#312 Molly Benjamin – Transcript

Jess Brady
Molly Benjamin is the creator of ladies finance Club, which, as the name suggests, is a club to teach women about money. She isn’t a financial advisor. And so we talk about the community that she’s created, how we can work better together as a team, and some of the learnings around how to engage women in the advice journey. Enjoy. Hi, Molly. Hi. I’m so excited for today’s chat. Thank you for being here.

Molly Benjamin
Oh, thank you for having me. Excited to be here.

Jess Brady
Now, I have known you for actually a little while now.

Molly Benjamin
Getting up there, Yeah.

Jess Brady
Oh my goodness me. And I’m so excited about what you do. It is different to financial advice. But has, I was just saying before we started recording this, like we’re an ecosystem. And so I am really delighted to have you talk today more about what you’ve done, what you’re building, and how we as advisors can work better with people such as yourself. But before we get into all of the deep and dark questions that I want to cover, I think for those of you that don’t know, Molly, it’s important that we go back, Molly, can you tell everyone what your story is? Yeah, absolutely.

Molly Benjamin
So I was living in the UK in London. I was working, you know, a great corporate gig earning good money. But I was living paycheck to paycheck, I had no emergency savings, money would come in and money would go out. And my girlfriends were exactly the same. And and actually what was really interesting as the women I was working with in the bank at the time, they were the same as well, like, it seemed like we were clueless about our pension as super, we were clueless about how to get started investing, like I’ve done a little bit that I’d learned from my parents, but majority of us absolutely clueless. And as I looked at the statistics, I was like, this is kind of scary. And like I’m trying to learn this stuff. And there’s no one really doing it for women. Like every time I tried to like pick up a book or go to a seminar or just get lost, I’d get confused. So what I started doing was literally running events in my living room would bring in like a financial adviser or would bring in someone who worked in finance, and would be like, Okay, let’s talk about this topic. And we just asked them questions, ask some questions, drink some wine, eat some pizza. But then what happened was we quickly outgrew my living room, girls, friends of girlfriends started being like, Oh, can I come to that, like, finance club thing you doing in your house? And I’m like, Okay, let’s put on an event in London, see who wants to come. And we sold out. We had like 100 women there. Most of them worked in financial services. And it was we call it like a Money Makeover. And we had this amazing financial advisor who’s now my business partner in the UK, for the UK business. And we’d spoke about like, okay, like, you know, what, what are the basics, we need to know like building your emergency fund? How does tax work? You know, why do we why should we think about investing? What should we do with our pension? Where should it be like, how do we find it? So all these really basic questions that we had zero clue about, and it was amazing, the energy in the room, the excitement, the just like the women asking questions, and I’ve worked in financial services, a lot of my career and I’ve run a lot of events in financial services. I’ve never seen women ask questions like this just rapid fire. And you know, like, like me, they missed the money 101 lesson at school because it didn’t exist. And you know, they were just so hungry for this information. And from there, you know, that’s when we started running more regular events. And then, you know, corporate started reaching out asking us if we would do workshops with them. Bank started asking if we would run workshops with our staff, and it kind of really grew from there. So then I moved back to Australia. In 2019. Started ladies find out target in Australia. And again we turned it into an online membership where women can come along they get access to a monthly masterclass with an expert. And those experts or anyone from you know, brilliant investment managers, we’ve got someone from NAB trade speaking us to get to us next week. Other times, we’ve had super experts, tax experts, budgeting, money coaches, mindset coaches, but it’s really all about getting women to engage with their money in a really fun and exciting way. We just ran an event at the ASX last two weeks ago, and it’s called Investing isn’t a drag. So we had like a drag queen co hosting this investing event. We had like, Vanguard, their Beta shares their E invest. We had a bunch of really awesome NAB traded bunch of really awesome speakers. And it was just like a member, one of the speakers said to me, she’s like, in my whole career, 40 years, I’ve never been in a room where there’s such a lineup of incredible female speakers and the room is female, like, this is the first time I’ve experienced that. And I’m like, Yeah, we want to learn this stuff. We’re hungry for this information. But just trying to create a fun, safe community where women can you know, go and yeah, but we are definitely not the experts. We just create the community, we bring in the experts, we break it down with the experts to make it like everyday terminology. Because sometimes, and I know you’re very good at this, Jess, you’re very good at speaking. You’ve spoken at one of our events very good at speaking like every day language, but sometimes we find a lot art. So we need to work with him quite a bit on like, okay, that’s coming in at way too high level, let’s bring it back. Okay, what are the basics we need to know?

Jess Brady
Oh, my gosh, so cool. I’m so sad that I couldn’t go to that investment event because I saw the socials, and it looked so fun. And it just proves you can have really fun events in this field. And they don’t have to be a drag. Yes, she did have phenomenal drag, who looked wonderful there. And so a huge congrats to you. And you know, you just touched on something that I think is exceptionally important. Women do want to learn, we do want to learn about money. We just don’t often feel safe, because we feel silly. And so I would imagine, Molly, a big part of the community is around that grassroots learning. I mean, what have you found in terms of the insights from the women that you help? You know, why did they come to ladies finance club and what are the big takeouts for them?

Molly Benjamin
Yeah, so a big a big reason I hear a lot is like, I feel like it’s very accessible, it’s fun. And for people who don’t know where to get started, which is a lot of people, when I say when they’re getting their, you know, shit together with money, they’re like, Where do I even begin? And we like to be like, okay, begin with us. And, you know, so we talked about, like, you know, setting up your emergency fund, which we call it G fund, you know, getting your bank account set up, correct, you know, teaching the basic foundations of investing, and then, you know, almost getting them to that position where like, either they can do it themselves, or they can go to an advisor. And you know, we’re very likely some of the guys, I just got a big windfall of money. We’re always like, you know, seek advice, like you need to go see an advisor. So we do a lot of referring out to advisors as it is. But yeah, I think women, it’s that confidence piece, you know, we’re creating community. I love our accountability group. So when we jump on, like, once a month, when we talk about what were our wins for the month, what what are we trying to achieve the next year, but it’s all money related. So you’ve got all these women talking about, you know, their goals and got an emergency fund, and everyone’s in different places, like some people are buying their second third investment property, other people are trying to get out of credit card debt. And so it’s very inspiring to have all these people in different places, kind of going on their money journey.

Jess Brady
And does the UK business work similar to the Australian business? Or have you noticed that there need to be quite different styles in terms of what you’re doing?

Molly Benjamin
Yeah, I think like when we look at that financial literacy gap, it really is a global problem. And, you know, the issues that women are facing in Australia, very similar to the ones in the UK, because that education piece was missed as well. So it’s kind of like, you know, and I run events, online events in Australia and the UK, the questions are always the same. It’s kind of like, what’s the pension? Where should it be? How do I find it? Like, just like, such? Yeah, there’s just such a need for education in those areas.

Jess Brady
And you know what I find sometimes when people come to see me if they haven’t found someone like you first, they’ve gone through a painful sometimes they’ve gone through a painful process where they’ve tried to figure some of this stuff out before they come to see me. Let’s like the cleaning for the cleaner. Like they want to try to do it a bit themselves and they get really stressed and really overwhelmed and they finally do And they sort of throw it at me. Like, here’s what I found. And I’m like telling I could have helped you. This is what we do. This is how we work. And it just, it’s so basic and so overwhelming that I can’t imagine how many didn’t meet you and didn’t make it to meeting me because they got lost and confused in the process. And I guess that’s why we’re both so passionate about what it is that we do. Tell me. How much do you know about your community? Like if you got an average age where they’re at in life? I know, you said that people are in different financial sort of parts in their lives. But have you got a similar sort of? I’m gonna say client base.

Molly Benjamin
I have a demographic Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, across our platforms, we have over 50,000 women. And what Yeah, between the Facebook group, Instagram, email lists, all that stuff, which is great. We’ve had about with the UK, we’ve had about 25,000 women through workshop, a course, boot camp, they’ve come to a webinar come to a masterclass. So it is like it kind of when I started, it was like, people my age and you know, early 30s, you know?

Jess Brady
Yeah, we were just we were just talking about that.

Molly Benjamin
Yeah, so early 30s, kind of having that corporate job. But yeah, kind of getting started on their money journey. But what I’m noticing, and what I’m seeing is, it’s very much shifting to the women in their 40s and 50s. Now, because these women in their 40s and 50s are going, either the kids have left home, or I’ve just gotten separated or divorced, or something’s happened, they’re, they’re having a bit of a life change. And they’re like, I don’t know how to manage my money, or I want to understand so I can have conversations with my partner about money. Or crap, I’m about to retire soon. And I don’t have I need to be putting more away for my retirement. And again, so we do a lot of education on like, just understanding those basics. So then, you know, they’re ready to either seek advice or, you know, they’ve got just the basic foundations of what they should be doing next.

Jess Brady
Yeah, and we need to acknowledge that not everyone will get advice. And, frankly, we probably don’t have enough advisors to service everyone anyway, right now.

Molly Benjamin
As you know, like the finance industry, it seems it is like, you know, from or whatever it was Royal Commission, it is distrusted amongst people. So, you know, we get a lot of people always asking us, Well, who do you like, Who do you trust? So kind of a bit of a vetting process there. But yeah, it is. It’s interesting. That kind of people just have this misconception of like, I can’t afford advice, because it’s so expensive. And you kind of like, a lot of timing. Like, it’s gonna save you so much more money in the future if you go get advice now. So yeah, it’s an it’s an interesting one. Totally bust that myth.

Jess Brady
Um, how have you commercialized like these ladies talk money, because that’s what I

Molly Benjamin
love. Ladies talk money. You guys do? I love your attitude to do awesome work.

Jess Brady
Thank you. And we don’t commercialize that that is our little not for profit. thing. But if you commercialize ladies finance club,

Molly Benjamin
yeah, absolutely. So we do. We have our monthly membership, where it’s like a very affordable fee. And then so monthly, and then they get access to a bunch of like, amazing experts, they get access to masterclasses, accountability groups, tools, templates, all that kind of stuff. And then also we do partnerships as well. So for example, last year, we ran a virtual trading contest with eToro. Because, you know, a big thing I noticed was like, women don’t want to invest because they’re scared, and they don’t physically know how to invest. So you know, that was like, you know, play money. It’s not real money. Let’s do a little contest online, you know, with educational webinars throughout. So we’re like, yes, this competition is short term. But Investing is for the long term. And I was really proud the other day when the market hit a bumpy, bumpy road, and on our Facebook group, where we’ve got about 9000 Women now just over. So many of them were like, Well, I’m not stressed, because I’m a long term investor, and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, Yeah, awesome. So yeah, so that was just Yeah, giving people that chance to, you know, dip their toe in the water without any risk at all.

Jess Brady
I have never seen anything like this. And I hear this over and over again, particularly from young women, which is like, ah, I’d like to make my money work hard for me. But you know, I don’t want to invest in shares or anything, that’d be really risky. And I’m like, Listen, lady, we got a chat. And I think that you were able to create a space where people could learn with psychological safety, and they could take risks, knowing that it wasn’t their real money yet. And as you say, the community what I watch So what I think happened was the community were helping each other learn each other understand more about what they were investing in. I thought it was a really fascinating social experiment, actually.

Molly Benjamin
Yeah, no, it went well. And a lot of people did say afterwards, it gave them that confidence to open a, you know, a broker account. And, and that’s the biggest thing. I think people think when you get started investing, they have this, again, this misconception that they’re gonna have to invest 10s of 1000s. Like, no, you can get started with $50, you can get started with a small amount, you know, you can dip their toes in the water. So I think as well, like, yeah, there’s just a lot of myths that need to be busted. Again, as you said before, like that gambling one, like, I don’t want to lose all my money in the stock market. And you know, when they have that basic education and information, they go, okay, I get it, that that’s actually if I diversify, if I spread my risk, you know, that’s quite, it’s not as it’s not as risky as they originally think.

Jess Brady
Yeah. And I mean, I saw something online, I don’t know if it was on your page or not. But it was like, Oh, my gosh, I couldn’t put $200 in shares. But we’ll happily buy a $200 dress that I never wear larious I actually had someone off the back of that investment simulation that you ran, come and seek advice from us, because it gave her the confidence to and she from memory, had done a very good job. She had bought her own first house in her 20s and had quite a lot of money stockpiling in an offset account. And I think from your investment project, I don’t actually remember what was called sorry, yeah, I realized, oh, I can do this. And it’s not what I thought it was going to be like, and then yeah, reached out, I think when it came to investment selection, and sort of strategy that was sort of where she was like, Okay, I need help. But it’s amazing to think that something like that has, you know, had so many impacts to so many women and led women? Definitely because I know, because they came to me for advice. So huge. Thank you. No,

Molly Benjamin
I think yeah, I think anything that can, you know, just increase women’s confidence around investing? Because, you know, as I said, that’s, that’s one of the biggest blockers I say, it’s just kind of like, not knowing where to get started thinking it’s so risky. And yeah, the confidence piece.

Jess Brady
And I guess for us in the advice landscape, it’s really important that we do honestly critically think about how we talk and what jargon we’re using, and how when people stay really quiet, and say they don’t have any questions. It might because they don’t have any questions, but more probably, it’s because they either feel stupid or disengaged. And so we have to be honest about how we can be better at this.

Molly Benjamin
Yeah. And I think as well, we did a really interesting post the other day, and I had hundreds and I’m not hitting hundreds of DMS after this post. It was a story and it was just talking about like, have you as a woman have felt excluded from the financial services industry, and guess countless tales of women going? Yes, when I went and got my bank loan, the bank manager didn’t look at me once. Even though it was my money, they still tried to put it in my partner’s name. Or when I you know, when I went to buy that car, or when I went to get that, yeah, mortgage, or just story after story. When I went and saw my advisor, they just talked to my husband the whole time. So yeah, making sure that we’re always including women. And even if it is a couple, like, you know, if they’re not Yeah, as you said, if they’re not asking questions, it’s because it needs to be broken down. But um, I know, you are definitely, definitely a massive advocate of that and the work you

Jess Brady
do. Oh, yeah, but I think I can be better. I think we can always all be better. And you know, right now financial services speaks to women about you know, coupons and budgeting and, and yeah,

Molly Benjamin
yeah. Yeah, how to grow your wealth, not how to invest. Yeah, absolutely. We say that as well.

Jess Brady
So if you are a financial advisor, and you have any literacy, think about that, if you are from a bank or large financial institution, please think about that. There is a fabulous report from the UK bank on that, and I’ll put in the shownotes because it’s terrifying. Terrifying. What hasn’t worked? Molly, what have you tried? That’s been not as successful as you’d hoped. Anything that’s been a huge disaster, anything you’d go back in time and change?

Molly Benjamin
Well, I regret not doing a podcast earlier. So we’re just we’re about to bring one out so I’m really excited to be Yeah, we were doing a ladies finance club podcast. Like this I mean in business and you know, for those people who run their own businesses, you know, there’s like learnings every single day and sometimes and sometimes you know, things work things don’t I remember we tried to do a debt like a debt series and like a debt workshop and no one wanted to engage with it at all. And I thought that’s really interesting. Obviously. You like, people either ashamed because I know there’s a lot of women in debt that either exchange or there’s some kind of barrier there. So again, it was like pivoting. Okay, well, how do we then, you know, create that space where people feel like they can come and they can seek their help? Yeah, so that, you know, we were like, what doesn’t go around multiple things every day, but it’s just kind of like, you know, learning and trying to like, I still think we’re still trying to nail you know, our model of a lot of the times women when they leave the membership, they’re like, I just don’t have time, I just want someone to do it for me, but they don’t seek advice. So it’s kind of like, well, you know, you’ve got two options. You can either, you know, take action now, but you know, they’re busy. They’re mothers, they’ve got 1000 things going on finding their super getting investing, it’s just another thing on the list, and they just don’t seem to get around to it. So yeah, trying to come up with you know, we’re still pivoting all the time about how to, like best engage with the community, that’s going to be the most helpful. So yeah, we’ve got some exciting things, kind of, hopefully, on the horizon that are gonna happen. But yeah, I think like, the session we did, like that project we did with ATAR, where it was like playing money, fake money, there’s no risk, you know, give yourself dip your toes in the water kind of thing that seemed to work well.

Jess Brady
And I mean, you’re pretty ferocious on the socials in the nicest possible way. Do you do all of that yourself? Like, practically? How do you manage? How do you manage all that?

Molly Benjamin
Yeah, so I’ve got an awesome team. So when it comes to the content, I really like to, you know, lead the content, because I feel like I am the target audience. So I kind of get, I feel like I get what they don’t get, because I don’t get it. So with, with a lot of the social like, I obviously have a great team, I have a great designer, half of them are based in the Philippines, a couple of based in Australia. And they do a lot of kind of the grunt work as well. But again, like that’s, that’s a business thing. And we’re still learning every day. And I think like, oh, entrepreneurs, you know, it can be a little bit of a roller coaster where some days are great. Other days, nothing seems to work and then just kind of keep working on those systems.

Jess Brady
Hmm. Do you post every day? I feel like you post every day.

Molly Benjamin
Yeah, we post pretty much every day. And then yeah, we try and do stories. But again, like, you know, I see other people online and like other well, not that we consider ourselves influences as any sense. We think of ourselves more as like, education, like a tech platform. But when I see a bunch of those influencers, post every single day, they’ve got stories I got ticked off. I’m like, Ah, I had to find that time.

Jess Brady
Oh, my gosh, I’m like, How do you do every day? I’m like, Jessica, you will do once a week. Jessica? Yeah,

Molly Benjamin
consistency is key. Once a week is great.

Jess Brady
It doesn’t always happen. But nevermind. Let’s talk about that. So classic, changed some rules around influences. Did that have any impact on you?

Molly Benjamin
It had very little impact on us from the sense that, you know, it had, like, I know, a lot of the influencers and their friends, and it definitely had a massive impact on them. But a lot of the stuff we were doing, we you know, we’re constantly always work with financial experts. So from that sense, we were fine. I mean, affiliate links, there was like, we did very little of that anyway. Because we don’t like to align ourselves with one financial institution ever. So we like to keep our independence that way. So yeah, look, you know, I think it was a really good reminder to some people out there about, like, you know, I’ve seen some shocking posts, or, you know, and like some shocking advice, where I’m like, That is not a financial education, that is like crossing the line. So definitely guidelines need to guidelines needed to be bought in, I just think it’s, you know, I’ve seen a couple of influences kind of pull out the space or really pivot. And a lot of that education was really helpful. And it really inspired a lot of people to get started in investing. And, you know, I look at that, and I just go it’s education, it’s nothing to do with advice, but they’re just now kind of completely kind of stepping out of the whole sector because they’re just like, it’s too risky for me and for them, they you know, a lot of them, it’s a side hustle as well. They’ve got a full time job anyway, so they don’t want to like, you know, be hit with a lawsuit or anything like that. So that wouldn’t be very nice.

Jess Brady
Do you know that I feel very mixed emotions about the changes because to your point well to both of the points that you make that sit on either side, like what did was create learning opportunities for people that traditionally either haven’t sought out our industry and frankly, may never. But I think obviously, the, the, the, here’s my portfolio, you should buy X stock and y stock. And then, you know, I was talking to a fund manager, friend of mine, and her and I were chatting about it, it was it was an it was coming, but we didn’t have sort of the full information about what was happening. And we sort of played it out. And we were like, well, worst thing that can happen. Honestly, these poor young people that financial advisors were up in arms about who frankly don’t want them as clients, for the majority of them to be really honest. Like Let’s call a spade a spade,

Molly Benjamin
they would not be I don’t think they would be profitable clients.

Jess Brady
What’s the worst that can happen? Okay, so they follow this idiot, buy list and they buy. And then it spectacularly blows up. Let’s say that that happens. Let’s do worst case scenario here. I mean, doesn’t everyone growing up, do stupid, silly things where they learn and obviously, betting the house would be a really dumb idea. But I’m like, it’d be a bloody good investment lesson, it would be very good investment lesson. Painful and make them gun shy. But I’m like, hang on, I think that there needs to be a bit of honesty around. Yes, it’s not ideal. But I financial advisors were up in arms about what people were doing online, because of course, if we did anything that sniffed of that, we would lose our license and have huge business ramifications. Yeah. I don’t know.

Molly Benjamin
Yeah. And look, I’ve never shared what I invest in, personally, because that’s not what we’re about. We’re not like, here’s my portfolio, like, battling, like, but we definitely will educate about ETs, and we’d love to go into like the different ETFs that are out there. And now we can’t do that as much, which is, you know, fine. no qualms there. But yeah, it is this piece where I just find like, if we leave people to do it themselves, at least were like helping them with basic financial education, you know, get out of debt first, before you start investing, it’s for the long term. You know, use money you don’t need in the next three to five years. You know, it’s basic stuff we teach. It’s not like we’re going you vest in this portfolio. But it’s the basics that people don’t have. And then I see what’s happening in the crypto space. And it’s these lessons that people don’t have, they’re trying to make a quick buck. They’re not understanding their foundations. And it’s just like, they don’t think they can afford property. And they’re just like, losing their money in crypto. And so you know, it’s Yeah. Yeah, it’s, I think there was definitely guidance needed to come out. Absolutely. A great, I think everyone, I think everyone in that space agrees with that as well. But yeah, it’s just it is it is an interesting one,

Jess Brady
rip to those of you who who were invested in some of the Kryptos that didn’t survive over the last few weeks, sending you lots of love. What’s next, what’s on the card. So you’ve got a podcast coming as part of ladies finance club, very exciting. We’ve got a podcast

Molly Benjamin
coming. We’re doing an online course as well with Danielle kuliah, who wrote the shepherd city series, which is really exciting. So she’s fabulous. financial educator. So we have that coming up as well. And then, yeah, we’re working on a couple of other other programs. And yeah, just trying to grow the membership as well. And we’re always looking for wonderful female sometimes now, but a lot of female financial speakers. So if anyone is listening, and they would like to explore that, please do get in touch. If you want to get involved ladies finance club, we would love to have you along the journey. We love to create a platform for women learning, but also women who are in the financial industry. And we’ve connected and had so many wonderful, inspiring, talented, intelligent women on the platform. And we just like we love them. And you know, it also, people see our members see them, they start trusting them, you know, and also there’s a massive lack of female role models in the financial services industry. Like everyone can name Warren Buffett, not many people can name Kathy woods. So, you know, like we need, we need like a lot. A lot of women up front and center. So yeah.

Jess Brady
And how are you doing mostly face to face stuff now that we’re back in the sort of real wide world you’re doing online? Where are your events? Mostly?

Molly Benjamin
Yes. At the moment, we’re mainly online we are I just wrote a book actually.

Jess Brady
To tell me that you wrote a book.

Molly Benjamin
Well, you’re quoted in it, remember? So you did that. Fantastic. You’ve got a little quote in it. I need some coffee. Interviewed by two women in finance and Then I wrote this book, it’s called Girls Just Want to Have Fun. It’s going to be out in like October. So we’re going to be doing a bit of a roadshow around Australia and again, working with super experts, financial advisors doing a bunch of different educational, very practical, kind of like, after work seminars all around Australia for that one. So we’re working on that at the moment as well.

Jess Brady
I cannot believe I forgot that. I’m so sorry. Um, so if you are a financial advisor, this this has piqued your interest and you’re not in a capital city. It sounds like at the moment, that’s still great, because you’re doing so much online. And then when the book launches, sounds like you’re going

Molly Benjamin
that’s where we’re heading for regional areas. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, you’re in Newcastle. Coffs Harbour, the sunny Coast Gold Coast. Yeah, definitely reach out.

Jess Brady
Holy, I’m so excited for you. Um, okay. How can people learn more about you? And then I’m going to ask you some rapid fire questions.

Molly Benjamin
Yeah, so obviously, we’re over at ladies finance club.com. We have our Instagram at ladies finance club. And we also have a Facebook group, which is ladies finance club money chatter. What I love about that group has as a bunch of mortgage brokers, a bunch of financial advisors in there, and you know, really helping out people with questions they have, and it’s just a really nice community. It’s really positive. And it’s, yeah, it’s, I love that space. It’s just a safe space where women can come and ask questions about women, mainly from Australia, but all around the world on there. And it’s, you know, people like to share their wins. And yeah, they’re not sure if something just getting second opinions.

Jess Brady
huge congrats to you for building such an amazing positive community where people are honestly probably voicing things that they have been trying to figure out for years and giving people confidence in a space that is quite often pale, male and stale, and very overwhelming. So a massive congrats. I’m very, very proud of you.

Molly Benjamin
Thank you so much. And I love the work you do with ladies talk money as well. So yeah, it’s great articles really good information. So we send a lot of people there too.

Jess Brady
Thank you. All right, let’s do some rapid fire questions to round out today’s chat. So I’d love to know what is one thing that you do to look after your mental health

Molly Benjamin
exercise, but actually straight after the ASX event I ended up in hospital the next day with an emergency appendicitis. So I haven’t been able to exercise for the last couple of weeks, and it’s driving me crazy. So that exercise is so key for me and my mental health.

Jess Brady
What Okay, let’s pause there. There’s a few things. Firstly, I hope you’re okay. And I just see appendicitis, you poor thing? Um, what do you do? Do you have like a schedule? How do you keep yourself accountable? I mean, it was freezing when I took the dog for a walk this morning. And I still did it because I had a dog. But I think if I didn’t know what to go back to bed, how do you keep this going for you?

Molly Benjamin
Yeah, absolutely. So look, it’s definitely something I’m still nailing my perfect morning routine. And I can say that as someone who clearly doesn’t have children. But yeah, I haven’t had I definitely haven’t nailed it yet. But generally trying to get up. And the first thing to do is like move my body somehow, whether that’s around a walk, meeting a friend for tennis, but I’m just about to move to Bondi as well. So I’m going to be switching that for beach friends now. So looking forward to my new sea change.

Jess Brady
Wurzer you’ll be out there freezing in the mornings doing laps or whatever they do.

Molly Benjamin
Yeah, I can’t say I’ll be swimming in winter in Sydney. I’m a Queensland originally, so that won’t be happening.

Jess Brady
Bless you know, you’ll have five public jackets on a piece of advice that you would give to your younger self, if you could go back in time.

Molly Benjamin
Oh, that’s such a good one. Think what, oh, that’s a really good one advice to my younger self. Well, I think just like even just very recently, I kind of had a bit of a reflection on kind of where I’m at. And, you know, just having that moment of like, what you’ve created can be changed. So you know, at the moment, like I find I’m working a lot, I don’t have a lot of free time. And you know, it is actually going like well, you’ve created this so you can change it. So now it’s up to me to you know, design the life I actually want to want to lead and the the life that’s going to bring me the most joy and you know, really achieved the things they want to achieve. So I think just remembering that, you know, you there’s a million things you could literally be doing with your time, I’ve chosen this but that can change as well. So you know, I can pivot I don’t you know, just have to stick to this one thing I can find other ways of working that was gonna bring me kind of that joy as well.

Jess Brady
It is deeply resonating with me also because I and I think it will with so many financial advisors because you know, you can build something that is seen as quite successful and it can be quite successful and you can be building other things. And ironically at the detriment of you know, you helping people build their great life can often be at the expense of your own. And that’s why I wanted to start this podcast specifically because it can be so easy Easy to be taken on that journey and almost feel powerless as everything grows and becomes fantastic. And remembering that you can control that and you can make changes. And it might be really hard. And it might feel counterintuitive.

Molly Benjamin
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I was speaking to an entrepreneur last night at this dinner. And she said exactly the same thing. She’s like, I walked away from she had started a nonprofit, just like I had to walk away because it was burning me out. And I think I speak to so many female business owners and they do or suffer from burnout. So it’s kind of trying to find that balance. And, yeah, I think it’s such an important one that just you get so in the day to day you forget to zoom out and look at what was that bigger picture? What was? Why did you originally you know, want to start your own business, or why did you want to go into that sector? What were you trying to achieve?

Jess Brady
I feel you, I feel I feel you. Um, what is one big thing on your bucket list that you’re yet to tick off?

Molly Benjamin
One big thing on my bucket list? Okay, I really want to do a stand up comedy course. So that is on my bucket list at the moment. So yeah, we’re gonna gonna give that a while this year. Just thought why not give it give it a 12?

Jess Brady
I mean, you said course Do you want to go and like do a stand up thing?

Molly Benjamin
It’s just on the bucket list. I mean, I don’t know. I’ve clearly have not been very funny on this podcast. But I don’t know. Like, you know, it’s not like I consider myself funny, but I just feel like it would be really interesting skills to learn and just, yeah,

Jess Brady
now you’re funny. I laugh at your Instagram stuff. You’ve got a funny sense of humor. I’m coming if you go to the show I’m coming and that remote like

Molly Benjamin
money in fact, yeah, financial finance and comedy that could work bit of magic on the side. Why not?

Jess Brady
Oh, my gosh, that’s such a I love these questions. I get such interesting, unique insights from people that so good. Last question, my dear, before I let you go and enjoy the rest of your day. Do you have a book that I should read? Apart from yours, which comes out later in the year? For my favorite book club,

Molly Benjamin
your fake book club book, I’m going to be a proud sister here. And my sister bought out a book last year called license test, but so are you. And it was about your really helpful things. The really practical and helpful things that got her through when she was diagnosed with like, worst stage cancer. And it’s become a best seller in Australia. So I’ve definitely obviously as a as a bias sister I would say check out that but but it is it’s really helpful and she’s had so many people reach out all over the world who have said like it’s helped them so much during their cancer journey and also how to be a really good support person to someone going through a lot when life throws you a curveball, whether that be a death tense, divorce. Yeah. Something where you weren’t expecting it to happen. So yeah, life is tough. But so you have a brand new Benjamin,

Jess Brady
it has done really well. I’ve seen it everywhere. So huge congrats to her. And look, financial advisors are often coaching people through really large big life scary things. That will be very beneficial for a lot of people I’ve added literally added to my list just awesome. Great. Well, it’s been so nice to speak with you. It’s been too long. Thank you for your insights. We very much appreciate it. And good luck with the next chapter and phase of ladies finance club.

Molly Benjamin
Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a blast.