 50%, whatever it is. Um, it really does depend on the employer. And so knowing what you are expecting to take home once you’ve had that baby is absolutely essential. And for me, it was completely different because I am self-employed. Um, and luckily, my partner’s in a situation where he has a parental leave policy where he was entitled to three and a half months of full pay parental leave, which he was able to maximize because of the fact that I work for myself, um, and so I didn’t take any leave. But it’s so specific to the partners, if there are partners involved to the companies, and yeah, if you don’t have an entitlement, then you can be left with it’s just over £150 a week, the statutory pay. Um, so yeah, you can find yourself really in a situation that requires a lot of budgeting, saving in advance, like thinking ahead, or not really being able to make ends meet. And it’s scary.

[8:02] Sammie Ellard-King: Yeah, it sounds like it actually. Like this is some certainly something that’s new to me. And so I suppose the question that pops into my mind then is like, what is the standard? What do you see as kind of being like this? What do most people get from their companies, or is it extremely, extremely different for every single company? It really is, in the sense that like public and private sector, you’ll see quite a big difference. But even within private sector, typically the companies that you would expect to have good benefits, so the companies that are high-paying, those industries will tend to have the best policies. So your finance, your legal, like your kind of white-collar jobs, they tend to have the the best policies in terms of giving you maximum paid time off. But when you then get to public sector and you have teachers, for example, they really don’t get a very good deal. Um, a lot of teachers, so you I’m probably gonna get this bit wrong, but um you can tidy this bit up. But basically, you’re entitled to, I believe, it is I think six weeks at 90% of your full pay and then it goes down to statutory, that’s the baseline.

[9:29] Sammie Ellard-King: Wow. Anything above that is up to a company or an employer. So if you think about that, yeah, it is not very much money. And most women at least want to spend a you know, a good bit of time with their newborn. Like it’s really important time for the child’s development, but also for the mother to recover, right? Absolutely, and this is the thing that’s crazy. So if you have a cesarean, which I had, then you can’t really do anything for yourself for six weeks anyway. So you’re not allowed to lift heavy things, um, you’re not allowed to drive. Um so there are lots of things that you actually physically can’t do for six weeks, and then well, this is this is before we even get to the whole what happens to the partner. Um, but you can find yourself, you know, in a whole new world where you’ve got this new responsibility, you’re probably gonna be exhausted, you’re overwhelmed, you’re homodal, physically you’re you know, trying to adapt, and you’ve then got money to think about for a lot of people on top of it. And then you have this issue as to whether you you’ve got any support at home, because uh again, statutory um paternity leave is two weeks. Um, and lots of people don’t even take it, like you because your employer again doesn’t have to offer you anything particularly good. So if you can’t afford to lose the pay, you’ve got dads, you know, basically not really spending any time early on with their new child or helping the mother who desperately needs that support. Um so it’s a it is a real mess, is what I would say. Luckily, there are lots of employers that do offer better packages, but there aren’t enough, and the fact that it is down to private companies to decide what should be done, um it just doesn’t seem like it’s the right way to to go about changing things and encouraging families to you know settle into this new adjustment, this new period of life. And there is a big campaign actually, um like a government petition that’s trying to get um statutory paternity to six weeks from the two. Okay. Um but you know, even that would be a start, but there’s a way to go. So yeah, it’s it’s a lot to navigate for uh for new families expanding.

[12:11] Sammie Ellard-King: It it it really is. Like what blows my mind with that is like just from a human perspective, it doesn’t feel right. No, no, it’s not you know how do you how do you expect a mother who’s then told by the NHS, which is a national health service, that she cannot pick anything up, however, the father can’t then be around to do that for her. Does not make sense at all, does it? So yeah, why don’t you put them both at the same? Because it’s equally important that both parents are there at the beginning for multitude of different reasons, which I can think of off the top of my head right now.

[12:56] Ellie Austin-Williams: Yeah, exactly. And you know, in a lot of countries, and this is, you know, we can get into this, but and this is a whole topic of itself. In a lot of countries, there are very different systems, very different setups, um, because they recognise the importance of both parents being around, being able to help each other, but also to spend time with the child at that really early developmental stage. Um, we are not great at it in Britain, um, as expected, America, even worse. Um, but that is not something to you know look at and be like, okay, well, we’re doing better than them. Um they’re not the benchmark in this type of stuff out of care, let’s be honest. Absolutely not. No. Um it’s I mean, it’s absolutely shocking the state of things there when it comes to like maternity care and pay and all of that. But yeah, we are really lagging behind. Um, and it only takes looking around Europe to see different ways that it can be done. And I think the real shame here is that because of how it’s set up, because there isn’t this equality in terms of what is accessible when it comes to both parents, it’s really skewed to mothers having time off, even if that’s not how the family wants to set it up. Then it does end up having this big impact on women financially, women who want to work, dads who want to stay at home and want to share the parenting responsibility. Like it just makes it really difficult to make ends meet.

[15:20] Sammie Ellard-King: 100%. And then obviously that affects the you know, the gender pay gap, the gender investment gap. These are all contribute contributing factors because of the situations that uh that mothers and fathers are fussed into with a newborn. So that’s really, really interesting because we we were speaking to um to Laura, Thrifty Londoner, about the gender investment gap and a gender pay gap quite quite deeply. We went quite deep on that podcast, but actually we didn’t speak about what the probably one of the bigger contributing factors, which is is this, right? Oh yeah, yeah, because actually, and this is where it gets like really interesting, is actually when you look at the data, up until the point where women tend to start having children, those gaps don’t really exist. Gender pay is actually up until around 30, I’m gonna say, relatively similar. The pay gap is very aged. Um and they’ve looked at this, and it’s because of that divergence once you start having children. Um and so I mean, I did a video on this which went a bit nuts on TikTok a while ago, and people I I the video was provocative on purpose, but people kept pointing this out, and I was like, Yes, I know, I know, that in your 20s there actually really isn’t a gender pay gap. It’s after that that it starts to diverge. Yeah. Um and yeah, it’s because of all of those that not working or the working part-time and then not making those pensions contributions because you’re working part-time and you’re not accessing the employer contributions, and you don’t have the spare money to be able to put into investment. All of that that comes with parenting and like childcare responsibilities. Um, so yeah, it’s it’s crazy.

[17:16] Sammie Ellard-King: Okay, okay. Really interesting now. This is I’ve really want to talk about this next phase because this is obviously this is happening right now. Mothers then perhaps have a decision where they need to go back to work extremely fast, perhaps a lot faster than they would expect. So they’re in that situation and then becomes the added aspect of if you don’t have support, what then happens to the child? It needs to then be going into some form of childcare. And then childcare, as we uh as I have come to find out because of the many comments which I have received on some of my posting uh breakdowns, um is astronomical. And then when I started looking into it a lot more, I couldn’t believe it. And I genuinely was unbelievably shocked. And then that’s a secondary financial pressure post-pregnancy. Father’s then back at work early, perhaps doesn’t want to be, and is perhaps supplementing uh the household income. Then you’ve got like that decision of we’re going back to to work, but then they’ve got to pay for childcare. And actually, sometimes it doesn’t even balance out, it’s it’s mad.

[18:31] Ellie Austin-Williams: Absolutely. Yeah, you hit the nail on the head there that for a lot of families it doesn’t make sense. And again, this is where we end up with all of these gender gaps because for families where ultimately the cost of childcare full-time is the same as one salary offer often the mother’s salary, because you know, in a very cheap stereotypical household, the mother is more likely to do the lower-paying job, then it makes no sense to pay to go to work. Um, other than, you know, from a purely financial perspective, yes, you’ll get the pensions contributions, which are valuable, and your career will progress, hopefully, so that once children are in school and older, you can continue to earn more. But for a lot of mums who, you know, maybe don’t love their job that much, or it just doesn’t sit that well to pay someone their whole salary, which I totally understand, to look after their child when they could do it themselves, then the decision is kind of made for you. Like stop working, stay at home and look after the child, which on so many fronts does not make sense. Um it doesn’t make sense because it often isn’t what the family wants to do. It doesn’t make sense because, from a like I said, female perspective, what it’s doing is starting to embed those financial differences and kind of exacerbate them. Um and it doesn’t make sense economically either, because you know, the government without going into the government too much, but like, you know, they’re like, we need people to work, we’ve got all these job shortages. Well, like is it a surprise there are job shortages because half your workforce can’t work because childcare is too expensive. Um, and if you actually want people to be able to work and to create economic output, like you need to fund the childcare to give them that platform. Um and the thing that drives me most mad about all of it, as you can tell, it’s quite infuriating, is that again, you don’t have to look very far to see economies, countries where it’s being done and it works. Uh where there is proper funding for childcare.

[20:51] Sammie Ellard-King: Yeah, yeah, no, there is, and it’s like there’s some really great examples out there. And uh when I looked recently, it’s actually been cut. Budgets have been cut in that area. So we’re we’re going backwards, we’re not going forwards. Um, and obviously this is a reflection of the government here, and I feel like there’s a massive opportunity politically if you were to go and get this right. Um, but that’s a different conversation for a different day. Uh uh get very deep into that myself. But I I I won’t I won’t bore the audience with my my stance on the latest politics. But here we here we go. Yeah, I’m I’m it is, it’s a huge opportunity. I’m not particularly optimistic at the moment because I just feel very like just disengaged generally and lacking in any inspiration when it comes to this this country and our political landscape. But I do think that if you can not just do something which is kind of symbolic and like like has been done with this current system where they’ve they’ve said, you know, have some more hours for your two-year-olds and your one-year-olds, but we haven’t put the system in place properly. Um, if you can actually reform the sector and get it right so that the workers are also rewarded fairly, because that’s one of the biggest issues in this country, is that pay is so bad, conditions are so bad, and the costs are so high, there’s just this big gaping hole. If you can do the reform of the whole sector, then there is that there is hope and there could be a real opportunity to get so many people that really want to work and that want to get that kind of satisfaction from having their career. Like, you know, some people don’t want to do that, and that’s fine. But if you do, then you should be able to. Like, we’re in 2024, and it’s like, how is this still the case that if you want to have a job and you Want to go out and do something for you that you can’t because you can’t afford to work.

[22:51] Sammie Ellard-King: 100%. Like 100%. We had Elizabeth Willetts on from Investing In Women, and it was such an interesting conversation because we were talking about this journey back for women post-pregnancy, what happens. And really interestingly, she was teaching me all about job sharing. And I went down a deep rabbit hole after that, learning all about that. And I think it’s amazing because that provides some level of balance for raising a family and equally as well for the woman being able to re-enter into the workplace and feel like they’re contributing to themselves and to society too. So, which is uh hyper important on so many different levels. So I find that very, very, very interesting and and something which I really feel like uh the newer companies are embracing. So we’re seeing the sort of generational shift there, especially in the digital economies, uh, with with you know work that you can do at any time, anywhere, and still be contributing. These are the landscape is shifting there, but it it’s the older money and the older con institutions which is uh harder to shift.

[23:52] Ellie Austin-Williams: For sure. And like I think it’s you know, it’s similar with well, it’s flexible working, isn’t it? Working from home, working um a bit more location-free. Um, a lot of like the kind of older companies are really struggling to adapt, and it’s having a huge impact on all of their staff, but again, particularly parents who have got to do a school run and they’ve got to pick up the kids and drop them off at the clubs and things. And that ability to work from home really does enable people to be a bit more present in their children’s lives. Um, but a lot of companies just aren’t are trying to come back from where we got to in terms of flexible working. And the well-being side of that as well, thinking about it is yes, I’m feeling great because I’m with my kids, plus I’m working doing this hybrid role, I’m contributing, I’m earning, I’m with my children. Does that not just make a better society all round in my head it does?

[24:53] Ellie Austin-Williams: And so I think so. I I think it’s so important. Yeah, me too. Me too. And I and and look, I I suppose conversations like this are really important just to raise awareness and and try and and see what we can do. But for me, uh I’m extremely passionate about learning more and uh and shining a light on this because uh pregnancies aren’t going anywhere. Let’s let’s it’s something that’s gonna be forever apparent. Um, and with financial uh well, the financial situations for many families in this country being a lot worse off than where they were two, three years ago, I feel like it’s only gonna become bigger, bigger conversation. So yeah, definitely want to open as many doors on this as we can.

[25:39] Ellie Austin-Williams: Yeah, and I think that’s the thing, you know, we we’re seeing in the news like lots of people being like, okay, well, we’re we’ve got falling birth rates, you know, what what’s the future going to look like of work? Who’s gonna do all the jobs because we don’t have enough children? And it’s like, well, it’s quite clear why we don’t, because it’s uh I read something yesterday and it was saying that we are in uh we are running the risk of children becoming a luxury like a Porsche. Um and literally in the sentence where it was kind of put like that, I was like, I can see it, I can see how. And one of the things that I see a lot on social media, which is horrible, are when you see people, mums often it is, talking about you know the fact that they’re struggling financially. People in the comments are like, Well, why do you have kids if you can’t afford them? And it’s oh yeah, it’s horrible, and you know, it shouldn’t be that shouldn’t be the choice, it shouldn’t be a case of like you can only have kids if you have X amount of income when that amount of income, of course, you should you know think about it ideally and have some level of like financial oversight of what’s going on in your budget, but yeah, if the figure this is responsibility, yeah.

[27:03] Sammie Ellard-King: Let’s be able to do that. Exactly. But yeah, yeah, but if that figure is like you know, 50, 60, 70, 80, 100 grand, whatever it is, which it’s starting to get to, which like what less than five percent of the population earn that much, like it’s that shouldn’t be the requirement to be able to survive and have kids.

[28:32] Sammie Ellard-King: Yeah, that is mad, isn’t it? It’s just increasing and increasing, so it does end up looking like a Porsche. Wow, like okay. Let’s talk about the book because I want to get into that because I I think I would go all day on this, as you could possibly tell. And um, I don’t want to not talk about the book because actually there are some things in the book which directly contribute to this and perhaps ease some of these pressures by by learning about them a little bit more. So um why did you do it? And let’s talk about the the bits and bobs in it. A moment of madness um is why, um honestly writing a book. Wow, uh that was an experience. Um it was always something that I liked the idea of because I like I like reading and I like putting things down tangibly in words, like I’m not really a person that can learn off screens and digest things that way. Um I like the paper. So the idea of having something written down that people could go to and make notes on and refer back to and like pass on to friends and family always appealed. And I I didn’t want to just write another tips book. Um I felt like I’d seen them. There are many out there that are great, but I didn’t want to write another one of those. But when I was speaking to my book agent, and he was like, you know, what would you like, what would you want to write if you can do something? I was like, I want something that I wish I could have read, which feels like actually addressing the issues that I and my audience, my friends are experiencing when it comes to navigating money as a millennial in your 20s and your 30s and even your forties, like these lifestyle factors, the weddings, like the work, the babies, the hens, all of this stuff. And so that’s what I wrote. Um, and yeah, I mean, I’m I’m really pleased with how it evolved and how it turned out because it seems that actually my instinct that a lot of people have a lot of anxiety around these, I guess, milestone events that tend to happen over this 10, 20 year period financially. Um that I I wasn’t alone in experiencing that and thinking that like a lot of people are also going through it, and the fact that I felt like I had something to share and to be able to kind of give people to try and help them navigate it, um felt yeah, like a worthwhile reason to write the book.

[31:21] Sammie Ellard-King: Is it like a you would you say then you for you? Does it feel like the guide almost that you you need to navigate the world financially? Yeah, I think so. And it’s you know, it’s not like your here’s how to go and start investing type of book at all. It’s very much like a these are the things that you’re gonna have in your life that come up, like the events and the social situations. Like they’re sticky sometimes, but here’s like a guide to help you try to navigate, work your way through them without really compromising your financial well-being. And when they come, this is how they feel, and this is what you need to do with yourself, perhaps to yeah, exactly.

[32:09] Ellie Austin-Williams: And like there’s a lot of stuff in there which is from experts about like how to have these difficult conversations that you might need to have, or like just hacks and ideas for just how to save money or be more efficient in certain areas, and how to figure out really like you know, what matters to you so that the money that you’ve got is going further. Um, just little nuggets that hopefully people can take away and actually implement and actually see a difference from. Okay, okay, cool. Love this. So, one of the things when I was diving into uh that came up, which was one of the overarching themes of the book, was about hustle culture. And we’ve already spoken about this on this podcast, and I thought you’d be the perfect person to go into this with. So, what stands out for you at the moment with hustle culture and and what is it, what does it mean, and and how can we navigate it because it’s thrust upon us at the moment.

[33:05] Ellie Austin-Williams: Yeah, I mean, for me, hustle culture is the the culture whereby we should be constantly working, hustling, networking, building, being productive um at all hours, at all costs, um with no rest, um, that we need to have not one job, but three or four, have a side hustle, um, be you know, having five plus streams of income. It’s this this culture which really, I guess, glamorizes and endorses that way of living, that ultimate productivity, um and the grind, really. It’s kind of the opposite of just doing your job for the paycheck and going home and switching off from it. Um, and it is, like you say, everywhere. And I think it’s really been perpetuated by social media, obviously. Um hasn’t everything. Um, and you know, obviously, I I am a fan of social media for the most part. I think it has some great things it can contribute, but one thing that it has really done is thrust upon us this idea that like you could always do more. Like you could always be churning out more content, you could always be starting up a new business idea, or you could be networking, or you could be posting on LinkedIn about you know your latest career goals or your personal brand, like it’s it’s really hard to switch off from it. And puzzle culture, I also think, has turned every single individual into almost like a product. Um it’s encouraged us to see ourselves as something that is marketable. And you know, in a way, yes, we have always been, in the sense that we’ve always had like a CV and you go to an interview and you say, Here I am, employ me. But that that that was in a very kind of contained environment and it was limited to those interactions. Whereas it feels as though we’re now in a culture where every time you show up online or offline, but mostly online, like you need to be thinking about that image that you’re putting out there because you are of this product, you are this brand you. And if you switch off for a second, well, you know, you might miss an opportunity, or you might not make as much as you could, or you might not be seen by the person that you want to be seen by, or you might get left behind ultimately. And it’s exhausting, I think, is the the truth. Um it’s really exhausting physically, but mostly mentally. Um and it really glamorizes the idea that you should be working all the time, um and that we always need to be aspiring to climb this invisible ladder of not even a financial ladder sometimes. I think that’s what is strange or interesting about hustle culture. It’s almost like a perception or a status ladder, like an achievement ladder or a success ladder. Um yeah, it it’s it’s yeah, it’s everywhere, and it’s it’s really hard to try and untangle yourself from it, especially once you are slightly in it.

[36:39] Sammie Ellard-King: I’m guilty. Yeah, me too. And like I know I am, and I find myself fighting it often, but then there comes a line for me where I’m growing a brand, so it’s different for me in a lot of ways than it is for the everyday person because if I my output equals my input equals output, sorry, um when it comes to growing my brand. And so I struggle with it, but uh my other half knows that I’ll be on the computer till 11 o’clock sometimes and like that just that’s just life. Um but then I am now actively disassociating myself from these cultural culture aspects and trying to find hacks and time to give myself back time, and then once I’ve got that time back, being very protective about it and being that this is time for me to do XYZ, things which are not associated to growing my personal brand or Up The Gains or the digital products or all of these things which are so like thrust upon us. That’s my time to go to the gym to look after myself, to spend with the dog, to uh go out with my partner. And that’s been a real eye-opener for me.

[38:03] Ellie Austin-Williams: And look, you know, it is hard when you are growing a brand in the business, it’s really hard. Um, and there will be times, I think, where you do have to go into that or you do find yourself in that. It’s just like you say, I think that awareness of when it’s happening and the ability to see it for what it is, and to be able to step back from it and to put back in place those boundaries. Because I think the danger with it is that there is no limit, there is no end. Because we as humans, we always move those goalposts, you know. It’s very easy to be like, oh, I will stop it when I get to you know, X income or X followers or X videos week or whatever, but there’s always something more you could do, and those goalposts will just keep on moving unless you keep them in check. And so I think a lot of what I’m trying to communicate and like the message that I’m putting out there is about gaining that awareness and that ability to stop it when it’s getting out of control, because ultimately, like your well-being is at risk when it comes to you know overworking and tying too much of your self-worth as well to the output and the success or perceived success of the business or the brand or your career or your bank account. Like it’s it’s really important for all of us to be trying to disentangle ourselves from connecting our worth to an external measure. Um, but it’s hard, it’s obviously very hard, and I acknowledge that.

[39:47] Sammie Ellard-King: Do you know what though? As soon as I started doing that and putting time back in my day, my business has tripled. So that just goes to show uh, you know, if you you could sit there and what I also remember is do you remember when you used to go on Facebook and you’d scroll to the end and it would get to the end, it would say, You’ve now hit the end, and you have now caught up with all of your friends and your activities. Yeah. Now an Instagram feed is endless. So you could keep going for the end of time, it would never ever stop. You’d never consume enough to get to the end of it. I don’t want you to get to the end. So that’s where it’s been going, and that addiction phase of the scroll and the success mantra and everything that’s been drawn into us is the problem that we’ve got. So But yeah, I just wanted to make that point. Like as soon as I I stepped back and went, no, I’m not about this life. I’m not doing 16-hour days anymore, I’m doing eight hours or 10 hours, or and if I want to do 16 hours, I’ll do 16 hours. I’ve got an important launch coming up or whatever, then I’m gonna do the 16 hours because I want to. But yes, I’m also gonna do the eight on other days and listening to my body and myself and being a bit more humanized. Business has tripled. So what does that say?

[41:03] Ellie Austin-Williams: Yeah, and I imagine like it is it because you know you’re actually being more intentional with your time, you’re being you’re less burnt out, you’re less exhausted, like your ideas are clearer because you’re probably getting more time to fill up your cup. I’d just more grateful and way more clearer and uh a lot more a lot more switched on. Uh amazing what happens when you get good sleep and optimize a bit your health and go back to the gym, and suddenly all these things start uh compounding together as they do with investments. It it works in in other areas of your life too. Um, I want to talk about I love that though, by the way. Thank you for that explanation. I think it’s really important, and I I I completely agree, and I loved everything that you said there. Um one thing you talk about as well is is purpose versus paycheck, and I loved that, and I’d love to know what that meant to you as well.

[41:57] Ellie Austin-Williams: Yeah, I mean, I guess to start off with a caveat being that, you know, for some people there isn’t a choice. Um but in the kind of context that I talk about it, it’s where people do have a choice about whether they get up and they go to work because they have a sense of purpose in what they do, or whether they’re getting up and doing it because of the paycheck. And the experience that myself, but also a lot of people that I’ve spoken to have gone through, and I don’t know whether this is just a classic, again, millennial symptom um experience of going into a career where you’re thinking about, oh, I’ll get a good title and paycheck, and actually not really questioning whether you want to do that job, uh, whether you’re gonna get any sense of fulfillment out of that job, um, whatsoever. Um myself, I’m looking at. Um, like I think that’s that’s really where it comes from. And the thing that kind of puts it into perspective for me is the fact that me and a lot of my friends went into legal careers, and legal careers are notoriously inflexible and demanding um and high paid. Um and you know, they literally pay you for your time.

[43:20] Sammie Ellard-King: Um so it’s no wonder that it’s high paid because you have to work round the clock and you have to be available at silly hours, but you don’t necessarily think about that in there for 24-hour stints and exactly, and that part of it is that part of it is accurate. The the the glamour of it is less so. Um, but yeah, they don’t all look that good. No, absolutely not. Like, no, and the job is not that fun as well when you start out either. Like you’re literally there drowning in piles of paper, not like off to court, like oh, anyway, that’s yeah. Um, but so many of the people that I know that started their careers in high-paying demanding industries at the age of about 30 are either out of it or on their way out. And it really led me watching this happen, because I was one of the I think I was maybe the first, one of the first of my friends to like leave, because I only stayed in law for a couple of years and then left. But as I started to see it happen over like the subsequent kind of five or six years, I started to be like, what was going on here? Um and the more conversations that I had, the more you dive into it, people start to realise that they cannot work for their entire career, which for lots of us is gonna be into our sixties and seventies and beyond, purely for money. Like there has to be more to it, and there has to be a sense of purpose, fulfillment. And yes, maybe you can work in a job which is extremely intense and high pressured for a short period of time to facilitate something else. But really, when you sit back and think about you know the trajectory of your life, for a lot of people, I think there comes a moment when you realise that you need more from your work than just the money. And I think really the kind of purpose versus paycheck is about figuring out what that looks like for you and where those different, I guess, lines are, where the balances are, because you know it’s not a case that you know everybody that loves animals can go and be a zookeeper and get paid £10,000 a year, whatever. That’s not realistic. Um but where are those, I guess, compromises that you are willing to make. To actually facilitate a life and a job and a career which you don’t hate getting up and going to every day. And again, this is not to say that there aren’t some people who thrive off the high pressure, high intensity, like there are, I know some of them, and I completely take my hat off to them. But that’s not for everybody. There are a lot of people that find themselves in those situations where they feel like they’re just in the grind. And I it’s I I want to help those people to try and work out how to go down a different path. Um and so that is kind of what a lot of what I do when I talk about careers and work, that’s what that’s really trying to do is to help people identify what they can do and what they want to do, and how they could maybe apply some of the skills that they’ve built up into an area which they do feel more passionate about, or where they do actually get a bit more of that lifestyle that they value rather than just spending all of their hours at work.

[46:56] Sammie Ellard-King: It’s difficult, isn’t it? Because like you get to a certain point in your career and you’re like, well, I’ve built up to I don’t know, let’s say 50K is an example here, and they’ve done really well and built up to that point. And I’m a I’m a community manager or I, you know, regional manager of 10 supermarkets. I I spent my spent quite a while doing this. I spent a long time um trained to do this, etc. Whatever role that might well be. I can’t up sticks and go and bloody do X, Y, and Z. I’ve got bills to pay and also I’m scared about that too. So like that is really, really hard for people. And that’s where I do feel like having an element of hustleness going on in and around your work is important, i.e., bringing in how can you train in the evening for that new career, how can you take courses, how can you expand your knowledge and learning outside of the work frame to give yourself the opportunities to do that purpose activity that you really want to do. Um that’s where it becomes important for me. So that’s where the there’s a fine line and balance, I suppose.

[48:06] Ellie Austin-Williams: Yeah, but I think the difference there is that it’s like a season and it’s with a view to a end kind of pivot or move. So there will be, I think, those times where that has to happen. Um I think you know, it’s I I would be lying if I said that you know, there’s never going to be a time when you need to hustle or like put in the extra grind or put in those extra hours. But to get what you want, I think Exactly, to get what you want, which ultimately will hopefully then last for five, ten, twenty, thirty plus years, um, and will actually give you a more rounded sense of fulfillment in your life. And I think, yeah, you know, I was lucky that I did it early on, but the reason I did it early on was because I was also very aware of a concept which I’ve talked about recently, which I I didn’t realise was not that well known, but golden handcuffs. Um, this idea of golden handcuffs, whereby basically you are incentivized by financial rewards to stay in a situation that you don’t really want to be in. Um, and I think that a lot of careers like like the one I found myself in, that was always the danger. And I could see it because I could see, particularly with law, you know where your salary’s going, you can see what’s going to happen. And I knew that if I stayed much longer, I’d be handcuffed. Like I would adapt, I would be used to earning that much money. So I got out before I got there and thought, you know, I can always come back if I need to. And the longer you stay, the harder that is completely, and the more you have responsibilities, and you’ve got your mortgage, you’ve got your kids in private school. Like, it’s why I do have some sympathy. I do understand, you know, you see these stories of people who earn your household income of two, three hundred K and they are struggling to make ends meet, and they’re miserable. And I can see how, because if you if if you’ve got yourself into a situation where you can’t leave the job because you need that money, like you need to pay for the kids’ school fees, you need to pay for the car lease, you need to pay for the man. Yeah, like of course you’re gonna be feeling as though you don’t have a choice, whereas it’s easy to sit outside and be like, Of course you have a choice, you can go and get a job for a hundred grand, not two hundred grand. Like, that’s really simplistic, I think. I think the reality of how we operate, like there are there are very few people that would be earning in this world, I imagine, 200 grand uh living off like 30.

[50:56] Sammie Ellard-King: Like that it doesn’t exist, let’s be honest. No, no, yeah, and so I think you know, of course, you have choices that you can make, you can sell, you can downsize, you could take the kids out of school, but we’re also complex humans, like we have emotions, we have desires, we have people that we want to keep happy, and so status and honour and status pride, sorry, not honour, pride, you know, these are all massive things. You’re part of your social circle, you leave a 200 grand job to take a 30 grand job elsewhere. Well, how do you how does that make you feel to your friends you’ve lost all your friends? Yeah, you might do. You feel like Yeah, and I think even that fear, like you say, the the the fear of the fact that it could happen, I think for a lot of people will keep them up at night and we’ll keep them in that situation that they’re miserable in, even if it might not actually happen. Um and I just think it’s why money’s such a complex topic, isn’t it? It’s it’s so easy for the people, the trolls on TikTok to say, like, oh my gosh, like it’s so straightforward, spend less, earn more. Like, it’s not that straightforward.

[52:06] Sammie Ellard-King: Well of that, thanks guys. Yeah, I really appreciate that. What do you want a job? Literally, I I I didn’t I’ve just putting out a video about this, and it was why I gave up a six-figure job in the corporate space. And exact one of the big things in there was um I talk about how the paycheck feels good, it feels great because I can go on holiday, I can do X, Y, and Z, I can buy really nice clothes, I can buy nice shoes, I look good, I feel good, I smell great. Like these these are things that like when you’re especially when you’re like 20, uh, you know, mid-20s, uh earning quite good money, it it’s it’s a nice feeling. But something like a massive thing like COVID kind of kind came around, hits hit a lot of people’s reset buttons. And with me, it made me realise like and I did an exercise, I saw this um uh entrepreneur called Brian Lubin, quite controversial in a lot of things that he says. So, you know, don’t take everything he says with uh 100% belief, please. Um if you’re listening, Brian, I do apologise. But one thing he did say is uh he said take a look at your boss and look at them and say, Do you want their life? And if you look at your boss and the way that they’re often running their life, usually the people in the higher echelons of your corporate space will be fat, grey, old, bored, wife bordering on divorce, um kids who he never sees, and uh, you know, quite close to uh some sort of serious heart disease or failure. Yeah. So, or and borderline alcoholic, and perhaps has some sort of form of addiction in there as well. Doesn’t look like the type of person that we would um want to become. And actually that’s uh something that really whacked me. And I realised very quickly, like, okay, I don’t want to go to the next level. It was the next level for me was managing director, and I did not want that. And I was like, uh I know all of the people that I know that are managing directors within the hospitality industry look like they were falling apart. And I was like, that’s not okay. I’m not okay with that for myself. And I it was the same when I looked at it across industry, most manager directors were falling apart. They don’t necessarily want to be these people. Do you want to be those people? No, you don’t. So don’t put yourself through the strain, the stress, the burnout, the competition, the lack of fulfillment that you’re going to face along the way. Don’t do that to yourself.

[54:43] Ellie Austin-Williams: Yeah, totally. Like that. I mean, you’re you’re spot on there. And I mean, my partner moved job, like he moved just to a different firm. He’s a lawyer, um, as well. But he he made a career change about four years ago, um, still within law, but to a very different environment for that exact reason. He looked up, and once he started looking up, he just thought, I that is not a life I want. Like, yes, they’ve got big paychecks, but all those things that you listed um were just rife everywhere. And yeah, you know, it’s it’s hard to take on board, I think, and to really like digest and to act on when you are young and when you’re still thinking about, like you say, all those things that you could do with the money and the shiny title and the status, all of that stuff. But once you really sit with it and you start to see what that reality might look like, I think sometimes that’s when it really clicks that actually maybe I’m not willing to make that trade-off.

[55:52] Sammie Ellard-King: 100%. And then you then you go on a piece of of self-reflecting and what do I actually want and finding your why and your purpose, and then it’s about backtracking how do I make a plan and how do I stick to that fucking plan and go for it. And if that plan takes me five years, so be it. But that’s the end goal. I’m now gonna position myself to work towards that, and that gives you such a lease of life, both um in the work environment, because you know immediately from that day on that you’re that new person and you’re going after this dream that you then set yourself. And that gets lost along the way, and it can happen because of kids, it can happen because you just get fed a paycheck and you get good at something, can you train in something that you didn’t know what you wanted to do out of school, so you went and did an apprenticeship in X, Y, and Z, and you ended up in that field and you you learn these types of things. But having that moment um and asking yourself that question, do you want to be your boss? I feel like is a winner. Um, it really like most people that too. They go, No, fuck, I don’t. Um and then it’s like, uh oh, uh, oh, okay. And then you can see their cogs go, and then I probably send them home really sad. I’m like, sorry for you for asking me that question. But um, I’m happy I can’t.

[57:05] Sammie Ellard-King: Existential crisis. Yeah, yeah. Like, what have I done to these people? I’m so sorry. But actually, really, really important because the two months later they’ll come back and they’ll go, I’m gonna do this. And I’m like, yes, let’s go. Um for this. So um, yeah, I could honestly talk to you all day. I’ve absolutely loved this. Uh there’s so much more I wanted to um really wanted to unpack with you. But um I feel like we’ll have to do another one. Waffle. We will. There’s so much more in there. Um, but I’ll leave the links to the books below. But where else can can people find you, Ellie? Yeah, uh so firstly, thank you so much for having me. Again, I’ve also thoroughly enjoyed this, and yeah, I could I could be here for days. Um, but the best place to find me is at this girl talks money. Um I’m on Instagram most of the time, sometimes double in TikTok, sometimes don’t. Um yeah, it is what it is. Um and yeah, you can are so so strange. And the the comments on TikTok are another level, aren’t they? Um, but yeah, um I’m I’m around, drop me a DM, say hi. Um, but yeah, and also money talks available Amazon, nice bookshops, anywhere. Um cool. Yeah, that’s that was all loved it though.

[58:28] Sammie Ellard-King: Thank you so much. And honestly, it’s been a pleasure getting you on and absolutely getting you back soon um to do another one. Great. Cheers, Ellie. Uh, we’re gonna be able to do that.