Girls Know Nothing - S2 Ep32: Rebecca Ajulu-Bushell | Leonardo Dicaprio, Olympics & Becoming Arthurs

Episode Date: September 20, 2023

GKN Social Channels:  Https://linktr.ee/girlsknownothing  Instagram: @girlsknownothingpod  Tiktok: @girlsknownothingpod TikTok: @girlsknownothing

Hi, I'm Richard Karn, and you may have seen me on TV talking about the world's number one expandable garden hose. Well, the brand new Pocket Hose Copperhead with Pocket Pivot is here, and it's a total game changer. Old-fashioned hoses get kinks and creases at the spigot, but the Copperhead's Pocket Pivot swivels 360 degrees for full water flow and freedom to water with ease all around your home. When you're all done, this rust-proof anti-burst hose shrinks back down to pocket size for effortless handling and tidy storage. Plus, your super light and ultra-durable pocket hose Copperhead is backed with a 10-year warranty. What could be better than that? I'll tell you what, an exciting exclusive offer just for you. For a limited time, you can get a free pocket pivot and their 10-patter pattern sprayer with the purchase of any size copperhead hose.

Just text water to 64,000. That's water to 64,000 for your two free gifts with purchase. W-A-T-E-R to 64,000. By texting 64,000, you agree to receive recurring automated marketing messages from Pocket Hose. Message and data rates may apply. No purchase required. Terms apply. Available at pockethose.com slash terms. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites. With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates,

so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs. Don't wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com slash kids and family. Just go to indeed.com slash kids and family right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply.

Hiring Indeed is all you need. I keep making jokes I'm too old for Leonardo DiCaprio. You are. And that's fine. That's true. That's a fact. My life is basically over now. It's over now.

You'll never date Leonardo DiCaprio. To be fair, I think I might be okay with that i think you're probably right there are rumors that he has sex with headphones on what yeah confirmed that's actually true i know that on very good authority with noise cancelling headphones on welcome back to another episode of girls know nothing our next guest is an ex-elite athlete who swam for great britain and kenya over a 10-year career she is a former british champion a world number one and the first black woman to ever swim for great britain her 2019 documentary breakfast in kasumu which she directed produced, premiered at renowned film festival

IDFA. Rebecca has also been honoured in Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2023 in the social impact category. Not only this, she is also the CEO of the 10,000 Interns Foundation, a non-profit that champions underrepresented groups by creating an internship opportunity prior to this she founded and ran nkg a creative strategy and media agency focused on social change projects rebecca also studied fine art at the university of oxford at brazenose college so welcome to the studio rebecca what ick that's a new ick on my list like headphones during sex anyway um tell us about how you became a swimmer okay we're in all right um so I grew up being terrified of water okay which I think is really common in like black communities and I mean that definitely wasn't my experience so I'm mixed race my mom's white my dad was black

and when we moved out to Africa we lived in Uganda for a while on the shore of Lake Victoria which is where my tribal family is from um and I used to get in the pool with like a rubber ring and like armbands and like I used to be like make my mom hold me and I don't know one day it just clicked and all the plastic floaty stuff came off and then that was it it just felt like home it's like easier than walking and i loved it it literally just like that just one day yeah i was gonna say fear of water is not irrational no it's not and i feel like i'm still like really terrified of the ocean um yeah you know I have like a lot of reverence for just open water and I think it's immense and scary and I

don't know like existential but it is um you know you have to have a lot of knowledge to have like good water safety so I think yeah it's not irrational at all but then so going from rubber dinghies to then swimming like as a professional athlete that's that's quite a big jump yeah it wasn't a short journey yeah I can imagine like so how did that journey like start or come about so we moved to Kenya um which is where I grew up and kind of where I'm from. I'm half Kenyan, half British. And I did my first race when I was about six years old. It was like, it was very cute. And I think I swam like the 25 meters front crawl.

And I was just so fast, like a little eel. And I remember going home that day and I like drew my mom this little picture of like a girl in a swimming costume with a medal around her neck and I was like this is me when I win the Olympics um and then that was just that was it and then I just started training and I started training more and we moved to South Africa and I trained even more and training is like the kind of constant theme of the whole thing. And then when I turned 12, 13, my parents were thinking of moving back to Kenya. And there aren't really great facilities there, you know,

no indoor pools, no kind of, you know, infrastructure around big kind of coaching faculties or whatever and then I came to UK went to boarding school here um and swam and swam and swam because you became the first black woman to swim for Great Britain so you literally manifested by that drawing right if you believe in that kind of thing I certainly don't but if I did if I did then yeah that's what I did so um what challenges do you did you face in the world of professional swimming and like how did you overcome that being the first black woman I think it was it was weird having like a mixed heritage and kind of facing that level of scrutiny and also getting that title

really young so I was 16 when I became British champion um 15 when I got my first kind of world number one ranking and then my kind of senior British debut was like later that summer so I was super super young um and I think I'd like always understood myself as being mixed race I grew up in this really kind of like white expat world in Kenya um I didn't have like a really strong connection to my black identity I didn't really like understand myself through blackness yeah um especially like going to boarding school in Devon like it was such a white area you know like it was just it was and also all those tropes around like black people don't swim and I was always the only black girl on poolside um and so you know that title really felt like quite

affronting it was like quite a lot of scrutiny um you know I was like 16 my body was developing like there was a lot of I don't like press and media attention just around what I was like 16, my body was developing. Like there was a lot of, I don't know, like press and media attention just around what I looked like as opposed to how good I was at what I did. That's quite a big thing to deal with at the age of 16. So I think at 15, 16, I was in a park playing with the football, but definitely not at a professional level with all that media attention on you. Was that really tough to deal with? Yeah, it was. It was.

And I think for a long time, I didn't really talk about how hard it was. But yeah, it was incredibly hard. I mean, I think when you're competing at that level, like the nerves and the pressure, that's all there already. And to be really good at what you do especially when it's an individual sport like swimming like you have to really like block out the noise and you kind of get up behind the block and you just have to kind of forget that everything else exists and when there was so much noise around my race and um you know whether I was going to succeed and whether I was going to prove people

wrong and whether I could swim against these narratives that were so entrenched in, you know, the world of sport, it became like harder and harder to block that out, you know, and I think it really started to affect my performance. Do you think that your achievements contributed to an increase in diversity and inclusion in the world of swimming. Hi, I'm Richard Karn, and you may have seen me on TV talking about the world's number one expandable garden hose. Well, the brand new Pocket Hose Copperhead with Pocket Pivot is here, and it's a total game changer.

Old-fashioned hoses get kinks and creases at the spigot, but the Copperhead's Pocket Pivot swivels 360 degrees for full water flow and freedom to water with ease all around your home. When you're all done, this rust-proof anti-burst hose shrinks back down to pocket size for effortless handling and tidy storage. Plus, your super light and ultra-durable pocket hose Copperhead is backed with a 10-year warranty. What could be better than that? I'll tell you what, an exciting exclusive offer just for you. For a limited time, you can get a free pocketivot and their 10-pattern sprayer with the purchase of any size Copperhead hose. Just text WATER to 64000.

That's WATER to 64000 for your two free gifts with purchase. W-A-T-E-R to 64000. By texting 64000, you agree to receive recurring automated marketing messages from Pocket Hose. Message and data rates may apply. No purchase required. Terms apply. Available at pockethost.com slash terms. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed.

Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites. With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates. So you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs. Don't wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash P-O-D-K-A-T-Z 13. Just go to Indeed.com slash P-O-D-K-A-T-Z 13 right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast.

Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. That's an interesting question. I mean, it took 10 years after I quit until there was a black woman at the Olympics for Great Britain. And that was Alice Dering in 2021. Wow. And I retired from professional sport in 2011. So, I mean, how much has it changed as a kind of institution like not that much I don't think um and when I first quit I think that you know a lot of people wanted me to speak about

you know what it was like or what what it meant for me and I think I felt like I had to have all the answers you know and people would ask me like why don't black people swim and I was like or what it meant for me. And I think I felt like I had to have all the answers, you know, and people would ask me, like, why don't black people swim? And I was like, I don't f***ing know. You know, I'm like, I'm 17. I don't, you know, I don't even know myself right now. And I was still trying to figure out, like, what it all meant. And then, I don't know, a couple of years ago, I guess,

I realized that just like the value of sharing my experience was probably enough, right? And, you know, I can't represent for everybody, but I can do what I can. It's a lot to take on. It's quite a grown-up thing to take on at the age of 17. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't feel particularly grown up.

I still don't feel very grown up. Sorry, I needed one. I definitely didn't then. But I was like, when I was doing research for you on, for this episode, you've literally done so much. So like after you stopped professionally swimming and that kind of moved on from being an elite athlete, you went into being a filmmaker and a writer. So talk me through that transition and how you decided that was the path you wanted to go down um I'm trying to think about where to start so when I quit something and I think much like you I'm like really voracious and kind of intense

and I'm always like what's the next thing like what's the next hurdle what's the next moment um and so I kind of I guess I dusted off my school books and worked really hard in my last year of school and I went to Oxford and I thought that I was going to study politics and I ended up studying fine art um and I specialized in film and I loved film I was really interested in making and you know then I realized my parents weren't really rich enough for me to become an artist so that that went in the bin um but it took me a long time to come back to kind of creating and then eventually I did I kind of I made this film and I kind of I guess understood that through writing and I really wanted to I don't want to be involved in storytelling I think I probably wanted ownership over my own voice after feeling like I didn't really have that during swimming is that how it

shaped your perspective on like diversity and representation like by wanting to put it through a different form yeah that's a really interesting way of putting it I think I've never necessarily thought about it like that but I really liked being behind the camera for once um and um I liked having that complete control over like how the story was going to be told and what people were going to feel um when they when they heard it when they experienced it and I think that that level of control is something I've probably sought a lot after my swimming career where it felt like you know I was in control of nothing I can imagine as well moving on from like the politics of being a professional athlete to then moving I can imagine

as well politics in Oxford is probably not as fun as doing fine art right it was a really it was an interesting degree I mean art school is kind of mad obviously it's just like loads of um you know self-conscious like narcissists just like all in one place um but you know again I was like the only black person in my year and you know Oxford has its own issues with diversity and representation as all kind of elite institutions do as a lot of our you know British institutions do and so you know again it wasn't like a super comfortable space for me at times. It was, you know, it still felt like a kind of struggle to find my place in it.

Your first documentary, Breakfast in Kisumu, and it did receive a lot of recognition. What was your inspiration behind making that documentary so um I guess this kind of like links into what we were talking about earlier right like finding some sense of your identity and your heritage and for me that was after my father passed away and he was a freedom fighter academic he was very involved in um the resistance against the kind of apartheid regime in South Africa. And so when he died and we buried him in Kenya, it was the first time I'd kind of gone back as an adult. And it was this kind of real awakening and I guess just reckoning with, you know, where I'd come and and how it felt to be back there especially

you know being like a light-skinned black woman and that that was a difficult narrative to kind of hold in tension with having grown up in the UK but having all of this family that I hadn't spent a huge amount of time with um and weirdly just before he died I sat with him over breakfast and I recorded this conversation and I asked him about his life when he was my age and meeting my mother and being in prison and being out of prison and he didn't know that I was recording him and then I know after he died I found the voice notes and all the recordings and I started putting this film together there must have been like a part of you that was like I might I have to like record this

conversation it was really serendipitous like I don't know why I did it I also like don't really do things like that so it's a very strange it was a very strange thing that I decided to do um but basically I kind of traced his footsteps and we went to all the places that he talks about um he was exiled from Kenya and went to university in Bulgaria and so like we filmed in Sofia it was crazy it was nuts yeah I think that I actually do wish I did that with my granddad because he had like quite a wild lived experience as well but I think that there's a general consensus with every mixed race person I know that you it's great because you grew up in so many different cultures and you have such a good understanding of so many different things but like for me I never felt

white enough to be Polish right I felt dark enough to be Asian so and then in each community it's a little bit like what really are you, you're born very much in between, right? And you kind of end up as this translator between two worlds, but you're not fully a part of either one of them. Sometimes when I go back to the village in Kenya, the kids will like point to me, and they're like, Mzungu, Mzungu, which means like white person, you know?

And I'm like, oh my God, who? Like, what? Oh my God, me. You know, and it's like the color of my skin changes the way I'm like oh my god who like what oh my god me you know and it is yeah it's like the color of my skin changes the way I'm identified in so many different places like in the UK and black when I go to Kenya I'm like almost white when I'm in South Africa I'm like cape colored and it's like a really dislocating experience I think it's a weird thing that I think every mixed race person will feel because like I get that if I walk it's a weird thing that I think every mixed race person will feel

because like I get that if I walk into like a Polish supermarket they're like what's this girl doing here but then if my cousin my baby cousin used to cry at the sight of me because I was so white wow and like so I think I always felt like oh where do I fit fit in and then I guess that's probably like what inspired you to to go on and to tell like stories and shine light on these yeah i think that especially kind of first and second immigration kids mixed race kids like us you know like you don't necessarily have access to that world right like now that my dad's gone i have to take myself home when I go back to the village and that's like a weird thing because it's not somewhere I grew up it's not something that

the way I look you know easily kind of identifies me as being from and so you do have to kind of take your own ownership of it and shape it in a way that makes sense to you. There's no like blueprint. Yeah. Do you feel like you've grown as a person by forcing yourself out of these comfort zones and taking yourself home and trying to learn a bit more about where you've come from? You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites. With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates, so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs.

Don't wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com slash P-O-D-K-A-T-Z 13. Just go to indeed.com slash P-O-D-K-A-T-Z 13 right now and support our show by saying you heard about indeed on this podcast terms and conditions apply hiring indeed is all you need i'm from your family yeah definitely definitely i mean the last time i did it i kind of drove by myself which felt i mean it's not a big deal but it kind of felt insane it was this like okay this is kind of my life now I'm going to be making this journey myself I'm going to be making it with my kids

hopefully one day and knowing that I can do that I think is quite powerful I mean even if it doesn't sound like a big thing it feels like a big thing to you yeah and I think that's what's important important right absolutely but um all of your work seems to really focus on a lot of social impact like things and could you elaborate a bit more on the mission behind the 10 000 interns foundation yes i can i talk about this all the time um so we're a charity that champions underrepresented talent um and what that means is that we create programs for young students and graduates um from underrepresented communities to gain access to opportunities that they are oftentimes overlooked for um or that oftentimes aren't really accessible to them so we have a program for black students and graduates, and we have a program for disabled students and graduates as well.

And we've been three years in the making. We've created 5,000 paid internships so far. Oh, wow. So we're already halfway there. And we've had 25,000 young people come through our programs and receive training and development opportunities. It's a really insane job in that it's both amazing and that it's just so full on. Are the internships in a specific thing or are they like depending on what the person wants to do?

Yeah, so we work with over 700 companies all across the uk and we represent maybe like 30 sectors um so each intern that applies gets kind of three choices of things that they might want to do so marketing advertising and i don't know creative and culture um we partner with the royal academy with nhs nike bbc goldman sachs nationwide all the big ones everybody everybody that you can think of um and yeah it's very very as you can imagine like meaningful and kind of humbling work so when you get to the 10 000 mark what happens what are you gonna do like what happens next like well then we've solved all the problems of the world and it's over so um no then you know then kind of more impact i'm thinking about breadth and depth of impact impact at scale you know what does it

mean to kind of not be so london-ric how can we create even more diverse opportunities for people how do we nurture our alumni community are there other underrepresented communities that we can help you know I think yes we're only solving a very specific problem by creating internship opportunities but oftentimes it's the first step for somebody in kind of changing the trajectory of their kind of career and broadening their horizons and so I think that I mean everyone kind of remembers their first internship did you ever intern anywhere I actually I don't think I ever interned anywhere I literally went straight from sixth form straight into government wow so I went straight into my first full-time job at 18 but I

remember that's so hardcore it it that's where the menopause story starts coming but like it was I think it was it was quite scary because I didn't feel like I had a safety you know when it's when you're an intern people always I feel like they're a little bit more lenient towards you whereas I think yeah you can fail forward you can kind of just you know people don't expect you to know what you're doing which is like the best learning opportunity yeah I didn't get that but then it's nice as well when you picked up on the London centric stuff because you know neither of us grew up in London and I felt like being from a diverse background is hot it has its own challenges anywhere in the UK but I think when you're more London centric it's it's

just generally more a diverse city anyway whereas I came from South Oxfordshire and I probably stuck out like a sore thumb in many ways absolutely and then all of the opportunities you tend to find or like ways to help you get into like certain opportunities are all London based yeah and then other people especially up north tend to get forgotten about yeah really really left behind I mean I think that's part of like a broader agenda at the moment. But it's something that, yeah, we've got to take very seriously. I mean, my parents live in Gloucestershire, and it's like kind of growing up there without the level of representation that we have here in London right and I think if you can see it then to some extent you believe that you can be it a little bit more yeah and I think that that you know that needs to kind of be extended outside of you know where we are right now in metropolitan you know what I hear that phrase from so many guests that sit on that sofa and they're like you can only be what you can see

and it comes from like you know so many people feeling that they have to walk so other people can run after them um and you were talking about how your parents live in Gloucester and how all these places you've lived how do you feel like it shaped your your own identity I think about this a lot I think when I was younger and I was growing up I really wanted that kind of what other children had they you know they grew up on one street and they had all these friends they went to the same school their whole life and there was this sense of kind of continuity and yeah you know really physical community that came from that. I moved around all the time. I moved schools like every two or three years.

I moved countries almost as much as that. And so I guess now that I'm older, I think it's given me this amazing sense of cultural literacy and this ability to kind of, you know, imagine the world outside of where we are right now or what I can see around me. And I don't know. I mean, I think what feels important to me now is that every interaction

and every conversation, every interaction that I have with people is kind of inherently political and important and you know I don't really have a strong sense of kind of nationalism or identity that's rooted in any one place it kind of feels like it comes from everywhere I think that's one thing that I mean I've never lived abroad but like having traveled to like home for long stints of time I felt like that where is home for you so my mum's Indonesian so like I used to spend summer and all of Christmas like it was basically like almost two months in a whole year there oh my god wow um so it was a lot but like I

think it made me it really opened my eyes and I think that made me realize how lucky we are sometimes in the UK to have access to the things we have access to and being able to understand how different people live and I think it makes me makes you less ignorant as a person I think when you meet somebody that's not like you yeah I think that's so right I think that's so right it's really good to be out of like your echo chamber and to not kind of think that the whole world is created in the same way or that people are having the same kind of experiences but I also did have what you said that you wanted when you were younger about growing up on the same street and having the same friends and things and I actually think now maybe it's just because you

know when you're always sitting the grass is always green on the other side because sometimes I think oh maybe I would have liked to move to a different country when I was younger and like take those opportunities because you have a weird, like when you outgrow your friends, if you've had the same friends for the whole time you've been a child

all the way to adulthood, you feel like you have to stay with them. Yeah. But you don't. I see that so much, right? People have kind of pulled their, you know, high school or like uni have kind of pulled their, you know, high school or like uni friends kind of into their life.

And, you know, I mean, some people are really lucky and those are the people that they're kind of bonded to. But I think for a lot of people, they're in London, which is inherently, you know, kind of a lonely place anyway. And they don't feel that connected to this group of people that they've kind of just inherited and like had for a really long time um and I think if you move around a lot you just you end up having this more kind of diverse and eclectic group of people that are from different places and different parts of your life and you can be different parts of yourself with each of

them yeah that's why sometimes friendship groups don't mix yes don't always mix your friendship group um one thing I was talking to you about earlier was congratulations on being Forbes 30 under 30 even if you don't get any shiny there's no award no sparkly prizes there's no award I feel like I'm that type of person I would make myself one is that really vain just to like make myself a trophy for me like the only person it's like this is my Forbes 30 under 30 award yeah no we don't we don't get anything apart from obviously a very warm feeling and you're hot no I'm kidding um did you get a warm feeling did I get a warm feeling I'm thinking about that um I don't know I thinkours lists are kind of complicated.

Like we were talking about earlier, I think it's hard to measure your life in these really like discrete chapters and what happens after 30, right? Like there's no Forbes 40 under 40. Because it's like I was saying to you, I was like, oh my God, but I turned 30 in two years. What if I didn't get Forbes 30 out of 30? Panic. Life is over.

I think it actually might be. It's certainly not over. No, I, you know, I think the social impact category is really interesting and important. We've got to build a future that is different to the present that we currently experience and for so many reasons.

And so I think to honor people who are doing things to change the kind of social fabric of our country, the world, you know, the way that the climate interacts with everything else that's going on, you know, that feels really important. And so, yeah, to be in any category, I think that is definitely the one that feels most yeah salient to me. Does it did it give you any kind of leverage to like make change or was it just one of those things you kind of collected on the way around it makes it sound life is like a monopoly board so yeah gotta catch them all um did it give me any leverage you know I think after after I quit swimming and I'd kind of been really visible for quite a long time I really shied away from that and I didn't really want to have like a hyper visible job or like a hyper visible personal brand um and then I took the job at 10,000 interns as CEO and that kind of changed that

and I had to lean into it a little bit. And so definitely having platforms and awards and being honored in Forbes 30 under 30, it only serves to kind of strengthen the power that I have to impact change. and so that's the way I have to use it I guess as well if you if there's other like when you were saying that how people make comments about black people don't swim and then if you were a black swimmer and you see somebody who's done it the same way as if you'd seen a black person make 30 under 30 kind of even if

you don't actually necessarily do those things yourself it can say like if someone else can do it I can do it yeah absolutely I mean I think um you know I was really lucky that my parents kind of raised me to believe that I could do anything that I wanted to and be anything that I wanted to be um and I think that probably freed me from a lot of the kind of gender and racial politics of being black and being a woman but it didn't stop me from having to face it anyway and so yeah there's a part of me that when I get recognized for things like that I'm like yeah yeah you should feel like fuck you yeah even if you like This conversation is your sparkly prize.

I'm sorry it's not as glamorous as getting a nice trophy. But there are so many things I wanted to talk to you about. But I think one thing that I really wanted to ask you about was your book. These Black Bones was your debut as an author. Can you tell me about your book and what it is about, essentially? Yes. So it comes out next year in June 2024 um but I think pre-orders will be ahead of that so look out for it um these heavy black bones is about coming of age and it's about race and racism. And it's about my journey through elite sport and why I so badly wanted to be

the best and also why I kind of walked away from it. It's, I guess a bit of like an offering of freedom to myself. I think I spent a lot of time after I quit, you know, just not being able to kind of interrogate it and not knowing what it all meant and so writing about it I think helped me just to kind of set some of that stuff free and also I guess to acknowledge other people who would also experience similar things I think because one criticism I've always got is when you put

something that's quite personal out online everyone's like well why are you sharing that if it's personal and I think it's about taking about your own power yeah about allowing what you want to share with people be shared and then being able to keep certain bits for yourself and it's a really powerful way to think and move for yourself I think that's if people aren't online or don't have a public facing role they don't necessarily understand that it's hard to know like what to give away right and what not to and where's that line and when I was writing the book I was really I didn't think about anyone reading it because I wanted to be as kind of truthful and as self-facing and as honest as possible. Yeah.

I was speaking to my agent at my editor the other day and they were like, okay, so, you know, all these people are going to read this book and like, they're going to know that like, this is about them. And I was like, oh my God. Oh God, yeah. I didn't even consider that when it came. Yeah. So it's, I mean, so there's all of that. And then there's all this stuff about me and like, you know, what my parents are going to read and what they're going to think. I mean, so there's all of that. And then there's all the stuff about me and like, you know, what my parents are going to read and what they're going to think. I mean, it's not like a scandalous tell-all, but it is my life, right? And it is my experience and it's my story.

And there is something really fucking terrifying about that. But I think like you said, there's something really powerful about that as well. There's something really important about you know just releasing the things that have happened to you that have been hard and scary and terrifying and amazing and you know releasing them into the world and owning them in a different way not worried about anyone popping up like prince harry's did after he released his memoirs i'm hoping no one i'm hoping no one sees me yet.

So as someone who's achieved so much already, what are your aspirations for your future, both personally and professionally? I spend a lot of time thinking about how I can go to the gym. And if there's time for me to do that it sounds small but taking time for yourself is really important well I never actually get to the gym so I'm still working on that spend a lot of time thinking about why I don't have enough time to get my nails done um time is like the general theme I would love to have more time for myself and I think that that

probably involves you know really thinking about where I want to put my energy and being really focused about okay where does work end and where does Rebecca start and you know I think I hear all the time especially young female founders and like you were saying earlier that kind of hustle culture in London and people are always talking about like you know it's such hard work and like I'm so busy and I think the fact that what I do and what I've done is hard is like the least interesting thing about it and I just can't like stress enough how desperately I don't want to talk about how I'm so busy or and I just can't like stress enough how desperately I don't want to talk about how I'm so busy or and I just hate hearing people talk about that like yeah it's hard of course it is of course it's hard sometimes being busy isn't being productive though completely like you could

be running around that hamster wheel for ages but actually never get anywhere yeah and I hear it from my family you know and it really makes me sad when they're like, oh, we know you're so busy, you know, and I'm like, I don't want you to think that I'm too busy to see you or to spend time with you or that this is more important than the other things that I have to work on in my life. Right. Like it's all work, relationships are work and they're as valuable and as equally important as the work that I do you know day to day yeah and especially when your job is pouring into so many other people's cups you can't do it if your cup's empty yourself oh completely completely and I think yeah anyone who like yourself is kind of running around spinning a thousand different plates right like it's it's exhausting it is but but you can't let that suck you under and I think that can't be the focus so it's how do you kind of create a balance that makes sense for you um that's

something I'm still learning like every single day I don't think it exists I think that you just have to integrate well and yeah figure it out as you go that's good because that's pretty much the approach I take to all of my life yeah I think just wing it work-life balance is such a fallacy and that isn't to say that you should be running a thousand miles an hour all the time but you know I think one of my friends said to me the other day I like to think of life in terms of chapters um and maybe this is a chapter of hard work and the next one's a chapter of rest. On a yacht in the Bahamas. Amen. With painted nails.

And Leonardo DiCaprio. Minus the headphones. Please leave them at home. I'm going to be thinking about that in my sleep now. Oh God, I'm so sorry for you. I always ask my guests a similar final question so what piece of advice would you offer to your younger self based

on your life and career journey so far? Oh god um just chill out just chill out um I think I really when I was younger

felt so often like I had to prove people wrong um and I've got to this point in my career now where you know I've done all of these things and there's a kind of level of respect I think that comes with that um and I wish that you know I I knew that the only person I kind of had to prove anything to with myself yeah no that's a really good piece of advice I think that a lot of people I can relate to that when you're constantly in like trying to prove someone wrong but then you're actually what satisfaction do you get from that completely if you're not happy within yourself yeah and happiness I think that's a lifelong journey but I think being present and kind of you know not thinking too much about what other people think is a good start oh no that's a really good piece of advice um thank you do you know you speak you're such a calm

talker and I feel like it's made me change my tone of how I talk I'm such a loud person and I admit I didn't realize how loud I was until we started talking I was oh my god if am I really this bad now I get what my teachers are talking about just chatting yeah I don't actually know where the volume dial is in my brain it's something that's something I'm gonna have to work on for the rest of my life I think you know I think I try I don't know if my team would say that I'm very scary but I think not shouting there's quite a lot of like power and like when I tell people off and I'm just speaking in a very kind of even keel then I go oh my god I think that's worse oh I think it's way worse my dad used to do it I think it's way worse it's like when it's like I'm not angry I'm just disappointed

it really hits you a lot harder than like I'd rather you just hate me just shout just scream yeah just scream but I'm always just shouting but I don't mean to be we'll work on your we'll work on your podcast volume I'll find sorry Luke can change my volume just turn her down you're a seasoned professional I think you've got it on log oh thank you but no thank you so much for coming and I can't wait to read your book when it comes out next year thank you for having me and please I will send you a copy