Episode #010 How to Refire Your Midlife with Guest Wendy Garcarz

Is the “What Now?” conundrum casting a shadow over your Midlife? Like so many of the fabulous women Kate coaches, do you feel you've lost direction? Worrying about what comes next. 

We can feel we're in a career slump as our 50s gather pace, dreaming of going it alone but held back by fear of failure and success in near equal measure, underpinned by self-doubt, comparisonitis, lack of self-worth and fear of judgement. While retirement looms on the horizon. 

So is hitting Midlife the end of life as we know it? Are our hopes and dreams slipping away as the clock keeps ticking? Well, Kate is 55 and is just getting started. And she's delighted to be joined by her guest Wendy Garcarz, multi-award winning business strategist, Ted X speaker, futurist, author and founder of REFIREMENT 

Wendy has more than 30 years’ experience working with women business owners in all sectors, helping them create a business strategy that achieves growth and success. And, like Kate, Wendy is a passionate ambassador for giving women 55+ the vital clarity and focus we need moving forward at this pivotal time in our lives. 

Wendy’s REFIREMENT movement is redefining what retirement looks like today and giving women a vital choice in how we age and contribute as we approach our later years. There’s a longevity revolution happening right now, and this is our time to stand up and be taken seriously. To embrace our wisdom and shine in our brilliance.

Kate and Wendy share inspiring stories and insights to empower us all to be – as Wendy puts it – “Rocking Midlife, but not from a chair.” Wendy reveals more details about REFIREMENT and how you can get involved, and shares her three top strategies for refiring our Midlife. 

Connect with Wendy here and get involved with REFIREMENT
https://www.refirement.biz/
www.wendygarcarz.com
wendy@wendygarcarz.com
https://www.facebook.com/wendy.garcarz
https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendy-garcarz-06b75b2/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:03

Welcome to Midlife Unlimited, the podcast for women who want more. I'm Kate Porter, the midlife metamorphosis coach, and I know what it feels like to be stuck navigating the midlife maze. I've looked in the mirror and thought, who is that woman? So Midlife Unlimited is here to let you know you are not alone. You don't have to put on a brave face and put up with it. You don't have to play it safe. Midlife Midlife Unlimited is all about ripping off that mask and telling it like it really is. Smashing stereotypes, busting myths and misbehaving. Because our second spring is our time to shine our way. So, welcome to today's episode. Now so many of the fabulous women I coach feel they've lost direction and they're worrying about what comes next. Often they feel they're in a career slump. dreaming of going it alone but held back by fear and those self-doubts and all the while retirement is looming on the horizon. Is this the end of life as we know it? Are our hopes and dreams slipping away as the clock keeps counting? What do we actually want from life after 55? Well, I'm 55 and I'm just getting started. So I am delighted to be joined today by my friend and multi award winning business strategist, TEDx speaker, and she's fantastic, futurist, author and founder of Refinement UK, Wendy Garkas, to talk about how to refine your midlife. So welcome, Wendy. Thanks for having

SPEAKER_01: 1:56

me, Kate. I'm really looking

SPEAKER_00: 1:57

forward to this. Now, I am thrilled to have you here today. And I don't know if anyone saw our little promo video when we were launching Midlife Unlimited. And I think you said the main question is, will they be able to shut us up? So be prepared for a long one, ladies. But Wendy, you've got more than 30 years experience working with women business owners in all sectors, helping them create a business strategy that achieves growth and success. But one of the Many things I love about you is you're a woman of surprises and I'm all about surprises because you've got an alter ego, haven't you?

SPEAKER_01: 2:38

I do, yes. I am the lady with the double life. So by day, I am everything that you've described me as. And I work with businesses to help them build and scale up thriving businesses and particularly older women. And then by night, my alter ego, Wendy Charlton, takes over and I write espionage novels.

SPEAKER_00: 3:03

I love that. So do you have like a hankering for like joining MI5? Is there something we should know here? Do you know, I

SPEAKER_01: 3:12

could tell you that, but then I'd have to kill you. No, no, no, seriously. I think that one of the things when you when you coach other people, one of your jobs as a coach is to bring out what's already inside. And I spent, you know, more than three decades talking to women about how they follow their dreams, how they realize what is inside themselves. and how they make that a reality rather than just keeping it there as an unmet need or a dream. And I got to the stage where I was 58, I just thought to myself, there's a bit of hypocrisy going on here, Wendy, because you're doing this and helping other women achieve their dreams and fulfill that lifelong ambition, and you're not doing it for yourself. Because I'd always hankered to write a novel. I always thought that there was a novel in me. And so on a whim, and you know me, Kate, I do lots of things on a whim. I've done the best way. I decided that I was going to do this. I was going to make it happen. So when I was 58, I put my business into my fours. I... sold my house, put my house on the market, sold my house and moved to a leafy suburb out into the countryside in Staffordshire and gave myself two years to write and publish a novel. because I'm a bit of an action taker. So I just decided that I would do that. Luckily, I've got a fabulous husband who has supported me through everything that I've ever done, who said, yeah, OK, if that's what you want to do, let's do it. And so I did. And in 2020, my first novel was published, Keeping Secrets.

SPEAKER_00: 5:01

That is incredible. That is incredible. Oh, a woman of mystery, a woman of mystery. Well, I think when we put the links at the end, anyone who would like to get copies, can we put links as well and in the show notes of where they can buy your books? Yes, yes,

SPEAKER_01: 5:17

absolutely. Yes, yes. It's available on Kindle and you can buy it in paperback

SPEAKER_00: 5:22

as well. Love that. So a little bit of a segue. I do like a segue. When it comes to solving mysteries, then, The what now conundrum is one that I think many of I've been there. And I say, obviously, you explored a what now and these dreams that can be put on the back burner so often. Now, your fabulous refinement UK movement. It's I am so excited to be part of it. It's set to play a huge role in giving women 55 and over that. the clarity and focus that we need to move forward at this pivotal time. And later, you're very kindly going to be sharing your top three tips on how we can refire. And I love your play on words. I'm all about the words. Refire yourself in midlife. But firstly, for the lovely ladies listening who haven't seen your post, where have you been under a rock? What is refinement UK? And you're wearing your scarf. I am. To get to the launch. But you very kindly have given me my scarf as well. So I'd love the scarf, the launch, Refinement UK. Talk about it. Okay,

SPEAKER_01: 6:40

so it all started very early on January 2024. And I was working with women over 55 who were increasingly giving me these weird stories about how difficult they were finding it to set up or scale a business. And I thought that that can't be right. So I decided to do a bit of research. So using my social media networks, I put out a questionnaire and said, if you're over 55 and you're either starting or scaling a business, tell me about it. about your lived experience, what's been happening to you. And if I'm honest, Kate, I would have been really chuffed if I'd have had a couple of hundred people who gave me a response. In the end, 1600 women responded. And they were sharing their experiences with me about some of the ridiculous stereotypes that they were coming up against, the ridiculous barriers that commercial companies were putting in their way. And it seemed to be the only reason, the only common thread that we could find to all of these difficulties that women had experienced was their age. And I was incensed by this because I thought to myself, this is nonsense. I have got an academic background. And so when I looked at all of the research that had been done, it was absolutely clear that the older you are, the more likely you are to be able to set up and run a sustainable business and a successful business with bigger returns than our male counterparts. And I couldn't understand where this mismatch had come from. come from so I decided to publish all of the results in a report which was the 2024 wise women in business report and I put this out and people were contacting me who'd read it and said I can't believe that this is happening in this day and age the fact that we're having to negotiate these outdated stereotypes about mature women business owners is ridiculous and so somebody said to me as a joke, do you know you ought to do a TED talk on this? And I thought to myself, do you know, that's always been on my bucket list. It's always been there. So I thought, how difficult can it be? So I went through my contacts and I found somebody who'd been sort of lurking in the background. And I put this out and she said, oh, by the way, I curate the Wolverhampton TEDx talks. And we've just opened the application process. So I put my application in and I did my little video and and she came back and said oh yeah you'd be absolutely brilliant you've got one of the 12 slots so so I thought great I shall do a TED talk and I delivered that in August of 2024 and and then the world went bananas And so once it was up, people were coming back to me from all over the world saying, this isn't just a UK problem. We have this problem in America, in Canada, in Switzerland, in Belgium, in France, in Spain. I mean, everywhere. And so I thought, you know what, this is bigger. We need to be doing something about this. And so in the report, I talk about the fact that many women are tired with this brush of being tired out and lacking in ambition and ready to hang their boots up and, you know, spend their afternoons at garden centres drinking dodgy coffee. And I just thought, you know what, that's that's not for us. We have got so much more after menopause in particular. We're fired up. We've got this energy. We've got this free time. Most of us have got less responsibility. We've got a whole phase of our life where we can start again, where we can give something back, because that's the common thing with women of this age. We don't just want to do stuff. We want to make the world a better place. We want to leave a mark. We want to leave a legacy. And so how could I help with that? I decided that I would launch a global movement, as you do. As

SPEAKER_00: 11:04

you do. And

SPEAKER_01: 11:04

so I coined the phrase Refinement UK. because it isn't retirement we're not tired out we are fired up and so the new phrase should be refinement and this should be an organization that challenges these stereotypes and actually reimagines what retirement should look like for women over 55 in in this day and age and so i decided to get together some some key movers and shakers women who felt like me about this issue so i decided to do a soft launch of refinement uk and so So on the 29th of October of this year, I decided that that's what we would do. So I got 24 women in a room in Burton-on-Trent and said, if we were going to start a movement, what would this look like? And those women came and boy, they absolutely... knocked it out of the park gate the report that came from the conference report that came from that bearing there are there are only 24 of us in the room um was 50 pages long and it was filled with a strategy for this movement it was filled with the practicalities of how do you set this organisation up and what should it look like? What should a membership look like? It launched four keynote projects which is around mentoring other women. It's about giving women more confidence about dealing with finances and financial planning and around the way that they adopt technology to make their lives easier. It dealt with how we could share that using a treasure map where people could search for the resources that they need and find them by their region. I was just blown away. I've done big corporate change management programs with some really big companies and they haven't produced in six months what that room of women produced in a day. I was absolutely blown away. And so Refinement UK was born. And it's really an organization that has really strong values around empowering women, encouraging women, really challenging some of those stereotypes, standing up and being counted. Because, you know, unless we tackle this, people are not going to come along and tackle it for us. So it was an organisation that's got a very strong mission and a very strong set of values and guiding principles um and it is just going from strength to strength and the scarf that you talked about i am a great believer in um in creating um an atmosphere where women can realize just what is possible because we spend our lives talking ourselves out of what is possible we can't do this because of this we're not capable of doing that oh it's only me why would i want to do that and it's all blooming nonsense and so what i wanted to do is create this feeling of possibility and so i decided to use the scarf as the thing that tied us together the thing that represented we are part part of this movement and together we can change the world if we want to and so I wear my scarf with pride as I hope all of the other 24 women on that day did. You had put so much support into helping us get it off the ground, even though you couldn't be there. You were there in spirit, Kate. And in fact, you were on our wanted wall.

SPEAKER_00: 14:54

Oh, yeah. I had a wanted poster on the wall.

SPEAKER_01: 14:58

Yeah, yeah. Because we want women like you. We want women that just, you know, cocker snoot at those ridiculous stereotypes and then go out there and do it regardless. And so you were on our wanted wall. So you were with us in spirit. I

SPEAKER_00: 15:11

was. And I now have my scarf that you very kindly gave me. I think it's absolutely brilliant and I'm so excited. And I think as well, you've touched on so many really empowering points there. And the basic fact behind all this, which is why it's so timely, is there is– and I struggle with this word always– a longevity revolution happening right now. We are living longer. So this is the time to actually, as you say, stand up, embrace our wisdom and say, what do we want to do now? And together with this wonderful, I love the idea of the scarves and tying and the unity coming together to find a way together. Yeah. It's just, it's estimated that, um, more than 53% of the population will be over 65 by 2050. And that women live on average five years longer than men. So if we do the maths from that. And there was that other brilliant article quote from the rose report that if women started and scaled a business at the same rate as men it could be worth 250 billion to the uk economy yeah have i written that down right yeah you have that is

SPEAKER_01: 16:36

absolutely the figure that is absolutely the figure And yet women's experiences from the report, and you can download the report. I think there's a link attached to the podcast where you can go and find the report. But what that report talked about was those lived experiences. So listen to the illogical way. that we have to navigate our path. So you're right that we are going to be living longer. We're going to be 63% of the population. What's really interesting is by the time you get to that stage, it's likely that our retirement age will be 70. That is the likelihood. 67 now, it is going to be increasing. By 2050, it will be 70. So what you have is the state at the moment where... If you want to start a business and let's say you're six day and you want to start a business, you're going to have difficulty opening a business bank account with some high straight banks because they see you as a high risk, you know, really have difficulty getting a business loan if you want to get it off the ground. And that makes that's made worse if you're a single woman over six days starting a business. So if you haven't got a partner. They see you as an even higher risk. So the likelihood is you're trying to devise a different way of getting from your 60s into your 70s and your retirement age, whatever that looks like. Mechanisms where you can earn an income to do that by being your own boss is made more difficult. which is absolutely crackers. If you've left and you've got a private pension, the likelihood is that because these pension products are designed by men for men, you are going to be retiring with on average£125,000 less in your pension pot than a male counterpart. And that's because we're the ones that have breaks in our careers to raise children, you know, run families. We're the first point of call for caring responsibilities. So even if your kids have grown up, if you've got older siblings or parents that then need to be looked after, you're going to be the first port of call. All of that might mean that you have career breaks and that affects your pension. So the odds are stacked against us and that is ridiculous in this day and age. So what we want to be able to do is say to people, what you're doing doesn't make any sense logically. If there's this 250 billion quid that is potentially available to our economy, why wouldn't you want to track some of that down? Why wouldn't you want to support women who are capable of making that sort of contribution and get us out of the economic downturn that we have been experiencing for the last decade or more? Why wouldn't you do that? And so nobody was talking about that and talking about these difficulties, which was why I felt retirement needed to be created, because as well as being a supportive mechanism and a membership for women to do this stuff, we're also developing a campaigning arm where we challenge policymakers, commercial companies that says what you're doing is illogical. It makes no sense. Go back to the drawing board. Think outside the box. and create products that reflect our life journeys and stop disadvantaging us.

SPEAKER_00: 20:15

I think that's so true. That's so true. I think it would be really... I put my teeth in. If we could touch... On your three top tips, because I know there's so much that's come out of this and there's so much that's going to be happening moving forward. And I'm so excited to be part of it. And I know we're going to put links in the show notes so that the women listening, you can find out and you can get involved. But when we were chatting before, referring ourselves in midlife, I think your number one tip that stood out was know your self-worth.

SPEAKER_01: 20:52

Oh, absolutely. I think women go through life full of apologies. We apologise for everything. The first rule is stop apologising. You have fantastic transferable skills. And people say to me, well, what would I know about starting a business? You know, I've only ever done this or I've only ever raised a family or I've only ever, you know, worked on this little job or whatever it is their experience has been. If you have ever tried to... take something off a two-year-old where that is potentially harmful to them and they don't want to let it go you are a masterful negotiator i guarantee it because i've watched those interactions women tend to have We have got head and shoulder skills above what normal people have in terms of soft skills, communication skills, influencing skills. All of these are incredibly valuable to women later on in life if they want to run a business. So we've got to stop talking ourselves down. We've got to have self-belief. We've got to have a realistic view about what our transferable skill set is. And we have to acknowledge it so that we can bring it out and use it when we walk on to rather than it just happening by accident. I think my second tip was about being brave and doing things that you were not sure that you can do. Courage is fantastic. And do you know what? I think that courage is singularly one of the things that grows after we're 55, because it becomes less important about what other people think. We're less worried about what the people think of us. And that is a fantastic trait to have, because if you're less worried about what other people think, you're more likely to try something new and different and push yourself out there. And for me, anything in my life that has been worthwhile having, I've got from being outside of my comfort zone. Your comfort zone is there to keep you safe. And anything that I've really, really enjoyed always or anything that I've done that has been hugely beneficial has been gained by working outside of that comfort zone. For me, the third tip that I would say to people is what women are brilliant at doing is collaborating. We're really, we, I do a lot of business networking and I love networking with women in business because there's not a whiff of testosterone anywhere. We are all about, um, praising each other, holding each other up, raising each other up. We are each other's cheerleaders. We do it in a way that is altruistic. We don't expect anything in return. But what we do do is we will support other women and we collaborate better because we're not worried about the competitive element. What we want to do is produce something that is even better. And we recognise that when we work with other people, work with other women and we create these almost by alchemy these fantastic partnerships my goodness me there's nothing that we can't achieve so those are my my three tips you know go out there believe in yourself be courageous with the choices that you make and don't be afraid to collaborate with other women because we can produce fantastic stuff

SPEAKER_00: 24:21

no that is just spot on and I know that kind of weaving those together as well was something we were talking about about being kind to your body and mind at the same time, because there are many, many reasons why women 55 and upwards might be looking to change career or reimagine their careers. And health issues can come into that and relationship issues and all sorts of things. So I think that's an area where to actually take stock and look at our strengths and experiences and not use them as a barrier or an excuse to try and i think

SPEAKER_01: 25:00

that's absolutely right case i mean for me that's part of that that first one about knowing yourself and having that self-belief We have gone through a stage, particularly if we've raised a family, we've gone through a stage of putting ourselves at the bottom of the pile. And everybody else in our family unit will have come first at some point, but rarely will it have been us. And when you've done that for 10, 20, 30 years in some cases, it becomes really difficult for you to give yourself permission to do that. But by knowing yourself, by understanding what you need and having that self-belief, believe that if you're not putting yourself up you're not going to be in a position to help somebody else so this is your time to actually say to yourself it's never too late what can i do to make sure that i'm in the best physical and mental health position that i can be to go off and realize this dream and honestly one will feed the other because if you feel that you're in the right place mentally and physically um then What you're capable of will absolutely blow your socks off. It will be far more than you believe it is now. Yeah,

SPEAKER_00: 26:11

I love that because it's embodied in your phrase for refinement, UK, women who want to rock. but not in a chair. But not in a chair, absolutely. And also, I mean, I'm all about mindset and I know it's something you're passionate about as well. And you did refer to, I'm not sure if I read it or it was a conversation, but the mature entrepreneur mindset about developing the positive attitudes about who we are, like you said, our values, what motivates us, but that appetite for risk and unleashing the childlike curiosity to... Not just tiptoe out of that comfort zone, but shimmy out of it. Shimmy out of it and shine.

SPEAKER_01: 26:54

Absolutely. I've got a couple of nicknames that I seem to have gathered along the way. And the first one is that some people within my network and my contacts call me a pint-sized powerhouse. I'm 4'11", by the way. It's great sitting down because I'm not the same height as everybody else, but I am 4'11". And so people call me a pint-sized powerhouse. But my favorite is a friend of mine. her husband used this phrase about her but i've stolen it and it's i'm four foot eleven with a six foot gob um and i just love that because i think to myself people look at me and they've done this in fairness all of my life although it has got worse as i've got older they look at me and they use all of those stereotypical interpreters so i'm four foot eleven i'm overweight i'm blonde um i'm a woman a female business owner and i speak like an extra from Peaky Blinders. And so if you look at all of those things, it's very easy to underestimate me. So if you put me in a room of 100 people, Very, very few of them would have me down as a successful entrepreneur, a businesswoman, an author, a published author. They just wouldn't, you know, I know that I work with companies whose fortunes are changed by the business strategies that I write. And I know how to kill a man with a blunt teaspoon. So what I'm capable of isn't necessarily what you see. Well, I'm not unusual. I think that of every woman that I see over 55, what you see is not what's inside, is not what you get, is not the potential. And we have to overcome those ridiculous stereotypes because they're no longer fit for purpose. Women are they don't age. We don't age in the same way. When I was little, a 60 year old woman was an old woman. You know, I look around at my role models and you've got Cher and Jane Fonda in those. And you just think, we don't age like we used to. And we shouldn't live our lives like we used to. There is huge mileage in using the wisdom that we've gathered and the skills that we have to go on and leave a legacy. And that's what retirement's about. It's about helping women realise what that legacy is and how do they go about leaving that

SPEAKER_00: 29:24

legacy. I suppose as well, it's turning that phrase, acting your age, into, yes, retirement. We are going to not just act our age. We're going to take action because of our age, because we can. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 29:40

Yeah. And I absolutely agree with that. And I would say one thing that people talk to me about, you know, very often people will say to me, aren't you thinking of retiring? No. Why should I? I'm 64 now. Why should I? But for me, my life mantra has always been retirement. people don't grow old they get old when they stop growing and part of my I suppose my belief in life is never stop learning, always be curious, always ask questions, always think about what you don't know, what you'd like to know, and then go out and find it out. That level of curiosity and the lifelong learning that I've always had from the time I was a little kid... has brought me to the place where I am now. And I am absolutely loving life. It is the fullest, the richest it's ever been. But that's because I allow myself to think about the possibilities and I find stuff out. And while I'm learning, I'm always growing. That's the most

SPEAKER_00: 30:49

important thing. No, I'm completely with you on that because the opposite of that is playing it safe, settling, stagnating. Yeah. And when you start stagnating, that's when you almost start giving up. That's when the, oh, meh, what's the point? But when you do, and it doesn't have to be massive steps, but when you do shake things up a bit, when you do do things a bit differently, which is what Midlife Unlimited is all about, when you do rip up the rule book, rip off that mask, stop doing what you're meant to be doing, stop behaving and start pushing for what you want. I think there's so many, like you said, there's so many opportunities out there. There really is. Well, I'm so looking forward to seeing how Refinement UK develops, well, it's not developed, skyrockets this year. Because you say this is a global thing. Yes, it is. It's big. And I know that a lot of the women listening are going to want to be part of it. So I'm so excited to see us all coming together with more power together.

SPEAKER_01: 31:58

Absolutely. And Kate, what I would say is that whilst we are a movement that is focused on women who want to rock but not in a chair, we are... absolutely an equitable organization so if men who support that message want to join we would love to have them on board in fact we've got some male members um who uh absolutely are supportive of what we're trying to do if we've got women who are as young as 30 who have joined and when you talk to them they say do you know what i'm not 55 yet but one one day i will be and i don't want to get to that stage and have to navigate the ridiculous stereotypes that you're talking about at the moment. So for anybody who's got daughters or granddaughters, we don't want them to have to navigate the ridiculous barriers that we've had to. And we can only change that if we get people talking about it. And this is becoming a really active space where lots of people are recognizing the value that women over 55 still have to offer massive value in every walk of life. And we need to galvanize that and we

SPEAKER_00: 33:10

need to be heard. No, absolutely. And as you say, by saying a, oh, no, men not welcome, you're almost self-perpetuating the very thing. Of course you are. Yeah. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01: 33:23

Of course you are.

SPEAKER_00: 33:24

Yeah. No, I think there is the more information, the more contacts. It's just about the jungle drums and spreading the word. But I think the main takeaway I've had from our chat today, which I love because I love you, I'm biased, is that we are wise women. And we need to own and celebrate that. Yeah, we absolutely do. And we don't do it enough. No,

SPEAKER_01: 33:50

and I think it's part of our DNA that we just get on and do it. I mean, one of the things that I've always believed in, if you want a job doing, give it a busy woman because she'll find a way. And if she can't manage it, she'll find somebody else who does. We have a huge amount of... We're incredibly tenacious. We're incredibly agile in terms of the way that we solve problems is really creative. Most of us think outside the box. We'll find a way. And if there's a barrier put in the way, well, we'll navigate that barrier. But it won't stop us doing what we're doing. Those are the traits that we need to be galvanizing, because if we galvanize those, we can really influence the policymakers, commercial companies. companies that are producing products for us. And, you know, I can't talk about all of those, but my goodness me, refinement has got some massive plans in the future. And it's just about watch this space, because if any organisation can change the lived experience of women after 55 who want to start a business, it's going to be us.

SPEAKER_00: 35:01

There's going to be a lot to celebrate, I think. There really is. And I'm so excited. I'm so excited. Watch this space. Now, talking of celebrating, another of the Kate fabulous segues coming up. It's that time of the episode where we celebrate you, Wendy. And I've got my three questions that I ask each of my fabulous female guests. Now, you've alluded to the answer to one of them, but I'll spin it background. You might have changed your mind in the last couple of minutes. The first question is, what is your midlife anthem the piece of music it doesn't have to be a song but when you hear it it refires you up oh that's dead

SPEAKER_01: 35:43

easy sisters are doing it for themselves

SPEAKER_00: 35:47

oh yeah

SPEAKER_01: 35:48

And I've got a feeling that it's becoming the refinement anthem too. So we played this as the, when we closed the conference on the 29th of October, we played this and just seeing a room of women on their feet in party mood, singing at the top of their voices, waving their scarves, pulling party poppers and having a whale of a time was just, it's an image that will live with me forever. It was fabulous. So, yeah, that's definitely my anthem.

SPEAKER_00: 36:21

Just captures the energy of it as well, doesn't it? And the excitement. So your midlife mantra you mentioned just now. Remind us the midlife mantra that epitomizes you, sums up everything Wendy's about.

SPEAKER_01: 36:40

I think it is be a lifelong learner. Without a doubt, because you we as I say, we don't grow old, we grow, we get old when we stop growing. And that curiosity that we have and the need to and the desire and the joy of learning something new every day is just what keeps our minds active and it keeps us in the game. And and so for me, it's really, really important that we all make a conscious effort to learn something new every

SPEAKER_00: 37:12

day. It is so important because it just stimulates the brain. It stimulates your body. It just makes you feel good. It keeps you excited. I keep using the word excited.

SPEAKER_01: 37:22

And it means that you're one of the first people to be picked for a pub quiz team as well. Because if you've got a brain like mine, you hang on to the oddest information and you never know when that's going to come in useful.

SPEAKER_00: 37:35

I do. I'm like a sponge. I absorb all sorts of things. I surprise myself sometimes. I know, I know. So on to the third and final question, and I'm intrigued about this one. What is, because you might have already read it, I haven't read it yet, or will be the title of your autobiography? I

SPEAKER_01: 37:58

would say The Life of a Pint-Sized Powerhouse. I have a genuine love of life. And for me, that phrase that people use about me is just it's taken me a while to get my head around it. But I'm absolutely proud to own that title that other people have given me. And it is, you know, if you want something in life, nobody's going to give it you. You have to go out and make it. happen and we can all sit on the sidelines and critique that's that's dead easy um but actually the thing that separates people out is the ones who are willing to do something about that and i'm definitely action orientated so yeah i will own and wear that title with pride um i don't mind at all being a pint-sized powerhouse

SPEAKER_00: 38:51

Well, that's what I'm an action taker to. So I think that's why I was drawn to you when we first met. And that's why I continue to be a huge fan of everything you do. And I think you're going to have some more fans amongst our listeners today. So how can they get in contact with you? I'm going to be putting all the live links in the show notes. But if you could just give an overview of where you are and how to reach Wendy.

SPEAKER_01: 39:16

So for me, I've got a couple of websites. The web links will be there. Refinement UK, obviously, the website is where at the moment it's a work in progress. So it's always worth checking in because we're always updating it because of the pace of change that we're going through. So you can contact me through that. I do a lot. of my connecting on linkedin so please if you want to reach out after listening to this and you want to find out more about what i'm what i'm doing or or how to get involved and please reach out on on linkedin and connect with me and i'm more than happy to to have a conversation with people um and look at how they can get involved in uh in what we're trying to do with refinement uk And I would also say, Kate, we haven't known each other for that long, really. Probably only about 18 months, I would think. But honestly, I think we gravitated towards each other because we both have this love of life. And the worst thing you can do to people like you and I is to convince us that actually we can't do something because if somebody tells us we can't do it we just go out and prove them wrong so i would say the same about you right back at you what you're doing with this podcast is absolutely needed um and i was i was honored to to be asked to come and guest as one of the the first um episodes because i just think we need to be doing it for ourselves and i I think we're sisters in this fight. So thank you so much for inviting me to come along and participate.

SPEAKER_00: 40:58

Oh, you're going to make me cry tears of happiness. Thank you. That means so much. That means so much. And honestly, I am thrilled to have you part of it because you've been in right from the start. So thank you for being part of Midlife Unlimited. And anyone else that would like to be more involved, we'd love to have you. You can drop me an email at kate at secondspringlifecoaching.com or you can come and join the Midlife Unlimited podcast Facebook group. Wendy's in there too. Links are in the show notes or connect with me on LinkedIn as well. Kate Porter, Second Spring. So Wendy, thank you so much. I'm feeling all emotional now in a good way. It's been wonderful having you as my guest today. And thank you for listening to Midlife Unlimited. If you've enjoyed today, Thank you again, Wendy. Here's to being fabulous and flourishing together and to living midlife unlimited. Bye.