Women In Confidence with Louise Bedford - Women In Confidence

Episode 36

The Power of No, Asking for Help and Why Women are more successful at trading

This week Louise Bedford and I co host the Women In Confidence podcast and the Talking Trading podcast

Louise Bedford is a best-selling author of five books on the stockmarket. She is one of Australia’s most compelling speakers on the sharemarket, has been trading the markets since 1990, and trained thousands of people to maximise their own trading potential.

She is a behavioural finance expert and has degrees in Psychology and Business, and she can help you shortcut your way to success. She’s been running the 6-month repeat-for-free www.tradinggame.com.au Mentor Program since the year 2000, and she’s also the founder of www.talkingtrading.com.au, a free weekly trading podcast. Known as ‘the corporate executive who lost the use of her arms and achieved financial freedom by trading with a pen in her mouth’ – she will inspire you to achieve your trading best.

Her presentations are not about vague concepts that don’t work in the real world. They are about incredibly practical, time-saving strategies that you need to implement in order to become an extremely successful trader. Her key areas of focus are using candlestick charts, trading psychology, pattern detection, the impact of neuro-psychology on trading decisions and trading crisis management.

Officially crowned as Australia’s ‘Candlestick Queen’, she’s known as the trader that brought this fascinating technique to Australia.

When she’s not hanging out with her traders, she is spending time with her two children and husband, lifting weights at the gym, and enjoying yoga… and trying to get a glimpse of her own reflection on the back of her business partner, Chris Tate’s, bald head.

You’re going to want to listen to absolutely every word she has to say.

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to women in confidence with me, Vanessa Murphy, HR expert, confidence coach, and now podcaster. This podcast discusses all things to do with confidence in life and in work. And this is a podcast for women who want to learn what confidence is, how to obtain it and how to maintain it and learn how confidence can help you grow and flourish.

Every week. I introduce you to amazing women who have interesting stories to tell about confidence through their stories, insights, hints, and tips. You realize that lack of self belief or low self-esteem is common and also very human. But by listening to them, you'll take away what they have done to show up confidently on the inside as well as on the

outside.

Hello, lovely women in confidence listeners. And. To this latest episode, which is episode 36 and just so happens to be my favorite number. So this week I'm joined by Louise Bedford and to keep things fresh. And because we both like the idea, we decided to co-host this episode. So on Louise's podcast, which is called talking trading, we'll hear a slightly different version.

So her intro and her outro are different, but the bulk of the recording is the same. You can find both on your usual podcast download sites, and you can also find the unedited version on my YouTube. So as well as being just an awesome cohost, Louise Bedford is a bestselling author of five books on the stock market.

mentor program since the year:

And she also shares with me by. Tend to be more successful at trading. So carry on listening to find out. Hello, Louise, and welcome to winning confidence. And, and I actually really love the concept of us. Co-hosting I think that's amazing. And let's take on the world in the next sort of 40 minutes. Let's do that.

I love it.

Absolutely. I'm so excited to talk to you, Vanessa. I know that the people who listen to my podcast talking, trading.com.au, they always value. Being introduced to incredible resources. And this is one of them. Your podcast is terrific through women in confidence and Vanessa hyphen murphy.com.

Yeah. Fantastic.

Thank you, Louise. Well, what I'm gonna do is, and I ask this of all my guests who come on, we start off with a question. So if you'd answer, this would be amazing. What does having confidence

mean to you? Having confidence means the ability to say no. Short isn't it. Okay.

short. But I imagine in your line of work, that is really important.

And certainly some of your expertise saying no is gonna be really, really important.

I think it is. And I think it goes deeper than that as well. You know, so often we're backed into a corner by an unreasonable boss and they say, just work back a little bit later, just do a little bit more, just be involved in this project that you don't really want to be involved with.

And if you have confidence, You can position it properly. And also, interestingly, if you have the money to vacuum, you can say yes, just at the things that really appeal to you and make your heart sing. I always find it incredibly difficult when I hear that women have to make decisions based on what they feel they have to do instead of what they want to do and what really.

Then move forward as an ambitious creative energy in the world. So I think that ability to say no is very important. And if you're a trader listening that ability to say no hits you right in the hip pocket as well, we have found the majority of traders who just say yes, yes, yes. To. Every opportunity that comes their way.

They are the ones who don't make as much money. You need to know exactly what you are heading for in terms of that perfect trade in order to say yes to that. And no, to all of the other fluff that crosses your desk.

It's funny is there it's like a, it is such a simple word. It's only two letters and yet it's probably one of the most difficult to say.

What have you found yourself? Pushed into a corner. And you've, you've had to say no because it's felt wrong for you or you've had the facts and the

data. So for me personally, when have I been pushed into a corner, look, I'm gonna go really personal here. And it's gonna be really fast. The time that really occurs to me when I had a real job, I had a co-manager.

He was literally in front of me and I was backed into a corner as he shoved his hand down my pants. Now, It was shocking. It took me completely by surprise. I had done nothing to encourage that behavior. He thought it was a big joke. Oh, you've lost weight as his hand goes down. Okay. Now I have to tell you what that did to me.

I know we're diving in the deep end here with some emotional content, but I think it's really important that we have a look at other people's experiences. The first thing it did for me is it made me. Instead of expand. I went and I cried in the ladies, Lou, I didn't know what to do with these emotions.

And I thought, how am I ever going to face him again at work? I got together with my boss, who I'm still happy to be friends with today. He's living in the UK. And after all these years, we are still such firm friends. And we talked about an action plan. And the thing that I said to this gentleman, his name was mark.

I won't give you the surname because you'll probably be able to find him. If you get clever with LinkedIn. I said to him the next day, I said, look, what happened here is. The way to get my best results I want to achieve for the business. I know you do too. That's what we have in common. Those key outcomes is what we are heading for.

And by you touching me in that way and backing me into a corner in a way that I didn't feel comfortable, that is not the way to get the best content from me. So. In the future. If it happens again, I will be going to HR, but I will let this one slip because perhaps it was a misunderstanding. Are we clear?

And that method Vanessa worked really, really well. I encourage my daughters to use that method in case that happens to them. I think this is a topic that we don't speak about. We keep it under rat. And we don't think that it's commonplace when in actual fact up to one in four women have experienced something very, very similar or far, far worse.

Mm.

And when you were preparing yourself to, to speak to this chat who has just done the, the most shocking thing to you and, and hope in an environment where actually you would hope that just wouldn't happen. How did you have to prepare yourself or did it be, did it come quite fluently because it came from the heart?

No, no. I was definitely in preparation mode. I rehearsed it. I made sure that I had my points and I think that's one of the things we need to do as well. When we're in a position where we are lacking in confidence to have bullet points that we can use, regardless of the opportunity that's in front of us can really keep us on.

One of the difficulties. I think that some gentlemen find with this female persuasion is that we use connecting words and just like that word and or some people use. Um, and it leads us onto the next topic without a pause. So if you can have two or three points in preparation for any confrontation that can really help because you've made 0.1 point.

Point three. And ideally, if you can say, I have three points to make, they know when it is likely to end, so that can really help them take on board. What you're saying and can prepare you for actually telling yourself when. To stop. I think that's very important, Vanessa. No, I think that's

really good advice because well, being prepared is something I always, always do when I'm going into a meeting.

That's not necessarily confrontational, but might be like, be challenging because I'm such a chatter. Um, I know that I can sort of just go down all sorts of rabbit holes. So. I now know myself well enough to know that I have to be prepared and I always have bullet points written down. And I really like your, what you just said, you know, I'm, I'm gonna cover three things or, you know, hear me say my three things or four things or whatever it is.

I think that's really good advice. So thank you for that. Let's move on to, to more, hopefully a more, um, pleasant subject. And this is about you. And I was doing my research before we came on and there's a, your, I would say multi passionate. That's a bit of a, a NAF word perhaps, but, but you're a woman after my own heart because we, we do lots of things and I love that.

So I'm just gonna read out a few things. So first of all, you're a finance expert, a behavior, a behavior finance expert, and we'll come onto that a little bit shortly. You're a bestselling. Which is incredible. You are a speaker on the share market and properly Australia's most famous, most compelling speaker on the share market.

You're also a trading expert. You're a podcaster, which is amazing. I love meeting other podcasters. And also you have a mentor program which is called trading game. Did I miss

anything? Oh, my goodness. You're wonderful. Good job with all of that. I, I think you have covered the core of my business expertise, but to fill in the gaps, I'm also happily married.

I've got a wonderful business partner as well. Luckily, my husband and my business partner, two separate people, they both had the first name of Chris. Ha how lucky is that? I can just yell Chris and they both turn around. . And I'm also the mother of two. So yeah, there's a lot going on there. Yeah.

So when I was reading it, so now you've just filled me in, on some of that.

How on earth do you feel? I mean, where's your space? Where's your capacity?

How did you make it all work? Yeah, look, I think there is no. Easy answer with that. I do think there's an aspect to having domestic help now they always say when a woman decides to work outside the house that she brings on three people on average into the home to look after the roles that she was.

Struggling to fulfill while she was full time in the home. So I have a wonderful team around me, of different people to really help pick up that slack. So my husband came home from his job. He does property development now when our first was born and that gosh, 19 years ago now, so that was wonderful. And so he's just an amazing.

Character there cuz we are sharing things 50 50, you know, we always get to the kids' events and the kids' sport and all of that is very, very high in the list of priorities. But to enable us to do that, I actually have a couple of people come into the home. And they chop vegetables and they do washing and they vacuum.

And I damn, I love it. I can highly recommend outsourcing the Drudge. I love being the domestic, God airs cooking the feature meal, but I really, I, I have to say I hate doing things like vacuuming. So I think that that is a real key. And the other key is when you do have somebody taking over a role and let them do it to the level of 70% of.

You could do it a hundred percent. I know you could. You're incredibly talented that way, but even if somebody can do it to 70% of your level, allow them to take it over and that will help. And the second thing I'd like to suggest there is when you are doing something, have 100% focus. I do feel that is probably one of my core skills that I can block out everything.

I turn off the phone, I get rid of the notifications. I shut the door. There is no outside influence that is going to harm my level of concentration. While I'm concentrating on a big project, breaking that project down into tiny little steps, even things that might take five minutes gives me that source of joy, that endorphin rush, that I'm moving towards.

That really big goal. I

really like the fact you said, and you are really honest about it's like, get the help in, you know, do. The stuff that you get paid for, you are good at those are the things that matter. And actually the stuff that is judgey, or actually just sucks your energy into another, a space or distracts you.

Get somebody in to do it. And I think many people and particularly me, small business owner, just starting out, it's quite a tricky balance to do that between where do I need to focus my energy on where I'm gonna make some money versus my house is a mess and I need someone sort it out, but I really like your honesty on that is get someone in as quickly as you can, but also ha let them do.

Like that is what they're paid for, but also, sorry, I'm, I'm going down a bit rabbit hole, but also what I really like about the fact that women who are financially independent, they're actually contributing massively to the economy by getting people in to do the iron or the cleaning or the walking, the dog or whatever it is.

I think that's often forgotten that women who are financially independent as you and I both are. Really supporting an economy of perhaps other women as well. And I, I think that's amazing. I love that.

Yeah, me too. And you know, the thing that I really enjoy as well is that by putting a price tag on it, because you are outsourcing to somebody else who's doing that work.

You're actually managing to say to your spouse, look, my work is valuable as well. So I think the way you can position it with your partner is to get a really big, long list of things all around the house. Even outside the house, your duties as a parent, if that's applicable your duties to even go out on date nights.

Okay. Because we do have a duty to our relationship to honor that relationship. And break it all down and work out. Are you going to do it? Am I going to do it or are we going to get somebody else to do it now? For me personally, I didn't want people looking after my children. I felt that that was my role, but while I have somebody in the house looking after chopping the carrots, I will be a hundred percent with my child eye contact.

They want to do, making sure that I'm not getting distracted while I'm with them. So they know they are the center of my world for that time. And then when I need to work, I can say, sweetheart, I did give you a lot of attention there. Remember we did this, so I really need to concentrate. Now you need to find some.

To yourself to be able to explore your projects, because this is incredibly important to me. And do you know how much that makes a difference to a kid when they know they have your full attention when you are with them? I think that can make all the difference in terms of your relationship with your child.

So your podcast

and I'm sure you've been on lots and lots of podcast is mainly about trading and finance. This is, this is gonna be slightly different for you because we are actually talking about you and finding out a little bit more about Louise Bedford herself, but we will absolutely talk about trading.

And how did you get into trading and being a trading expert and also. Being an, an advisor and a mentor to other people around

trading. Yeah. It's, it's an interesting journey actually, the way it goes. I think as with many of our careers, we fall into them. Don't we? So look back way back. When, when I was living with my parents, my dad really caught my eye when we went from being quite poor to in one year.

caught my eye. It was back in:

He managed to call it and his own trading was very haphazard. Let me just state that for the record. It was not what I suggest. Now we'll talk about what I'm going to suggest for traders, but he basically put it all on black and woo away. We go. Now that is, that is really not the right way to do it for everybody listening, but it did catch my eye.

All of a sudden my views about wealth. Just spun on their head. I also wanted to be involved in the share market. I got involved with my first trade. I think I was 16 when I first put money into the markets way back when, but I didn't get serious about trading until I was 20, which was very, very lucky.

Because by the time I needed to leave my job, I'd already worked out the basic dynamics about the market. So I knew how to have my written trading plan that had my entry, exit and position sizing. I knew how much money I was making out of the markets. I knew how to save. I had those core. Building blocks of financial success that set you up for life.

So by the time I became a full-time trader, because I had to, I had a health issue. I'd already had a lot of those core skills in place, Vanessa. So

trading and all the language around trading and, and I'm gonna create some things. So you talk about candlestick charts, uh, trading psychology pattern detection.

To me that feels like a barrier to entry because that's where I would lack confidence, cuz it's a language that I don't understand and it's numbers and it's a lot of information and it feels quite daunting. What's your advice then to women, because this is the, the nature of this podcast who are thinking the same and thinking, gosh, this sounds daunting.

I don't belong in this space. How can I get over those barriers to entry?

Firstly, I can totally hear where you are coming from. It does seem like such a big area and it does seem like a male dominated area. And in fact, the figures say that women find it difficult to move into trading because. Feel it is so male oriented that I have to tell you first and foremost, that my traders, when I look at all of their results, and this is over many years, I mean, I've, this is going to be, the coming year is going to be the 23rd year that I've been running my mentor program.

So I've got masses of data on my traders is my top traders are women and they always have been. We are more conservative with our views. We like to have full information before we act, and we tend to take our time when we are learning all the qualities that make up an exceptional trader. So how do we get over that nagging for.

Feeling of self doubt. I think what we need to do is find somebody who believes in us, who cares for us and can break it down into very basic building blocks for us. Because if you can break it down, you can conquer anything. So some of the things, perhaps if I'm giving you advice for Vanessa, I think it's probably easier if I, if I talk just to you, okay.

just between you and me. I would say, firstly, why do you want to trade? Give me some feedback. You know, what, what would trading do for your life personally, Vanessa?

Well, for me it would, it would support me financially. I think that's why I would go into it because, but also it seems. Exciting and I like learning.

So for me, it would be like, I dunno anything about this space, but I know I have the capacity to learn. I am curious, and it's not gonna beat me so financially. Absolutely. Because I know it can be like, your father can be very successful. I mean, obviously there's gonna be the downsides, but also cuz I just love learning new things.

So this are the two things. That's what it would give me. And, and it would make me probably more financially

stable. Absolutely. Well, they are brilliant reasons to get involved. Your reason has to be strong to learn anything because our lives are so cluttered. Aren't they, we have so many things on in our life to take on one extra thing can sometimes be insurmountable, but.

If we've got a real reason to go for that, it can not seem like work. It can seem like fun. You know, this is an area you can explore. So perhaps some of the other reasons that some of my traders have been involved can give you some clues as well. And maybe everybody listening to this can think about what their reason is for getting involved in trading.

At the same time, we have got some interesting stats on. Roughly four months after a separation from a partner, something interesting happens to the women. I don't know what in the hell is going on. They get their payment from splitting everything 50, 50, and before you know it, they're going, where do I live in this world?

What's my identity. Who am I really? And what can I do to actually make a difference? Now, weirdly, we have got a huge number of people four months after their divorce, four months after this, the payment has come through, come into our flock. Now let's think about why that would be so many of us are financially uninvolved in our own future.

And even the stats are with millennials, which is just mind blowing. 54% of female millennials, hand financial decision making completely over to their male partner, 54%. Where, where are we going with this? Even with baby boomers, baby boomers, it's only 39%. So we have gone backward and it's because of the pandemic.

We got overwhelmed, too many things on our plate. We couldn. Think clearly. So all of a sudden we start stripping things off that actually are of personal meaning. So one of the things I think we need to do is remember, there are a lot of different reasons to get involved in a new area. One of the classics that I think of, there was a lady that I trained, had a trade when she was eight months pregnant, her truck driver partner decided that he didn't want a baby.

And they did it through IVF. What the hell bit . Yeah, exactly. So she was, what do I do now? She'd already just started trading. It was a significant step for her, but she said you are out. Get out. She got the settlement through super quick. And she is a full-time trader. So her little baby Nick is now six years old.

She has been with him every step of the way. She has seen every developmental step that this child has gone through. He is in private school and she has what I would say, a healthy dose of revenge there. He the male partner. He is in a very different life. Dial circumstance compared to this lady who is definitely up and up.

And she's one of our most incredible traders because of that huge reason. And because she has a real burn to continue to do well, your initial reason will take you so far and you need to keep resetting your why. So I think that's something that we can all learn from as a lesson. In life, what is it that we are really aiming for?

And then once you know what that is, how do we find people to help us get there? Yeah. And asking for

help. It is tricky sometimes. And what puts people off asking for help? Do you think, particularly. Around money. Money's a topic that people feel really uncomfortable about talking. And I love the fact that through this podcast, through your podcast, through all your work, you are enabling that conversation for women to, to talk about their money.

But what stops people asking

for help? I think ego, we think we should know what we're doing. We think by now we should be good at adulting. Oh hell. Oh, I'm in my fifties. I'm in my mid fifties. I'm still not good at adulting. What in the hell is this word? Adulting. Nobody knows what they're doing. Nobody knows.

We, we all have to realize we have our areas of expertise and other areas where we have no idea how to cope with life. That that is fine. That is actually fine. The unfortunate aspect with this is that there's a continuum and on one end is shame. And the other end is confidence. Now, the closer we move towards shame, the more we shrink.

And the closer we move towards confidence, the more we expand and we can take on the world, which is what your podcast is aiming to do as well, because by expanding, we can share our gift with the world. So I do encourage everybody to realize that it's okay. Not to know what you're doing to begin with.

It's absolutely expected if it is stopping you from asking the question. There are difficulties. There are absolute problems with that. So just

going onto other entries into the trading world. Is it a myth or reality that you need lots of money initially, to go into this?

Oh, look, it's actually something I cover in my trading secrets book.

Um, that's charting secrets for those of you watching the video. And if you're not watching the video come to youtube.com. And then go slash trading game, cuz I'll pop the video up there. And there's also my trading secrets book. So my trading secrets book is probably going to answer that in a greater level of detail.

But look, I always used to say to people you need roughly $20,000, maybe $50,000 to start. And then over the years, some of my mentoree laughed at me. They just laughed. They said, oh my God. I know you're telling people that that is ridiculous. I started with $5,000 so I would suggest one of your core skills to work on is to work out how to save.

We need to get better. At not using that impulse to purchase and to plan ahead for where our finances can lead us down the track. Most people are really crap at that. We're better teaching our children those skills than we are harnessing those skills for ourselves. So have a close look at your own personal spending habits, put some money aside, and while you're doing that, educate yourself, read those books for goodness sake.

They're. As they're gonna be your cheapest financial education that you've ever received. Listen to podcasts, do things that are cheap to free on that little kind of realm before you decide to make that big move and put money into the markets, because it's so easy to. See it dissolves compared to actually approaching it like a professional start with the end in mind, imagine what your life can be like down the track three to five years or so, and then work backward to backfill.

And how do you get that life today? Breaking that big overall goal into tiny little bits is going to be the best thing you can possibly do.

I can totally agree with what you're saying about this three to five years, and I think. Many people will be, oh, I just want an overnight fix. I just wanna, I dunno, put some money into the market and, and, you know, make my millions, or just in my world, they want one coaching session and they want to then be fixed.

They they're confident and what you are saying. And certainly I reinforces these things do not happen overnight. I mean, occasionally rare. But the majority of it, it's planning, it's setting a goal. It takes time, it takes practice, it takes education. So that is very similar. You know, I do coaching, you do trading and sharing your knowledge and expertise, but it does take

time.

It does. And I don't think we give ourselves that time to grow. You know, I often think there's that little bamboo shoot story. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but there's a bamboo seed that they plant in the ground and it takes seven years before it actually shoots up by 20 feet. And that can happen like over a period of a month.

Okay. Now, when was the growth occurring? Was it occurring in that month where you see the bamboo shoot up or. Occurring in those seven years where it was gathering the nutrients and gathering the energy and getting ready, like a ballerina in the crouch position to spring up. I can tell you what was in those seven years.

We don't give ourselves that time. We're willing to give our children time to grow. We're willing to give our coworker time to take on a new role and to learn. We'll give them as much time as they need, because, Hey, they're not us. Why can't we be perfect from the very outset? Oh my goodness. so I do urge everybody to treat themselves like a toddler.

Treat yourself like a toddler. Make sure you get enough sleep. Make sure you get enough to eat. Make sure you have your play dates. Have some time in the sun, have some fun, you know, do all of those things that you would do to look after a child for yourself. and also then that will have a good impact on your adulting levels.

I interviewed somebody very recently and she said, put yourself in your diary. And I thought that's a really good way of describing it because I put everyone else into my diary. So business coaching, work, kids, blah, all that sort of stuff. But I am personally hopeless at putting myself in my diet and I thought that's, that's a very good message.

Invest in yourself. Yeah. Invest time in, you know, your, your rest, your physical health, your mental health, all those things. And that helps build your confidence. You have absolute trust in yourself at this point. And I guess the same is true in your space is take that time for yourself.

And I think it can even go just using that calendar analogy a little bit further as well, where if you think of the big things in life, The things that are really important to you, whether it be holidays or trips for your work, put those in the calendar.

First, there's a story. And I dunno whether you've seen the video of a university lecturer. And he's got a, a big VA, a big kind of jug on the table and he fills it up with golf balls and he says, is there any more room in this jug? And everybody says, no, no, there's no more room. And then he takes little pebbles and he puts it in.

And of course the pebbles Nestle in alongside those golf balls. And he said, is there any more room? And no, no, there's no more room. There's no more room. He gets sand. He puts the sand. To the jug. Is there any more room? No, there's no more room. Then he gets water. He pours the water in. Okay. So now let's, let's apply that to our lives.

How can that be applied? The golf balls have to be your big priorities, your major things that you are heading for your big goals. You know, that. I don't know if we are allowed to swear here, but the big yeah. Go for it. Effing, audacious goal. You know, that huge thing that you are heading for. That's your golf ball.

Your pebbles can be some things that are smaller than that, but still very important and a priority in your life. Then you've got sand and often the sand and the water. Is where we are working. We're not getting that personal fulfillment from our job. We're finding it to be very much the Drudge. We're doing emails and emails, or we're just chopping the same bit of wood again and again, basically, and it's not fulfilling and it's not meaningful.

The difficulty is most people are sanding over their entire lives. They're not just having it in that one little subsection because they haven't filled up their calendar with the big golf balls first to goal

setting. How do you go about what's your methodology to set

goals? If I've got something that scares me, I'm usually on the right track.

I think we underestimate what we can achieve over the long term and we overestimate what we can achieve in the short term. So the big one that I use is I have that big goal and then break it down and break it down. And then I do a spreadsheet, like an Excel spreadsheet, and then with a done. Column and I just color it in with done, done, done.

So I've got things that I'm aiming to achieve on like a yearly basis, say the big golf ball and it comes down to a per day aspect to that. And sometimes it's even for half a day, I put it all into my calendar in advance. So every single component, like at the moment, I'll give you perhaps an example. I'm looking to launch our mentor program for next year.

Now it's a huge deal. It is a huge deal. I have to find the right people that are ambitious, who are willing to work with us. Okay. Because if they're not prepared to put their ego aside, you know, we can't work with them. We don't want that cluttering up. The group that we've already trained. we need people who have got an interest in trading people.

Who've already got a little bit of background, like maybe have read one of my books or one of my business partner, Chris Tate's books. So there are so many aspects to getting this to fly and there is every single year, but because it is such a big goal. If I look at it just as the goal, it's incredibly daunting.

And I, I could hyperventilate, even if I, even as I speak about it right now, but today my tiny little goal was to set dates in the calendar when to send out the emails. Ah, I can do that. I can do that. I might not be able to achieve the big one today, but I can achieve this tiny little goal. And that to me has stood the test of time.

I've achieved such wonderful things, because I barely even noticed those tiny little goals. So tell

me about the mentor program then. Cause you said you were setting yourself to launch it next year. When it, what, what dates are you planning on perhaps going live and it, it really starting.

Oh, well, thanks for asking about it because it is such a passion project for me.

I mean, I think anything that you willingly do for 23 years is. Them. quite the, quite the, uh, focus isn't it. So we launch in mid-November then we have pre-season training to make sure that everybody's up to speed for a kickoff in February. Now, what that lets us do is to make sure that everybody is comfortable and is willing to be in that success environment before we even begin.

So, because it's a repeat for free course, we have had people who did the program. 23 years ago, play along every single year. We give everybody a senior trading buddy. And that way they've got somebody like a, when my little one was in prep, they were in a really tenuous situation having a bit of anxiety.

And what they did is they signed with the school, a grade. A big grade SIXR to look after my kid, right? Oh, what a relief that kid was Nick. Right. Nick was amazing. Check on in, on him. Make sure that there's, you know, happy family type of time there with the little friendship group. It was wonderful. Nick was a star.

So we've done the same thing with our mentors. They get a senior trading buddy to ease them into the process. And then it's six months of intense. Work. There's no doubt. And I love it. I love seeing the changes in my traders. I love getting involved in their lives. I love seeing what money can do to a household.

Oh my gosh. It is just amazing. Add a little bit of money and somebody's complete life view can alter forever. This is intergenerational legacy producing money that can come into people's lives. And it's just my greatest. Pleasure to notice that and to see what is happening for my people, a mentoring. Do you have a mentor?

So

you, you oh yeah. Apply mentors to people who are going through your course. And, but

do you have your own mentor or coach? I definitely do. And I always am wary of a mentor that doesn't have a mentor. Mm frankly, so I've got mentors in different areas and I do find it to be interesting the way it goes, because one of my grandest mentors was Dr.

Harry Stanton who died a year ago. Um, Been my mentor since I was 15. How lucky am I with that? I read his book when I was 15 years old. My sister gave it to me. I wanted to run away from home, fly off the deep end, you know, as you do poor one 15 year olds, and she said, you can come and live with me. If you read this book first, otherwise you do not have my support and you, you can do whatever you like, but I'm not gonna take you in.

What a, what a grand way to approach a hormonal 15 year old. So , so I read Harry's book. I loved it. And to years later to have co-authored a book with him to have had him present from my traders to have had CDs that we've created together back in the days when CDs were around he has just been an inspiration for me.

So, yeah, he was definitely an inspiration from the trading psychology point of view. And what do

you say to people who think, oh, mentors, just that doesn't feel right. It's not accessible. Who do I even speak to? How do I get one? How would you, um, advise

those people? Yeah. I always think life is quite short.

So if you do have a spare 10, 20, maybe 30 years up your sleeve, maybe you don't need a mental. Maybe you can learn it yourself. Maybe you can tread down paths that aren't right for you and eventually stumble into an area that, Hey, yeah, this can be yours and you can own it. I don't wanna waste that time. I don't wanna take that long to achieve.

Oh my goodness. You only have a set number of decades in life, and it's something that perhaps you don't have as much control over as you think. So, finding a mentor is, is very important. I think it goes onto two levels to you do want somebody with the technical skills, but you also need someone who cares, who damn well gives a shit, because if they don't.

You're not gonna be able to take in what they say. You, I always think that people will respond to how much you care first and then how much, you know, second. So make sure you have those two parts of the Seesaw that can really be that fulcrum can tip one way or the other. If you've got all care and no knowledge.

There's problems. If it's all knowledge and no care, you've also got an issue. So find somebody that has boths for whatever area you are pursuing. So as we come

to the end of this podcast, what's your one piece of advice, Louise, for women who are listening and they think. Well, first of all, I wanna be like Louise, cuz she comes across as this most amazing confidence.

So articulate person, but also the confidence to get into trading. What's your advice for those people?

My thought is firstly, is that you can do more and be more and achieve more than you ever. Think possible. You need to find a way of shutting up that tiny little voice that is telling you that you need to be a small size because the world can't hold you.

You are that big. You need to expand and grow into that role and to give yourself time to grow as well. So just from a philosophical level, that is my advice. But in terms of advice, getting started trading, really getting the. Books getting the right input through podcasts. Visit my podcast, talking, trading.com.au and register your details.

Read my book trading secrets, and then follow it up with charting secrets. Come to my other website trading game.com.au. And register your details. I will give you, I will hand it over to you. A free five part eCourse called trading made simple, and I will give you my trading plan template that will go through all of the core things you need to do to write down before you put a dollar into the markets.

So. Give yourself a pat on the back for listening to this incredible conversation and know that this is part of the journey, you know, being able to motivate yourself, to find people who can inspire you. I mean, that's three quarters of it. The rest of it, you will work out. You're smart. Come on. You can do it.

Yeah. There's one thing women absolutely are, is resourceful. yeah,

that

could make anything happen. They can have, but thank you for your generosity in terms of highlighting, you know, the books and the free, um, content and all your websites. So thank you very much for that. And what I'll do, Louise is I'll put all those details into the show notes of my podcast.

So people who are listening to women in confidence can find you and hopefully sign up for your courses and buy your books, cuz they sound amazing. And I know where I'm going next. I'm going to amazon.com. AU. To find out about it. Um, but thank you very much for at least giving people that, that hope that getting into trading sounds so much easier.

Now I've spoken to you and,

oh, I'm so glad Vanessa and Vanessa, because I know a lot of my traders are going to be very keen to follow up with your podcast and to get in touch. Could you perhaps just give us a little bit of background about how your podcast can help my people and tell them where to go in their next.

Yeah, sure. So

women in confidence is, um, as we mentioned, right at the beginning, focused on working women and it covers a whole range of, of subjects, but just centered around confidence. Self-belief self-efficacy. And I bring in a whole host of guests who perhaps talk about money, talk about trading, but also they talk about self-belief and inner confidence.

They talk about I've had somebody come on about confident parenting, which people might say, well, that's not related to work. I think you can't separate life from work. They are. They're the one in the same. Um, I've, I've had so many people who come on and talk about their experiences in the workplace and how they've helped to build their confidence and how they've made decisions.

Confidently and also how they live their life with true belief in themselves and true purpose. And there, I mean, there are so many episodes that I can't highlight one as being particularly exceptional. But go and have a look at the website, go and scroll down all the episodes and find one that really resonates with either your current position or where you want to get to, uh, and, and go and dive in and, and, and check out all the different episodes.

There's one in there for everybody. I'm absolutely

convinced of it. Oh, that's wonderful. Vanessa. I've really enjoyed our chat. I'm so looking forward to exploring the resources that you've provided for everybody as well, who wants to gain more confidence. So I'll definitely be staying in touch with you.

So signing off from Louise Bedford and Vanessa Murphy, we will see you the very next podcast.

About the Podcast

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Women In Confidence
The podcast for ambitious working women

About your host

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Vanessa Murphy

Vanessa is a HR Consultant, The Founder of Boom Podcast Agency and a Podcast Host.
Vanessa got her first proper job in 1998 when she joined as an Officer in the Royal Navy and then after 15 years doing that, she transitioned into senior HR and Culture roles working for organisations all over the world.
She now has 2 strings to her bow....
Firstly, she is an empath, avid people watcher and she likes to observe people when they were operating with confidence and self-belief and learn strategies, tools and techniques from them. She helps women with confidence at work and her Women In Confidence podcast is a way for her to share her knowledge and her network with a wider audience.

Secondly, she has always been fascinated by what makes a company great to work for and now devotes her time to creating workplaces that not only have impressive performance but are also human centred - hint... they are not mutually exclusive. Her Conversations About Company Culture podcast is her way of sharing ways to build great organisations.