Life Uncut - Work-Life Happiness and Figuring Out Your Identity When You're Adopted - Uncut with Sarah Davidson

Episode Date: February 27, 2024

Hey Lifers,This episode was such a joy. Sarah Davidson is known as a 'funtrepreneur" (fun entrepreneur) for giving up her very successful career path in law to start her own business and find what brings her joy. Sarah speaks with incredible insight into the way that we view success and how that aligns (or doesn't) with happiness. Something a lot of us question is whether we could be feeling a bigger sense of purpose if we were doing something else, and also when to take that lunge and when not to; a cost-benefit analysis of your work-life happiness.  Another really interesting part of Sarah's story is that she was adopted at 5 months old from an orphanage in Korea. Sarah has found a different type of curiosity around her identity now that she is pregnant and will have a family member reflect her physical traits for the first time. We speak about some of the questions that adoptees face and have themselves. If you'd like to follow along with Sarah's story, or get her podcast, books etc you can find her here! If you have an question please send it on it to life uncut podcast on Instagram hereJoin us on tiktok Or join the facebook group here Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! xxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Life Uncut acknowledges the traditional custodians of country whose lands were never ceded. We pay our respects to their elders past and present. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. This episode was recorded on Darug Walamutta land. Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. I'm Brittany. And today we have literal sunshine as an interview for you. We are interviewing Sarah.

The sun. Just the sun. We got the sun on the podcast. And look, it's been a big day around the world. We are interviewing Sarah Davidson. Now, you might know who Sarah Davidson is. She is the host of a very successful podcast called Seize the Yay. But she was also the founder and director of Marcha Maiden,

which was a hugely successful Australian brand. Sarah is known as the funtrepreneur. And one of the things I loved about this conversation, it's something that's come up so many times throughout Life Uncut, the DNA of Life Uncut, is this idea of leaving your job and pivoting your career to start something new. Sarah, she once upon a time was a lawyer and she left what would have been seen as a successful dream job, something that she had studied for so many years and was really incredible at to do something that was completely left to field.

And I love when you speak to people who reinvent themselves. This is something that Sarah has done over and over. But it's not just reinventing yourself either because you're extremely unhappy. It's reinventing yourself when your career is going well. It's being able to say things are actually going really well. Like I haven't been forced out of a job and I have to find something new. I'm going to make the choice to leave something I have studied so long for and worked so hard to get to because it doesn't fit with me right now.

Like I'm going to make a choice to do something else to fulfill me in a different way. And I love the way we spoke about the different languages that you use in business for women in business that surrounds this idea of tall poppy syndrome. Yeah. One of the examples of this is, I mean, Sarah's obviously incredibly intelligent and we'll go through sort of what she had achieved in terms of her legal career, but then she started Mucha Maiden and it was not an overnight success, but it was a business that did very well. And it came in at an incredibly opportunistic time, but she also described it originally when she started making money and it started to grow. as like oh yeah it was just very it was all luck but somebody who's as smart and tenacious and

business savvy as Sarah their successes don't come down to luck but it's more around the language that we use as women to downplay the things that we have created. The other thing I really love talking about was the fact that Sarah was adopted at five months old from an orphanage in Korea and it's so fascinating hearing her speak about that and hearing her answer some of the other questions that a lot of adoptees have well Sarah's also pregnant at the moment and one of the things that I think was really touching is speaking about how this almost realization that this will be the first person her baby will be the first person in the world that she knows that she has a biological connection to that's part of her own DNA and the things that that's brought up for her being from

adoption and now looking at motherhood for herself it's such a beautiful chat as we said she's literal sunshine. I'm sorry that we aren't interviewing the sun, but it's as close as we could possibly get. And we hope that you love the episode. Sarah, welcome to Life Uncut. Thank you guys so much for having me. It's so lovely to be here. We start every episode with Accidentally Unfiltered, your most embarrassing story. Do you have one for us today? Oh my gosh, I have so many. I love this question, except that I have so many that I was like, oh my God, there's just, there's one that makes me sound like a total dumb bitch. There's one that makes me look incontinent. Like there's just so

many. So I'll start with the poo story. We can do both. I heard Ribble Wilson started with a toilet emergency. So one of them was, I was doing a fun run. And at the time I had never really done a fun run. I was a corporate back in the day and I kind of just got on the bandwagon of, you know, I can do this without any training. It's totally fine. It was 35 degrees. I've got a, like kind of a weak bladder at the best of times. So I dehydrated on purpose the night before, so i could do the run without needing to pee the whole way so 35 degrees dehydrated didn't eat breakfast got to the end i think it was like a 10k i was already just haggard and decrepit my body just had no idea what was going on haggard and decrepit as i usually am like not because the

race just because i that's how i am but at the end of the race they give you like a gatorade and a banana to just get the maximum fuel back into your body straight away and i've never like dealt with my body pre or post run so i was like let's just chug the whole thing because i haven't eaten or drunk anything in like 24 hours so on top of the heat and like your bowels are already just like what the fuck have you just done to me the banana and the gatorade hits my stomach like at the same time and i reckon i had 65 seconds of i need a shit like it's it's gonna happen right now and we were at the end of the race the mcg is like the finish line i looked at the queue to get inside to where the actual toilets were crunched the numbers did the math was not going

to make it so I was like that's not an option so surely when you see that and there's a line you're like you're pushing I'm just gonna go in front yeah but maybe all the athletes had to shoot I couldn't even see the queue to the toilet it was the queue to get inside the MCG to get to the queue to the toilet so I was like the math ain't math and I'm not making it there and then I looked at the port-a-loo queue same thing i was like i can't even see port-a-loos and the queue to get to just the area where they are is also that's not happening and there's no bushes it was like the back of the jollymont station side so it's just concrete so i was like there's no tree there's no shade there's no nothing so i'm like going through all the all the levels of like do i go into just

where there's no humans so i walked around the back of the mcj where it gets getting more and more concrete, less and less nature. And I realized it's happened. Like it's happening. Like it was the bridesmaids moment where she's like, it's happening. It's happening. And I had to decide, do I do it in my leggings? And then no one can see it because it's not in a concrete pile on the floor. Or do I take my leggings off, leave a big pile on the floor, but at least I can get home in an Uber, like without letting anyone know. And I saw a forklift and I was like, that's the maximum shade I'm going to get, ran behind the forklift, about to drop my pants, saw a St John's ambulance guy,

grabbed him and I was like, I'm going to shit myself. And he just threw me into like this ambulance room that had a toilet and I made it but I cried for like 40 minutes on the toilet. It was amazing. An ambulance has a toilet? No, ambulance room, like a medic tent. I thought you meant an ambulance and you like waved down an ambo and you're like, stop, this is more urgent, I need to shit.

Don't worry about the heart attack. I'm about to shit my pants on concrete. oh yeah exactly this is more important it was humbling i mean i have i have unfortunately shat myself all over the world so like i feel that but you got an escape you got a lucky ending yeah but also like you would have been the legitimate poo jogger i would have been the poo jogger yeah except like it's just you know that it's really it's the same mentally as if it happened when you've already gotten to the stage of not is it going to happen or is it not it's like where am i going to do it is it in leggings or out of leggings just wasn't glam but

the other one is less pooey but also equally like I'm pretty book smart like I've you know I was a lawyer but I'm really straight dumb so you guys probably know I was adopted I am therefore not genetically related to my very Caucasian like dairy farmer background parents and my whole life I've known this so I was studying in China I had been eating these pork dumplings every day like a hundred of them they were like 50 cents for 50 or whatever it was and at the end someone said to us I'm really going to miss those pork dumplings and I was like oh shit I've just I've been allergic my whole life I'm so sad I never understood how good pork is because I feel like everyone talks about all the time and they're like babe you've been eating these pork dumplings

like every day and in Chinese pork and chicken it's like jiro and juro so they sound really similar if you've never eaten pork before in a dumpling it's just white meat looks the same and yeah I was like no I'm I'm severely allergic because my mum is and they were like a aren't you adopted and b b like you don't know you don't necessarily inherit allergies but i was like you know you would think i was like eight i was like 25 and my whole life i'd never eaten pork ever because my mom and we're not related that's so funny that is so funny that no one also in your entire 25 years brought that up to you that there's not a genetic no i feel like people might have wanted to be like

we don't want to break it to her maybe she doesn't know yeah literally I just like so many times I'm like oh like we'll be at the automotrist and they're like what's your medical history and I'll go through like mum's uncle had glaucoma and then I'll realize I'm like we're not like I'm a full-blown Asian she's fully Caucasian we're not related it's amazing but it's nice that we forget I would love to know like I mean growing up I know you just mentioned that you always knew you were adopted I think when you are a significantly different race to your parents it's a difficult thing to try and hide. How sharing were your parents in terms of like the background, your culture, like your birth parents, were they, and did they have that

information to share it with you? Yeah, I think it's one of those situations where you have no choice. You can't end up in those, those family situations where you find out when you're 18 and it's really traumatic and you feel betrayed and like you've lived a lie because we were, yeah, my younger brother and I are so Asian looking and our parents are so Caucasian pretty much from before we could even comprehend what adoption means they were trying to introduce the idea that you know we were chosen family and in the in the best words you can use to like a four-year-old we always grew up knowing the story and having it explained to us in such a beautiful way like it's never been associated with trauma or abandonment, which I think it could easily

slide into that area, but it's always been treated as such a positive, you know, we found each other because we were meant to be together and look at this beautiful life we have. And so because of that, I think there was no secrecy or anything to give it sort of a traumatic or sad edge, even though in some ways it is quite a unique start to life to be born in an orphanage, but we've never had that sense of yeah secrecy or betrayal and it's always just been like a really beautiful part of our identity. So where were you born Sarah and how long were you in an orphanage before you were adopted? I was born in South Korea and at the time through various parts of the 80s and 90s different countries are open to Australia for adoption so at the time Korea was

very common there's a lot of us around the 80s late 80s early 90s and I was born in I'm not actually sure if I was born in the orphanage, there's a maternal ward there or in a hospital and then brought to the orphanage. But I think it was within two days I got allocated to a foster family. So your adoptive parents can pay extra for you to be placed with a family. So you grow up in a family environment rather than in a sterile, not sterile. I mean, they do a beautiful job, but kind of like dorms in a public, you know, baby unit. So within two days I was placed with a beautiful family. And I spent five months with them until all the paperwork gets finalized. I think you get allocated quite early and then there's a lot of bureaucracy that has to happen

on both ends. And then my parents flew over to Korea at five months and brought me home then. Do you have any information around your birth parents? Is that information that is given to you when you do get to an age where you start asking those questions and wanting to find out if you even had those feelings? Yeah, it's I think a lot easier in countries like Australia when there's an inter-country adoption where the documentation is a lot more thorough. We don't have a language barrier. You know, you're familiar with kind of births, deaths and marriages, like you know where to go for those kind of queries. But when it's across geographical boundaries, Korea in the 80s was a very poor country. It wasn't digitized at all. So the

records are really hard. So if there is that information available, it's often a really, really difficult journey to find it out. So that's always been a bit of a barrier to me. I think I've also had such a beautiful family life here that often what motivates people to go on such a difficult, laborious journey is a feeling of there's a gap, like there's something missing. There's a piece in my puzzle that I don't feel like I have. Whereas because I've had such a full and beautiful life here I never thought where are my parents I was like my parents are here they're the only parents I've ever known this is the only life I've ever known so if you said to me my birth parents were outside my house right now I'd be so curious to meet them and see

what they look like I've never seen my features reflected in anybody but if you said to me it'll take 10 years and you'll have to work really really hard to get that information which has been the case. I've never had that pull to really go and find that out. And for a couple of fellow adoptees who I know who have gone on that journey, they have either found out something that is quite traumatic that in my mind, I just sort of think you're not put up for adoption because of anything short of a real tragedy or a very young mother or out of wedlock or, you know, there's stuff that maybe is a can of worms. What are you going to do with that information? Yeah, that's exactly it, right? Like once you do find out, you're like, what do you do with that? Does it add to your

life? Does it fill a hole or does it lead you on a whole other journey of things that you need to figure out? But I imagine there's a level of, just like you said, like you've never even seen your features reflected, like a level of just like, who were they? What were their lives like? I mean, I can't imagine I'm not in that situation, but I imagine there's both sides, right? Like there's a curiosity of like, why did you not want me? Why did you have to give me up? As opposed to what was your life like what did you do for an occupation yeah I think that's definitely something that sits in the back of your mind like who were you and what led you to be able to not be able to but what led you to have to not have your child in your life and I think that's just

always been outweighed like even though it's there it's always been outweighed by the difficulty of finding that information the possibility that you never find it that it's not there because I think a lot of a lot of situations where just say it was out of wedlock the mother wouldn't want to be able to be tracked down like perhaps the pregnancy was a secret and perhaps it's not something that they ever want to be you know brought back into light but also I've since met many times my foster parents who were the family that I lived with from sort of two days to five months and in my mind the curiosity of the mystery that is my like zero to five months is with them it's sort of me asking what was I like what did I eat you know we went on family

holidays together and they had biological children who remember me being like this sassy little kid you know and I want to ask them those kind of questions more so than someone I never have photos with or I have no memories but not that I have memories of those times but I've seen photos of me with this family so seeing them has filled the gap that I might otherwise have to ask did I drink milk? When did I go on solids? All that kind of stuff. That stuff is also interesting when you're becoming a mom yourself, when you have your own children, because you kind of want to link back, well, what was I like as a kid and how is that going to be passed on to my children or what are going to be the traits that I'm familiar with? I think that they're things that

you have curiosities about when you become a mom. Yeah, a hundred percent. And I have spent my whole life being a relatively balanced adoptee in terms of of course it's a very unique identity and that does lead some people to feel a little bit lost in society as to where their place is especially when you're you have one ethnic identity but your cultural identity is Australian but also without the support of your family also looking the same as you you know that's it's not the easiest path especially when you're younger but I think I've always felt so loved and so supported that I felt really well-adjusted in terms of our experience until the minute you get pregnant, it brings up a level of emotion

that I just didn't even know was there. I just had felt the same way for 35 years. I was like, I don't think there's any new revelations I could have. But then suddenly you start to have these milestones of, oh, the baby's kicking or it's this many, you know, fruit lengths today. and suddenly I realised some woman had that with me and then didn't get to see me grow up. Like I've just never thought of it from the adult's perspective.

It's always been from the child's eyes of I've had a beautiful life. My life starts the day that I have that photo at Melbourne Airport with my family now. Everything before that doesn't matter to me. Whereas suddenly now all I'm experiencing is everything before that time. And I do think I'm already in love with this child. I'm already so enamored with every movement and every kick is like the most exciting thing that

I've ever felt in my body and then after childbirth has also been when a lot of my fellow adoptee friends have said they cry incessantly for their birth mothers when they've never even thought of them before just because you think two days later never seeing that baby again they've never thought of it like that before so I think I'm in for a bit of a roller coaster you never know how you're going to react or what your experience to something is going to be until you experience it. And the journey, I hate the word, but the journey of motherhood, it changes you in ways that you can never be prepared for. And I can only assume that it will be something that is a continual place of growth for you. But I have such a question around this idea of nature

and nurture, the things that you're interested in, the things that you love doing, the things that spark joy in you, the career paths that you've chosen to take. Do you think that there's parts of you where you go, I don't know where I got that from? Or do you look at your adoptive parents who are your parents and go, oh no, I see so much of myself in you. And that comes from the nurture of your love and care and overall your upbringing. I think we're very much a like ongoing scientific experiment for people of how strong nurture actually is over nature. Like I'm sure if I actually was in a room with my birth parents, you would see things that I'd never connected as being from someone before, but invariably, even as a small child, a very,

like I'm, I'm a hundred percent Asian. I'm not a, not a halfie. And my mom is very Caucasian, like very fair. And no one has ever sort of questioned whether we're mother or daughter, like they always use the terms in shops, like, you know, your mom, she can go in the change room with you, or does she need a size or, and I think it's our body language is just so clear that that's the relationship we have and people who meet both of us always say like oh you're so much like your mum because I you know have the same mannerisms or I have expressions that are the same as her and I trace back most of the things that are either physiological or just in my actual emotions to my family here but it's more visually that I think the weirdest

realization of pregnancy has been I will have my first blood relative in terms of genetics so it will be the first time I ever see like eye shape or cheekbones or hair color or that is one thing I've never had reflected and I think that will be quite surreal I mean I'm sure it's surreal even for people who aren't adopted to sort of be like oh my god that's my nose but for me for it to be the first time I think will be really special yeah that must be such an exciting feeling because I'm assuming now connecting the dots that your brother was also adopted, but not blood related to you. Yeah. Which is wild because we're four years apart, also South Korean. So born in different cities, but ended up being adopted through the

same orphanage. And it's a blind process when you get allocated your siblings. So they don't sort of have the files to match kids. They have pictures of the faces and the Koreans are Buddhist. they believe in face matching and destiny and mapping all the things that mean people should grow up together and they put us together and said like these children are meant to grow up together and found out later that we were born on the same day but four years apart I just got goosebumps what do they mean by face mapping when you say they map people's faces and they think that this is how it's like an aligned to destiny what does that look like I actually have no idea this is just sort of the the trivia that they pass on to you but they have everyone you know

they have all the family's faces and they just like look at I don't know I don't even know what the science is behind it or what the non-science is behind it but they sort of have very clear feelings about these children are meant to grow up together and we have been like best friends with the polar opposites but have been best friends our entire lives and in different sort of challenging parts of our lives we've been the perfect sibling to accompany each other through those chapters and I think that's always left me with this real sense of like my woo-woo side I've got quite a scientific brain but the woo-woo side has always been like you'll end up with the family or on the pathway that you're meant to be on even if you were born in a different country

in different cities you'll somehow end up together and that's weird because my husband's mum was the first Asian adopted into a Caucasian family in Australia wow that's interesting so your husband's mom was the first asian adopted into a caucasian family in australia yeah so the same thing a young asian asian girl in a orphanage in singapore got adopted into a caucasian family in tassie and then when he told me i was like oh i mean i know you'll say things to get in my pants but that's just too much of a coincidence but like well yeah yeah like well done she lives in tassie i'll never be able to check that story and then i met her obviously now she's my mother-in-law and it's wild. Like that's not very common. That's so interesting. Also though, there's such a point of

relating to her that you would, and it's such a uniqueness in that relationship that most people do not have with their mother-in-laws. That's for sure. Sarah, I would love to speak to you about, I mean, something that's so interesting around your story. And I know that adoption makes up one part of your story, but your career change and you're moving away from what you studied, being a lawyer, something that I think once you have achieved that goal, most people would feel set and that they had to follow the linear path of what that looks like whereas for you you had such a huge career pivot before we get into that I want to know what is a funtrepreneur and how like you that's kind of like what you self-describe yourself as but like what does that even mean

oh babe I don't know I just I just had fun with words one day it's just Laura it's just a pun you're like no but I love it I like like where did it come from and like what does that look like to you? It's so interesting. I've always been someone who loves playing on words. Like since I was younger, I was always alliterating and writing poems and puns have been like a big theme through everything I've ever done. So I think it started when I first sort of had to describe what I did after I'd left law and moved into business. I sort of thought I need a word that's not just businesswoman or entrepreneur, because that's what I don't, it'd become quite of cliche by then. It felt a little bit weird to sort of pronounce myself as something that I had

never studied for. And I just thought it was part of that CZA idea that you inject fun into everything you do. So rather than taking it too seriously, it's just a fun way to describe it. And also it encompasses everything because I have no idea how to describe what I do. But now I look back and I think it was also driven by such imposter syndrome and self-doubt of being like, if I pretend like it's fun and games then no one needs to think I'm taking this seriously and they won't judge me if I get it wrong or I fuck it up or I'm bad at it because I was just playing fun trip and I wasn't like a real businesswoman so I almost now can realize it was a protection mechanism as well at the start to be like all my corporate people watching me and thinking like who's this chick

think she is I'm like no I'm just playing it's not real do you feel now at a point and I mean you've had successful businesses you are an entrepreneur do you feel like it cutifies your achievements when you look at it and you say oh I use this as a protection mechanism and it's kind of like the same thing as we say like oh boss bitch and these other words which we use to describe female entrepreneurs but you would never use that language as a male absolutely and I think it's something that is such a learned behavior to survive as a woman in any industry and it started back in the kind of legal corporate context where if you're too confident and aggressive your likability factor just like plummets and you're constantly balancing the need to show

aggression and assertiveness to get ahead and to be good at your job but if you show it too much like in a male that's praised you get promotions you're like this guy has no fear he just goes in and wheels and deals. But as a woman, it's like, she's just an angry bitch. It's a way of softening how hard you're going at something. Even if you're actually going really hard at it, you would never admit that. I feel like as women, we're always teetering this fine line of you still have to be likable. You still have to have a bit of softness and Australia is amazing in so many ways. But I think of all the things we have that are difficult to deal with, it's tall poppy syndrome. So if you do think a bit much of yourself, self-deprecation is like the best

trait you can have. It's that idea of failure and people having their like, uh-huh, nice try moment. You know, I think that that's ingrained in us in Australia. But let's talk about how you did go from mergers and acquisitions and international law firms to funtrepreneur and starting this health. Like what was the moment or the day where you were like, this shit ain't for me it was so much more rando than that like I wish it was so simple as having this grand realization but I think I'm so passionate now about the whole idea of pivots and sliding doors moments because I was never I don't feel like I consciously made a decision I always call it a happy accident because I never did reach that moment of like oh my god this is

not for me and I'm gonna make a different decision because that's way harder than just falling into something so I think it does start from it's funny you said adoption is only one part of my experience and I've honestly never spoken about it as much as I have since getting pregnant because it suddenly become this thread that makes everything make sense but looking back I think being born elsewhere and then getting a second chance almost to grow up in the best country in the world where we're so lucky I've always had this intense sense of appreciation like I think everyone's lucky to live here but I almost didn't so I had this extra sense of I can't say no to an opportunity like I've got to do all the studies and all the extracurricular activities and all

the hobbies on the side because like I don't want to waste my spot that I've been given and mixed with a healthy sense of curiosity that's even worse because you just become this like hyperactive a type personality who has interest in everything which makes for the most like full life but when you're trying to decide what to do in life it's very hard to make decisions when you love everything. So I'd always spent my whole school years and uni years opening all the doors and not really choosing one. And I think I chose, you know, people say like, how did you walk away from a career you chose? I also don't think I really chose law. I fell into it because I got good enough marks and I didn't want to waste the marks. And it seemed like a really good idea to

do something that you could use to get into lots of different pathways. Really, I was just like, I don't want to decide now. How do I delay that and do something that seems successful in the meantime so that everyone gets off my back kind of thing. I feel like for so many people who are academic that could go into any degree of their choosing because they were academic enough to have the opportunity of choice. So many of those people define success by going into doing medical or going into being a lawyer or going into doing degrees in which society tells you, well, that's a successful degree. That's a profitable job. Whether you end up working for yourself or you wet for someone else it's going to be profitable regardless all the smart kids you you only ever

did law or medicine that was it if you were the smart kid at school it's like well i'll do law or medicine standard literally didn't even register that i could do any once you got the marks it was like well obviously you're going to use them to get into those things because like what else would you do unless you were already a famous sports person or already in the arts or a model or an actress or something you know like unless you were already successful in something else like if you had no better plan, no better other plan. Then I don't like blood. I didn't like gauze. I was like, well, I'm not going to do medicine. That was literally as much as I thought about it. And then law was the door opener. So ended up having a wonderful career in law. I think

a lot of people leave corporate careers because they get really unhappy. They find the hours oppressive. They find the structure oppressive. I find my story in hindsight scarier because I didn't hate it I was so gratified by how successful I was and I got off on the prestige of saying I'm a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at a fancy firm I was Meghan Markle in my cute dresses that you can't breathe in because like they zip you right in but you felt fancy so like I'm you know like I really got off on all that for for a couple of years and the learning curve was amazing so for your nerdy brain stimulation side I was also getting to work on these deals I saw in the news And that was so exciting.

I almost wore all the late hours as a badge of honour rather than ever getting to hate them like many people do. And because of that, I worry about past me thinking if I hadn't had this like big slide, second big sliding doors moment, I would still be there and I would have spent a whole career there and no one would have ever thought that I didn't live a good life. I wouldn't have even known that I wasn't happy because I didn't know any better. So I don't worry about people these days who are actively unhappy because I'm like, it'll get shit enough that one day you'll go, this is enough. I'm going to change. If you're just fine

and you're making good money and it's prestigious and no one's questioning you, like you can last in that. This is fine life for your whole life and not know that it could be better than fine. So it only happened to me because I ended up of all things. I'm such a rando person, but my husband has a creative agency. He's never had his, he says he's never had a job. He's always been an entrepreneur. His creative agency sponsored a charitable expedition to Rwanda. We got to go as sponsors in my first year. So I took leave before I'd even accrued it and just thought, again, if I want to be a diplomat or something one day, then box tick, resume pad, let's go to Africa and do a volunteer expedition. And it ended up transformative in so many ways that I didn't

expect. Firstly, seeing kids who were happier with a leaf for 12 hours than kids back home who have everything. So suddenly I thought maybe happiness and success are not the same thing. Like maybe having money and prestige and the internet and prospects and titles doesn't make you happy because these guys don't have that. And they're way more present and joyful and break into song because they're happy to see each other. So that kind of was a weird realization. And then the other thing I brought home was a gut parasite. I lost 10 kilos and it was very slow. It was like a I couldn't digest food very well it affected my appetite but because it was really gradual and I never like acutely kind of needed to go on a drip or go to hospital or anything I just kept working

I had no connection between my health and pacing myself or anything and I literally just passed out I just collapsed at work and then had to take I think it was maybe three months off and it was only in that process of realizing you have to earn your energy you have to earn your health that you can't just push yourself for no reason for things you don't even really care about that I got banned from coffee got banned from alcohol had to go on like a real like almost a kind of chemotherapy type diet just to give my body a total break and discovered matcha powder and that was literally how this total shift in our world happened was just because I got really sick by accident and couldn't find the one source of caffeine in Australia that I wanted and a business

idea literally fell into our lap and it started as a side hustle because we wanted it for ourselves we ordered I think it was like the minimum order from this beautiful tea farm that we found it turned up it was five million serves too many for two of us to drink by the use by date decided to chuck it in a bag and sell some and that was the start of the business and you're saying this in the business name was Matcha Maiden which I remember long before I knew who you were like I didn't know who the owners of the brand were but I remember it and I remember it just taking off like it was a really big thing but nobody even really knew what it was yet but I feel like you got in at a really good time as well before that I don't want to say alternate health industry

because it's not that it's alternate but before that was a really big thing in Australia like there was this movement of when you know acai bowls things that seem so normal now but it was the acai powder and the matcha powder and all these extra, this was really kicking off. And I feel like that's when you fell into the industry. Totally. And I feel like, like we were talking about before with the whole tall poppy thing, so many women especially tell their story in hindsight with the word luck. They're like, I was so lucky. I just hit the market at such a lucky time. And you sort of sit them down and you're like, no, you just were awesome. Like it wasn't all an accident of Mary Poppins going, like dropping this thing in your lap. But I must say, even

knowing not to do that, it was extremely lucky timing. Like I happened to get obsessed with this one product at a time where the Kardashians were already talking about it. Like people in America who are our trend leaders were already drinking it and being kind of photographed with a matcha latte or whatever. But even in the States, no brand had, it was like sugar. It was just a generic product. No brand had made it like purchasable online in a small packet. You could only get it at a cafe where it was in bulk and you couldn't like take it home with you. So we did enter just when no one else was doing this thing. See, I think that this is so interesting because even though, and I know you say, oh, we shouldn't say it's luck. And you're like,

oh you fell into it at the perfect time it isn't any of those things because it's like you became brand aware of something because it was being spoken about within a pop culture market you know you'd been made aware of something and a product that you then therefore couldn't access and you were like well I want this because there's already some conversation around it I've tried it I like it but I can't get it so it's more so it's not about luck this is about filling a gap in a market and being savvy enough in terms of business that you're like this has legs and I think that even when you do fill that hole and you do have a brand that does so well that we still feel like we have to attribute it to some of it being lucky timing. Whereas I think that like Marcha Maiden

was actually pivotal in creating such a culture around Marcha within Australia, rather than it being like, oh, we just got lucky and it got really popular. You serviced a need from people that were wanting the same thing that you're wanting and couldn't access it. yes I agree but I do not ever discount that luck comes into it because luck is when potential meets opportunity and you can't discount that there was an opportunity here you ordered too much at a time that it wasn't out you didn't know what to do with it then so you decided to sell it to your friends then you realize there was a market but then you use your potential for business and I think opportunity presents itself to a lot of people constantly and a lot of people don't take

that opportunity but luck does play and when I say that even our podcast Laura we started at a time that I would say was lucky we saw an opportunity that there weren't a lot of podcasts but then COVID happened so we started it and then people more people listened to podcasts at that time because unfortunately the world was shutting down and I say in terms like that you've still got to work hard and you still have to have the brain behind it but you know sometimes life presents you with things too that you yes you have to grab it but it still has to be presented I agree but I also think the flip side of that in terms of like touch we're having a full debate and they're so respectful it's like I agree to flip it on its head respectfully but I think it's important

I think it's so important as women especially as entrepreneurial women who have created their own businesses to like be conscious of language that we use around it because I know even talking podcast world when you say oh like we got lucky with timing of COVID we also created a podcast that was talking about relationships at a time when no one else was having those conversations and we created the podcast because we wanted to fill a gap. We didn't want to do a pop culture podcast. We didn't want to do a podcast that was about some other topic. It was specifically about relationships because no one else was doing it. And there was a gap. And I think that that is such an important part, especially of your story. There's this gap that needs to be filled,

but more so, I mean, coming back to this pivot, even though you have like what could have been deemed a side hustle at the time, you still had this law degree. You still had this law career. when was it that you decided that this is where I want to put my energy I'm going to move away from it and firstly how did you come to that decision and also how did you deal with the feelings of explaining to your colleagues that you're going to walk away from something that you'd studied for and that you're really fucking good at to go and pursue something that some people may not seem as being as academic or successful to sell an imported powder I always say like at the very beginning it was it was just green powder like because we packed it

ourselves we're in a kitchen it was summer we were in our jocks so that we wouldn't get like clothes fibers and like had little hair nets and stuff it was like breaking bad but green and I was like I could have made a lot more money with other powders like it probably would have gone better not compatible with my law background but like you know there were other opportunities at the time we chose the green one it's a great question because I think that was actually one of the hardest parts of it there's so much fear and uncertainty around any kind of life change whether it's like personal career moving house moving countries it doesn't just have to be about starting a business but we are creatures of habit we love what's familiar we love what's safe

it's very natural that's totally normal to want to know to feel like like you understand the situation you're in. But it's so important to dream big in this culture of hustle and like set yourself big goals and set yourself kind of unrealistic goals, but start really small, which sounds like counterintuitive. But if you start massive, you might overwhelm yourself so much that you don't start. So I actually think it was better for us that we didn't start with a big business. We started with one product. We started very much as a side hustle. I didn't go full-time for I think it was six or seven months we left it really like I didn't put so much pressure on it because I treated it as this side hustle that wasn't like it was important but it

wasn't I wasn't announcing it to the world most of my colleagues didn't even know and I almost feel like that allows you to get started without getting too carried away and how big it could be because if you go too far ahead it's so scary like I let myself be naive which allowed me to actually get started. So it minimized the fear part rather than letting it kind of get out of control. I always say, you know, you want to climb the staircase, but all you have to do to get to the top is just take the next step. You don't have to get all the way up straight away. So just concentrate on like, how do I sell five bags? If I could sell five, I could sell 10. If I can sell 10, I can sell a hundred. If I need a factory for a thousand, that's not today's problem. That's

later. But it's also why people say if anyone actually knew what it took to start a business, no one would do it. Totally. Which is why I think don't expect yourself to get to the end straight away. Like allow yourself to start on Etsy, like farmer's markets. Like that's why people start in their garages because otherwise they'd never start. But I think the bigger hurdle wasn't necessarily the logistical fears because they didn't come up straight away. It was the whole like prestige. It was letting go of my identity of having trained for this career for 10 years and not even the investment of time and money it was the title it was the fact that I had become quite a good lawyer I had great relationships all my connections and every

kind of opportunity I'd set myself up for were on this trajectory of I'm going to either go to the high court or be a diplomat or go to Oxford or Cambridge like I didn't have any support or any network or any skills in any other area. So not only were people going to think like it was a step backwards, almost away from this intellectual prestige, but also like I'm walking away from what's perceived as success. And I realized now it's just because I measured my whole life based on a few metrics that were excluding a lot of other ones. So all I was measuring by was money, success and prestige and productivity rather than like joy fulfillment and happiness yeah and when you said before which I really appreciated you saying that because not many

people say that when you said I got off on the fact that I was telling people I'm a fancy lawyer I'm wearing fancy clothes because at that time you mistook that as value and what you needed to impress people and I imagine it's it's a really hard pill to swallow and a different pivot to go from saying I'm going to be a diplomat and I work at this huge firm to I sell tea and there's nothing wrong with selling tea but when you valued that like what your personal value was what you felt gave you a level of importance so I imagine that is the hard pill to swallow and why you probably didn't want to step away straight away because all of a sudden you've gone from a I'm a lawyer to I sell tea and at the time it was even more heightened than it might normally be because I

I had applied six years earlier, so when I was still at uni, for a position as a judge's associate, which is sort of the right-hand person to a judge in a court. And it's not a career. It's just a one-year stint that you do, sometimes two, maximum two, that you do with a judge. You sit with them. You help them write their judgments. You get to work in their chambers. And you often take leave from your corporate job.

And then you go back. And it's sort of like going and doing an MBA and coming back. you've like learnt from the best minds in law and then you bring that back to your job and I had applied to the high court which is our highest court in Australia it's in Canberra there's seven judges so there's only and they have two associates each so any at any time in the world there are 14 people who get to do this job and I had happened to apply to the judge who became the chief justice by the time the role had come around and I got the job so I was due to start kind of the presidency of junior lawyers like the pinnacle of what you could get as an opportunity to set

yourself up for the future the same so at the start of 2015 which was the time I had to decide whether or not to go full-time so I wasn't just walking away from a corporate law job I was walking away from this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with a judge I had literally obsessed over since I was I'd first knew her name was Chief Justice Kiefel at the time. I think my default for someone who seems really decisive, the way I've always made decisions in life is how long can I delay making a decision? I'll just say yes to everything and just squeeze it all in. Like, let's do everything and not ever say no, because then I don't feel like I've had FOMO of an opportunity. But it got to the point where the business had been growing on the side and there were no

competitors really for the first year so we ended up getting off the back of social media into urban outfitters across the US they literally emailed us and said can you make us a matcha that's urban outfitters branded the fact that no one else in the world except this couple in their undies in Melbourne were doing it was a wild like now I can't even imagine that happening but you know they offered they ordered the same amount for like a one month purchase order as we had made in the whole six months and the only way to sort of say yes to this one opportunity it was around Christmas was for me to quit Nick was already like already flexible because he had his own business we didn't have enough time to organize a packing facility the only logistical way to get them

packed was for me to take time off work and us to like bunker down together and I literally had to decide in 48 hours because they sort of give you no time to say yes or no do I leave my job which I hadn't even known was a possibility, and not just leave my job, but say no to the Chief Justice of Australia and go and sell tea? Or do I stick with what's safe and say no and accept that this business idea will never go any bigger? It can't anymore. We can't hire anyone because we'll have to say no to this purchase order.

And I always come back to what's the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity? And even though on the face of it, the judges' associateship was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Law is not, it will always be there. I might be a few years behind my colleagues, but in the scheme of once you have not first year uni, like no one cares about taking a year off here and there. But like you said before, that lucky time in the market, when will we be the only mattress seller in the universe? Never again, ever again. Tomorrow T2 could bring out their own version, which they did very soon after, or Urban Outfitters could figure out how to order it. I'm surprised they didn't even figure out then how to order it themselves, but they wanted our

matcha. And so I literally quit two or three days later. And I think I'd almost, so I kind of cheated with the whole prestige thing. I waited until we were successful enough in this new job for it not to be weird to announce it to my colleagues. So instead of saying, I'm just selling tea I was like urban outfitters like everyone knows that and again it was almost saving face I was like I'm gonna just wait until I am successful or I have markers that I can tell these people that they'll understand and as soon as you say urban outfitters they're like oh that's fancy but I've spoken to people since then and definitely there was a dialogue for the first year around of like I couldn't hack it I left to do something like until we got even bigger and

then they were like, okay, I understand. But we all measure our metrics in different ways. And I didn't appear successful to them until a little while after that, which was, yeah, such a weird world. Sarah, what does success look like to you now? How would you define it? So I think I have gone from being someone who looks for it in markers, like measurable numbers. What is my title? What is our turnover? Even at the start of the business, I thought I'd become really enlightened about chasing joy, fulfillment, happiness, flexibility. And even still, I was like, our revenue is this, our growth year on year is this. Now I think it's a feeling. It's not measured by anything you could see written down. It's do I wake up every day and feel like I'm

doing what I was put on this earth to do? That to me is really successful. It's got nothing to do with how much I earn. It's got nothing to do with numbers, like how many downloads my podcast is getting or how many sales I'm making in our products or what my income I don't even know what my income is each year it's very much become do I wake up and feel like I'm I'm doing I'm on this earth making the most of the position that I've been given and every day I feel like that now and I think it's something that we silo ourselves so much as humans and we think if I'm a risk averse person or I'm a shy person I'm never going to be the opposite there's just no way I could ever change I feel like I'm a real life example that you can go from being a a risk averse

certainty loving person who had a 50-year plan to someone who now like I couldn't even go on a road trip with Nick if it wasn't five weeks notice that I was given like he'd go let's go to a stay on Saturday I'd be like um is it in my calendar like have you requested there have we discussed it like have we had a vote on that you know like to someone who like I have no idea what I'm doing in five hours let alone five minutes and our brains like the science backs us up now this isn't just we were people saying you can change your mindset towards your life at any time if you want to enough and I went from living a life that was just for other people it was just for the corporate ladder it was just for what it looked like to again I didn't hate it but the

minute I started doing people-facing creative work with storytelling where I get to be with people like you guys and evolve like our product your podcast over the last 400 500 episodes has been like 75 different podcasts because we've grown like we get to change it's not this static world where you're just a lawyer for your whole life and now I get to to be a different person every day and be with different people and stories every day and that to me is like a huge success I think it would be remiss of us now in this situation not to sort of bring back to something you said at the very start which was I was cruising through my life and I enjoyed it it was fine I could have done it for the rest of my life and it would have been fine there are many people out

there that are like okay I'm not doing what I feel like I was meant to be put on this earth to do and I feel like I could do something else but you know we live in a world where the economical crisis right now. And the climate means we can't necessarily go and do those opportunities. And what I think it's really important to note is we are not saying, think up an idea that you want to go do, throw everything in and go and try it, you know, because like everybody gets the same hours in the day. Like I hate that kind of rhetoric. Well, I also think, I think the part of your story that's so great and for people to really feel as though it's like, it's a step by step progress is because so much we see the overnight success. And when you say you wouldn't

speak about your business until you were already stocked in Urban Outfitters. All that does is it says to people that you created a business and instantly it was successful. And then people who are looking at small business or they're wanting to start their idea, they go, well, I've been banging away at this at six months or a year or whatever it is, and it's still not where it needs to be. And I think so often we see this overnight success, but when you actually unpick someone's you see all the work that led to their overnight success moment and it really is it's all the backstory that leads to a moment that is the catalyst that changes a business that puts a business on a new trajectory but it's allowing yourself to be prepared enough risk taking enough

that you can meet those opportunities head-on and that's what I think defines the small businesses that take off to be big businesses. Sarah what is the advice that you give to people I mean there's so many and we receive it as well in in our ask uncut questions people who are like i you know i'm not happy in my job i am in this so-and-so fine position in life i don't hate it but i'm not satisfied i'm not fulfilled and it's like you can see down the track of your life for the next x amount of years and this path looks certain you know you have an idea of what that looks like and then this path who knows what's going to happen on this what advice do you give to people who are at that crossroad and are not sure what risk to take or how to take them?

Yeah, that's such a good question. And I'm the same. It's the one that comes up the most of how do you make a big change? And even like when we sold the business in 2020, even that kind of new pivot and second chapter was like, yeah, how do you know when it's time to change and how do you take that step? And I think, Britt, what you said just before is so important that there's a lot of emphasis on quit your job, start a business. And that makes some people incredibly happy. For me that suits my personality and I was not quite the lemonade stand kid but if you look at my life there's academics but there's music drama sport like I've always been creative and it was stifled in law and it's clear that the minute I started business my personality came back so it was

obvious that that was for me some people go into business and hate it because they need the structure of a company and they thrive when they can just go to work focus on their skill not be the accountant, the marketer, the social media person, the HR, like some people thrive in a structured environment. And I think if you look at your life and you're not feeling amazing about what it looks like, the worst thing you can do is look at someone else's life and copy that. Like that's not the data that you need to look at. That's definitely the data for inspiration or for ideas about what your life structure could look like. But I think a lot of people just think I need to quit my job and start a podcast or start a business and not everyone's

suited to that or we'd all have successful podcasts and then no one would have a successful podcast because everyone would have one what I try to do with my podcast is tell stories of life structures that don't look anything like each other so there's like the military pathway there's zookeepers there's undercover cops there's like antarctic expedition leaders but then there's a teacher then there's a stay-at-home mom whose joy is her side hustle maybe for some like musicians and artists if you make your passion your job the deliverables and the briefs and the deadlines kill the joy maybe it's supposed to be something you do on the side so for me like seize the yay or find your joy the reality is bills cozy lives we need money you can't start a side hustle and

make a full wage straight away it's okay if you don't love your job and your job is what pays the bills and you find your joy as outside of your work like that's the reality of the balance of a joyful life for some people is our generation is so privileged that there are anyone any of us get to live a job we love but it's called work for a reason no other generation they look at us and they're like what do you mean you have to be fulfilled and stimulated at work you work to pay your bills like yeah just pay the bills the field gal like that's yeah milk the cow when it's your own time that's when you have fun yeah god damn it but you know what something you just mentioned then is exactly what Samantha Wills we interviewed Samantha Wills on our very first season four and

a half years ago she was our very first interview guest that we ever had and she said you know we live in a time where everyone is told that they can start a small business but what people don't realize is that whatever is your hobby whatever is your joy whatever that thing is that you're doing that you love doing just know that if you do turn that into a small business you will do that 20% of the time because 80% of the time you'll be doing the business and I mean it's true for me with Tony May I spend 15% of my days designing jewelry which is the thing I love which is what I started but I spend 85% of my days doing everything else that pertains to running a business. That is managing staff, that's managing logistics, factories, that's managing

quality control, like all of the things that are boring. If that's going to be your benchmark for what's going to satisfy you in life, then you also have to fucking love business. That's a very different thing as well. And I think that social media has really romanticized this idea of like the hustle of having your own business, of having your own thing. And there's so many more layers to it that you just don't see. You don't see the unglamorous parts. Totally. One of the episodes on CCA that stands out the most to me is a zookeeper at Adelaide Zoo who is obsessed with her job she is so happy that she got offered a promotion and she said no I never want a promotion because that changed her job to managerial managing staff paying bills offering other

people's promotions and she's like I don't get to work with the animals I want to feed possums I want to have I want to be in the enclosures I want to be running wildlife I want to be talking to the wildlife I want to be running these programs and the minute you change my job role just because of prestige and an increase in pay she's like that costs me that doesn't that's not a benefit on her cost benefit analysis of joy in her life she's like I don't want that job or I would have applied for that job and I was just like everyone needs to listen to you like upwards and bigger does not equal better for some people for sure but for her she's found her thing and she's like regardless of what the entire of society is pushing me to do to progress to be

better and bigger this is what I love and it's I'm okay if my wage never changes I'm okay if my title never progresses because I get to do what I love and I just was like if everyone could have that approach to their life so many more people would be happy and not that you're happy all the time like I don't think you know toxic positivity is good either I have mentee bees all the time but I think your net kind of result of your life shouldn't be below the line you shouldn't be every day just like depressed and crushed and in a toxic work environment or in something that actively takes away from you you just have to have enough of each thing to be feeling like you're having a good life overall. And I don't think that means the things that most of us think we think it means.

Sarah, last question before we let you go. You're halfway through a natural pregnancy, which is very exciting. Being adopted, does that make you any more inclined to adopting yourself? Yes, absolutely. I think having adoption, particularly on both sides, it means that both Nick and I are very familiar with the process and are very familiar with how families other than blood-related families if you've never seen it you can't begrudge someone for being hesitant to take on a family member who isn't related to them but when it's been around you and so successfully as well it's just not a mystery to us I think you guys both know we had a miscarriage earlier in the year in our first pregnancy and we didn't know if we were going to

have ongoing difficulties or how long it would take us to conceive again and adoption was very clear in our minds as sort of another step. Whereas I think for a lot of people, it's a very last resort or something that they don't even consider, which of course, if it's not in your realm and you've never seen it, we've actually had quite a lot of people who are approaching that decision, reach out and ask questions just because they don't know how it works or they don't know how, you know, whether the children, what their lives are like when they have to explain it when they're younger or when you tell them or yeah the hard bit when suddenly you do start asking really strange questions that about birth parents and finding them and then what if you do find them

and how does that all work so I think it's a lot easier for someone who's had it in their family to see it as an easy choice but we yeah we ended up falling pregnant again without kind of trying as hard as we thought we would have to. Sarah thank you so much for everything that you shared I could listen to you all day. The insight around speaking to people who have pivoted their life so fundamentally, it's such a fear factor for so many people. It's something that seems so unattainable, especially when you are on that rat race, like you're on the corporate climb and you've invested that sort of like idea that you've invested so much time into something. So you might as well keep on going at it. And whether that's your relationship, whether that's

your career, whatever that looks like for you, but we can all be guilty of it. And we're so grateful for you sharing your story, but also for your insights in it, because I think that this is a type of conversation that gives people that little bit of courage to explore other options for their life. Oh, you guys are amazing. You ask the most incredible questions and I can't believe we didn't even get onto the miscarriage because that's a similar thing. I think you, I applied that same mentality to, even after everything I've learned to fertility. I was like, if I just try hard enough and I'm productive enough and do all the research, I'm just an A type like I'll a type the shit out of this as if that makes any difference whatsoever so I feel

like don't be hard on yourself anyone listening if you have all the right revelations about fulfillment and metrics for life and pivots and changes and then you reach a new chapter and it happens all over again like we're all messy humans it's easy to say all these things so much harder to actually put them into practice and luckily you actually can listen to Sarah all day tell everyone where they can go and find a bit more about you so a spoonful of sarah on instagram is probably where the easiest place that's where everything else is linked from the cza podcast the book the jewelry like all the all the other things are all linked to there i'm completely unhinged there's a lot of massive oversharing on there so be prepared if you want to ask anything

about my bowels it's probably on there already so you're an absolute dreamboat thank you so much for coming on today and um good luck we can't wait to hear the good news with the pregnancy thank you guys so much for having me well i hope you loved that episode as much as we did and please keep your ask and cuts coming in for future episodes keep your accidentally unfiltered coming in join our discussion group on facebook which is life on cup discussion group and also we have a little bit of an exciting announcement tomorrow which i'm gonna see if you've made it all the way to the end of the episode. Listen to tomorrow's Ask Uncut because we've been working

on something very cool and we are so, so looking forward to letting you guys in on that tomorrow. I feel like it's a long time coming. Do you think? Oh, my God, it's so long coming. It's literally since... Like overdue. It's since we very first started the podcast,

a long time coming. Five years. 100%. Do you know we've been doing this for five years in July? Yes. Are we going to have a birthday party? I think we should. It'll be the first time we've ever, ever celebrated a milestone.

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