About me! The REAL Penny

I have just been asked to be on BBC next Tuesday as part of their Mental Health Week. Very excited

As a result I needed to write a few words for them so they can plan the interview. This prompted me to write this and I thought... this is the real Penny, not the Bio you read on my Profile here. So if this helps you to get some context on why I am so driven to help business people, leaders and owners, this might explain why.....

I am a business owner, I have built 2 businesses through to exit and am currently building my third. I was awarded my OBE in 2014 for contribution to Entrepreneurs in the Digital Economy. The journey has been tough as a business owner, this includes losing our home and business in a rather dramatic way, I have also had some fairly huge personal challenges which when combined at all over-lapping one another while keeping our family strong, 3 children, a good marriage and a personality that is relentless at work and supporting others, took its toll. 

In December 2017 I was diagnosed with PTSD, after a very terrifying experience. This was triggered by a troll that returned into my life and also, following time with a Psychiatrist, I was diagnosed with a form of depression that is rarely understood, named ‘Curse of the Strong’ by Dr Tim Cantopher

He identified a form of depression that high performing executives can have which is very hidden as they don’t display the usual depressive symptoms but they are slowly killing themselves through ambition and lack of self-care.

 As a result of an amazing awakening to who I was; my strengths and overdone strengths I took a year to rest a little and I wrote a book to share my story in a very real and raw way.

 My motive for sharing was that in a world of online comparison and the vortex of ambition that many are all sucked into by the culture of our economy and consumerism, notwithstanding the way we are being sold to by certain ‘online gurus’, few of us step back and consider the life and business we really want to lead. 

I read a lovely quote while I was ‘healing’ which was ‘To be whole, first allow yourself to break’ lao Tzu.

Weirdly this gave me permission to break. Having supported my mum through cancer and dementia, my sister through the sudden loss of her daughter to cancer, the death of my brother, again to cancer, my husband’s bowel cancer, 7 house moves, and my daughter being abducted and raped, it was time I learned what Mental Fitness was, all of this was in a 4 year period and followed the loss of our 14 year old 'global' business due to our bank withdrawing a loan during the banking crisis. I hadn't realised how defined I was by Ecademy as a business person.

Many of us think mental health is something ‘someone else’ has issue with, so we don’t think about it, if we are not depressed, suffering symptoms of anxiety or diagnosed with Bipolar we think we must be okay. However, Mental Fitness is for everyone, just like being physically fit, just like brushing our teeth so we don’t lose them. We can prevent burn out, depression and anxiety with some self-awareness which will result in more self-care.

 I learned that resilience wasn’t about taking the tough blows and standing up again, it was about knowing how to avoid them, just like the best boxer in a ring.

I am now more ‘whole’ than I have ever been, self-worth has a great deal to do with this. The route of how we treat ourselves, whether we have imposter syndrome or childhood feeling of being less than we should be. So many suffer from self-worth issues, this allows us to be abused and abuse ourselves. My OBE, my amazing online following, my lovely family, they all could not understand why I had such self worth issues, the reality is, we need to be able to personally validate ourselves, external validation only lasts a second. 

My life now is spent mentoring and supporting Business Owners and being really real and open with them so that we create the right benchmark for them in life. Not all of us can be Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates but you would be surprised how many people set that as their subconscious ambition and it is not surprising that this lack of attainment and reward reduces the dopamine on the brains and also dampens the serotonin.

Life is great now as my life is about supporting other people's dreams and allowing them to be real. Most people think that they started their own business to be free, financially free, autonomy, freedom of time. The greatest feeling of freedom is to be free to be yourself. That is what I learned and that is what I want to gift to others. Once you are that free, your life will be exactly what you want it to be.