The Multipotentialite Advantage: Creating Success Across Multiple Fields
Meet Rebecca Lambert, founder of the Freelance Jungle and portfolio career pioneer, as she unpacks the art of building a multi-faceted career. From disrupting old systems to creating inclusive communities, Beck shares her insights on how to thrive beyond the traditional "one job for life" model. Learn about time boxing, value-driven decision making, and why having multiple professional pursuits isn't just about income streams – it's about fulfilment, purpose, and creating meaningful change.
Number of fucks given in this episode: 5
Mentioned in this episode:
A Good Death (with Jessica Hawkins)
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Episode Transcript
Bek Lambert's Episode
Rah: hi, and welcome to Fuck Around and find out a podcast all about finding your way through owning your own business.
Rah: I'm Rah.
Christine: I am Chris.
Emily: And I am Emily.
Rah: Good morning. Oh, actually, no, it's afternoon now. Sorry. Hello?
Christine: Well, it is, it is afternoon, um, and it's slightly cooler.
Christine: Um, we've stopped having heat waves in autumn, in
Christine: Sydney,
Rah: know. Don't say that, Christine. It's gonna happen again.
Christine: No,
Christine: we have No, it won't, it
Rah: No. Mm.
Christine: Yeah.
Christine: Mm-hmm.
Rah: things that are joyous apart from the end of a heatwave or mini heatwave heat wave in Sydney, put my teeth back in is we have the amazing Rebecca Lambert joining us today, who Chris and em have heard me bang on about for a very fucking long time.
Rah: And I know Beck through her network community called the Freelance Jungle. Um, but she also has a multitude of other, you know, passion areas and businesses and, um, is incredibly smart,
Rah: um, and fascinating and always a joy to talk to. So, Rebecca, AKA Beck, thank you for joining us.
Rebekah: you, and I hope I live up to that introduction. That's kind of a little bit scary.
Rah: Um, I was being light. I was not trying to be too over the top to freak you out, so, but I do speak the truth, so you are very welcome.
Rebekah: Thank you.
Rah: we only have amazing people on here, so duh.
Christine: Yeah, Well, that's right. Yes.
Rebekah: Of
Rah: So, um, to start us off, for the people who are
Rah: not lucky enough to know about you yet, tell us who you are, what you do, et cetera.
Rebekah: Sure.
Rah: Beck 1 0 1?
Rebekah: Okay, so I'm Rebecca Lambert. I'm the founder of the State award-winning community, grassroots community, the Freelance Jungle. I also co-create death literature projects with, uh, Jessica Hawkins under a good Death,
Rebekah: um, I. I then also, uh, work as a freelancer as Unashamedly Creative, doing strategy and content, and I've just signed on as the business Operations manager for Girls on Fire Australia, which is, uh, basically using the fire teen, uh, the teen fire camp model to engage with. Young girls and kids from underrepresented communities such as queer kids, uh, aboriginal teens and disabled teens, to see a more inclusive fire service and emergency personnel approach in Australia going forward.
Christine: Oh my
Christine: goodness me.
Rah: Yeah. Right. So you guys are starting to see
Emily: me feel better.
Christine: yeah.
Emily: Yeah. Always
Emily: makes me feel better when people do as many things or more than what I do, and it's like, see, I'm not the only crazy person around. I.
Rebekah: you are not, and it's not crazy.
Christine: No,
Rah: Exactly. It's normal. It is normal. Um, and the fire stuff I'm fascinated by because it's such a cool way to. Start making a difference so that, you know, future, everything is, is gonna be so much better. So yeah, I'm very, very excited to see how that changes because of your input. Because yeah, like I know you've only touched the surface in terms of, you've talked about what you're currently working on, but I know that there's this whole depth of experience without going on about how old you are.
Rah: 'cause that's what it's implying. But you know, so.
Christine: No, I don't think it's, I just think you've jam packed a
Christine: hell of a lot in a very short amount of time. You're got lots of energy
Christine: and you're very, you know, you know what you wanna do and the direction you wanna take. So I, that's what I'm feeling. I'm not
Christine: feeling.
Rah: you.
Rah: Thank
Rebekah: Nice save. Nice
Rah: Yeah. Thank you.
Rah: Thank you for saving my as,
Emily: I was thinking that as well.
Rah: Whew.
Rebekah: Pulled her out of the fire as it were.
Rah: yeah.
Emily: Yeah.
Christine: No, it's more about me. I'll go, oh, bloody hell. I've done nothing in all these years I've been around.
Rah: Yeah, no. Like that 20-year-old we had on the podcast that we met the other day. Oh my God.
Rah: Yep.
Christine: God.
Emily: at 1212.
Rah: And now she's got bricks and mortar and it's like, holy shit. Okay, great. Yep. However,
Emily: what happens when you got supportive parents.
Rah: exactly. Well, and just have that confidence that I didn't get until I was in my forties lol. Anyway, so, um. When I was talking to you back about possible, um, ideas of what we could ask you about, because as I've indicated, there's so many options of ways that we could take this conversation.
Rah: Um, but you were somehow on the same wavelength as the three of us, and you mentioned talking about having a portfolio career
Rebekah: Hmm.
Rah: Like, I think we've already seen that in practice in terms of what you've, you know, described yourself as doing. and one part of your life is obviously with the Freelance Jungle and as a freelancer yourself in terms of, content and God marketing.
Rah: Did you say Content and marketing? But what's the difference at a top level view, um, between like a VA and a freelancer? Because people from different worlds are in the, used to one or the
Rah: other, and I think that line is starting to blur. So what are your thoughts on what that difference is?
Rebekah: Okay, so a freelancer is?
Rebekah: basically anyone that is self-employed that uses their skills or their services for businesses and organizations in either a project or like an hourly or a retainer or a contract way. So with the work I've done in the freelance jungle, I've done research. Three or four times on the breadth of the project.
Rebekah: And we have about 120 vocations in the freelance jungle, and that covers your virtual assistants, your copywriters, your web developers, and then your lesser known freelancers that you may not be quite as aware of, such as consultants in. Accessibility, death, doulas, drag queens, counselors, and even gps actually come under the freelance model in the majority of situations in Australia. So. The freelance Jungle is there as a unifying thing to talk about the isolation that people that, um,
Rebekah: run their own micro business that are self-employed often face, it talks to, uh, the impact that stress has on us. Because we don't have the water cooler, we don't have the supports that other traditional.
Rebekah: Mediums have, and it also raises the knowledge bar so that when we are going out as freelancers, we have the same sort of literacy with accounting and law and client management and business practice, so that we are not inheriting other people's, you know, lack of boundaries and we're not inheriting their problems.
Rah: Well, we can try, we can do our best to
Rebekah: We can, we can.
Rah: Yeah, yeah. And so, um, basically it's the same sort of. Umbrella term, like they're referring to the same thing of like, it's a title that doesn't explain exactly what you, what you are doing. So you could be
Rah: freelance or virtual assistant working in social media administration.
Rah: Is
Rebekah: Absolutely, and, and look, part of the reason why there's
Rebekah: a difficulty in advocacy for freelancers Is there's not one definition, but nor can there be. Because even a web developer is not the same as the next web developer. You know, they've got their own little focuses and stuff like that. So this is sort of like about creating a space where at least we have common things that we can talk about.
Rebekah: And these are generally those wibbly wobbly things that we come across, um, that are outside the income generation and. And just generally raising the community and giving them that up, that opportunity for visibility to learn from each other so a VA can learn from another VA or a web developer can learn from another web developer how to handle certain things.
Christine: Perfect.
Christine: Yes. So that community, that font of information, that areas of expertise to help the next gen of freelancers in no matter what industry they align with. Um, so important, really important. And I know that just in my, my background and work history, even before, you know, I became self-employed, you know, some of the skillset was. Um, you know, just listening to other people doing things. Um, so I was in, um, hotel events management and often when I'd started a new hotel, I'd wander around with the sales manager, get their spiel, get how
Christine: they talked about things, and then develop your own way of talking, doing whatever. But at least you're not reinventing the wheel.
Christine: Um, and or. You know, your, your freelancers from the community can take, you know, some, some help,
Christine: um, if they need it and, um, you know, troubleshoot any issues that they've got. I think it's so important.
Rebekah: Thank you.
Rah: Yeah, so very important. And I can't think of a decent segue, so I'm just gonna run with it. Um, we're just going to make a hook turn here. So I've hinted that we're gonna be talking about having a portfolio career and by chance, a podcast episode that Chris m and I recorded yesterday at the time of recording, um, started to talk about that concept.
Rah: How that is kind of the way forward potentially in terms of employment, just for anybody that having, you know, the old standard of working in a bank for 50 years and you get a watch when you retire, when you are probably back then 40. Yeah, exactly. Back then you probably retired when you are 40.
Rah: Whereas now you'll have to do it when you're 103. So talking about having a portfolio career, is it just another way of saying like, having
Rah: like multiple jobs or, you know, multiple income streams is another
Rah: term.
Rah: I remember hearing many years ago.
Rebekah: It can be, but I don't think that's the whole ball game. Okay. So, uh, it's becoming increasingly popular for people to have more than one job. And we know this, the
Rebekah: statistics outta the US where. Basically they're an economic collapse, for want of a better phrase, means that 50% of Americans have two jobs or more. Um, you've got firefighters who are attending things and then building furniture in the, in their spare time. You know, you've got all of that sort of stuff. But we're also seeing the same sort of thing here in Australia, and I think it's not just driven by economic stuff as it might be in the United States here in Australia.
Rebekah: I think it's about those people that are. Who have many parts to themselves that they want to entertain. So this is an interchangeable, uh, term with wide achiever or generalist, which are hellishly bad terms to
Rebekah: use.
Christine: Aren't they?
Rebekah: I. Or Yeah, exactly. Like high achiever versus wide achiever. Who would want that on their bum? So my personal favorite for this is Multipotentialite because it indicates that you are a person who doesn't have one
Rebekah: true calling. You're in a series of adventures. You are using your baseline skills and applying your values to many different sorts of things that you can do in many different buckets. And what that does is it recognizes that the person is within that. They're creating things that give them skills that elevate not just the one bucket, but all four or five or whatever they're working in. And it also means that all of those people that say, oh, you've got a niche down to be successful, that's not right for everybody.
Rebekah: Niching can be incredibly boring for some people. You know, if
Rebekah: you.
Emily: I love hearing you. say that 'cause that's something I've always butted against.
Rebekah: Exactly.
Rebekah: You know, it's okay for you to
Rebekah: have a diverse kind of creative acumen. It's okay for you to have different points of view, and it's okay for you to actually entertain those things. I mean, I know accountants that are counselors who also do mindfulness training and take photo photographs. Now, they're not going to get the same thrills and the same bells and whistles out of accounting, so why not diversify?
Emily: I've, honestly, I've, I've always been the, you know, it's that concept of the jack of all trades, but master of none. That's very much how I kind of sometimes feel about myself, but I've never been one to the, in the VA world, they always yell at you to niche.
Emily: It's everywhere. The messaging's quite strong about niche down, niche
Emily: down. And I've just always been, but I
Emily: don't, I
Emily: don't wanna, don't wanna, like, that's not, I'm not built
Emily: that way. I don't want to just
Rebekah: and that's, look, that's completely and utterly valuable. I mean, I think to, to be frank, um, saying that everybody should niche down. It's a nice clean branding exercise, but in an inflation crisis, we're second year into an inflation crisis. After I. Covid and all the rest has, has WR economic damage in the year of an election with a budget just to be handed down, niching is actually working against your supply of, uh, business because you're cutting yourself off from other avenues.
Rebekah: Opening that up saves your clients money when you're a VA or when you're a freelancer and those sorts of things. There are. The reasons why these jobs actually exist is because being very good at one thing doesn't help you. Um, take firefighters for example. Being very good at running upstairs and getting someone out of a building is one thing, but what about scaling a rock wall to do a rescue?
Rebekah: What about cutting someone out of a car? What about talking to a kid in a remote area in an aboriginal community, effectively, you know, you have to have a multitude of skills to be able to pull off. The majority of jobs that are out there. So this niching stuff is, is relatively new and I think a little bit counterintuitive to how most people's brains and appetites for work work.
Christine: Yeah,
Christine: and I, and I sort of think too that, you know, if you have your finger in a few different pies, you know one is going to fill your cup more than something else. And so it might be, okay, the one that doesn't fill my cup is gonna put food on my table, for example. Something else doesn't bring. Put food on my table, but you know, I'm building community here or I'm, I am actually fulfilling one of my seven types of rest.
Christine: You know, I might make a card because I need creative rest. It's not going to make me money, much money, but I might sell the cards. But you know, it's filling up different needs in yourself as well. Um, because it is a lot. I mean, we all know that money is incredibly
Christine: important and in small business it's.
Christine: It's also not the be all the.
Rebekah: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean it's about recognizing that, as you rightly put, like we are filling our
Rebekah: cup through other things, but it also
Rebekah: means that. All of this monetization and all this, you know, capitalization of people and commod, commodification of freelancers or workers is a relatively new concept, and it's driven by. Um, a very limited group of people that actually say, you know, this is what we want out of life. We want money, fame, and chicks. Not everybody wants that, right? In the surveys that I've done about the Freelance juggle and other work that I've done on, on, you know, careers and assessment, about 4% of people are driven by a profit motivation. The rest of us are looking for purpose, meaning
Rebekah: connection, uh, keeping our brains from exploding by. You know, entertaining the curiosity. Um, we are driven by the values that we hold, so why not create careers that actually make that possible?
Christine: Yeah. Yeah.
Rah: And that part, the, the main part for me as well is having different areas of. know, being the multipotentialite, which I'm getting better at saying, um, without tripping over my tongue, um, is that it feeds the different part of me that makes me better in the other parts. Because I take the time to dick around and gloom my fingers together while making earrings means that I'm thinking about, you know, a client problem that I'm trying to help fix.
Rah: And that's how it's, that's how I'm working out what the solution is. And it's, yeah, it's really interesting and I'm, I'm was really glad, so an article, um, that sparked our original discussion for yesterday's episode that we were recording, it was, it reminded me of just what that. You know, multifaceted part of, you know, earning money and having joy in your life.
Rah: I was like, yeah, that's exactly what, you know, what the world needs. Especially when, um, like, like I was talking about the olden days of having your job at the bank or you're a teacher and you stick in that job. 'cause that's just what women do and men go and work in the bank or whatever. You know, but then you lose that job because, you know, well Donald Trump's dumping every job anyway.
Rah: Um, but you know, something that you think is a solid career is no longer solid.
Christine: yeah, yeah, yeah.
Christine: There is no
Christine: guarantee in work. No,
Emily: There's no stability anymore. It doesn't matter whether you work for yourself or whether you're in a corporate position. Like, you know, I laugh because my husband's been employed in the same place for 12 years, but I will only ever get 10 years of my own stuff, let alone employment somewhere else.
Emily: So it just doesn't happen. And I always laugh. And you come across people now that I've been there 20 something years, it's
Christine: Yeah. And, and it's a rarity. I mean, they're teaching, you know, when they're doing HSC prep, you know, they're telling parents that your child would, will work in nine different industries across
Rah: Wow. Is that what they're saying now?
Christine: Yeah, absolutely. So what, you know,
Christine: whatever they come out and do following the HSC is really only gonna be what they do to.
Christine: They're 30 ish, that kind of thing. It's only gonna be the first entry thing. Um, so there is no gold watch retirement and like you said earlier, we'll be all working until 105 or something, unless we finally enter lotto and win it. Um, which
Rah: First step is I have to enter lotto if I'm gonna win, and I'm not even passing that first step.
Christine: not, not, not at all.
Christine: So I suppose, um, like I'm gonna attempt the word multipotential light, um, career, but I did read it.
Christine: I read it off the screen, you know,
Rah: We'll practice. We'll practice. Cool.
Christine: We certainly will. What, um, back in your, your expertise, um, and knowledge, what's the, the best way or a good way to decide, um, you know, if you've got ideas to do, um,
Christine: what's a good way to decide which idea to, you know, go ahead with
Christine: which idea you should let go of?
Christine: Um, if we're talking, keeping a couple of ideas.
Rebekah: Um, look, I th I think most of us don't actually set out to have this happen. We are just following rabbits and we follow those rabbits and we end up in places that we don't expect. And I think the first thing to. To think about that is if you are finding that the rabbits are, are leading you astray, it's not a bad thing.
Rebekah: And that we need to get over the fact that we shut people down when that happens. Um, I think also too, you know, it's, it's, there are various different parts of you that wanna explore avenues. I think giving yourself structure and, and actually testing that rather than following flights of fancy is a really good idea. You know, so that o opportunity to actually sit down with your ideas and go. Are you gonna function? Am I gonna look at revenue generation out of this and what do I want to get out of this personally, professionally, and on a values level? And I mean, the other thing that I look at with my stuff, for example, you know, it looks very disparate.
Rebekah: It looks like, okay, I've got firefighting over here and I've got. You know, end of life stuff over here, and I've got freelance jungle over here, and then I've got content writing over here. I have three ways that I work through this, and which is, one, I wanna work in new ways and disrupt old systems. I cannot stand it when someone says to me, oh, that's just the, the way we've always done it.
Rah: Oh,
Rebekah: ha
Christine: yeah.
Emily: my pet
Christine: Uh, yeah.
Rah: Yep.
Rebekah: So it's about breaking that up. So I want
Rebekah: more representation
Rebekah: in disaster roles and making communities more resilient by having representation and seeing people out there with the freelance jungle. I wanna de-emphasize the, the, the money, the prestige, and the popularity so that people feel okay with what they're doing and doing it for their reasons. The next thing that I focus on is I wanna work on access. I wanna see more underrepresented people. In leadership, I wanna see more brown faces, more black faces in boardrooms. I wanna see more queer kids standing up and being counted, and I wanna see definitely more people with disabilities being respected and in leadership roles.
Rebekah: So I work in these sorts of fields because with Girls on Fire, there's regional jobs, it's supplying regional jobs with. Unashamedly creative. It's getting small business. The access that they need to keep going, to create the work that they need to. It's also the end of life work to give the dignity to people at, at their most crucial moment outside of the medicalized environment by enabling communities, and that's the other connection that comes through. Is I. The third thing is I wanna see people more resilient as a result of my work, better community enabled. I want them to be able to look around and go, it doesn't matter if my family was a bonfire or if I've just walked out on my abusive husband, or if I don't know anyone in this town, I can find community and I can connect over shared values and I can use that. To create my job, to create my future, to create my friendships, my relationships, and all the rest of it. And these are the common threads that I look for because I get approached to work on people's projects all the time, and I could say yes to. Any of them, but I must focus my energy where I believe the greatest change is, and that is disrupting those old systems, increasing a access for people that don't generally get it, and also making sure that people are resilient and reliant on their communities rather than isolated at all times.
Emily: That was good.
Christine: That was
Emily: I,
Christine: goosebumps. Seriously, I love.
Emily: I jump at the word disruptor, like I, I laughed. I dunno if I mentioned it to Chris. Sra. But a few weeks ago I spoke to an old boss of mine Um, and he, in his messages to me on LinkedIn, he was saying, I always felt you'd be a very big disruptor of things.
Christine: So obviously, you know, years ago that was the dreadful thing to do was to be disruptive. You know, you must come in, toe the line, you know, do all the, keep your Ps and Qs to yourself kind of stuff. And especially girls. I. You know, don't upset the apple cart. And so I think really it's very important.
Christine: I mean, how the hell is anyone supposed to progress? How are businesses meant to develop and do better if somebody doesn't dis disrupt it? Um, you know, I often like to think, you know, yes, there was one recipe for a chocolate cake a thousand years ago, and then somebody made a second one, which was easier.
Christine: You know, it doesn't make anything wrong. But I tell you what, if you can save some time to get the same end result as in success and whatever that. Success looks like, um, to you? I think disruption is
Christine: incredibly important.
Rah: like lemonade scones when they came on board.
Christine: oh my
Rebekah: Have you guys not had your lunch?
Rah: Yeah.
Rah: Can you tell.
Christine: no. Can you tell? Yeah.
Rebekah: Yes.
Christine: But, but just, but, but seriously, it is important and, and I think as people who, um, who have their own businesses, we disrupted the way we did things ourselves. Um, and, and I know for myself personally, I am so much
Christine: better for the disruption that getting out of the normal working for somebody else and for their goals. Um. I'm, I'm so much better for
Christine: it And working towards what makes me successful, um, as a person and then in
Rebekah: Absolutely. And look, historically what we're actually working with is a model that was developed, um, with factory work in mind. So the schooling system gets a certain level of obedience from you so that you will work in the working systems. And we are outdated by about 150 years, let alone. The whole idea of neurodiversity now being embraced, let alone inclusion of disability, participation through racial equality, well, not even racial equality at this point in time, but changes towards equity and the inclusion of women in, in places where they didn't traditionally. Um, Rome and what that's actually created is we have a situation where work is so out of date that the majority of us can't find the satisfaction we need. So this is part of the reason why we're turning to portfolio careers. It's part of the reason why people freelance. I. Make no bones about the fact that, you know, I've got 6,700 freelancers in the freelance jungle grassroots community itself. The majority of those people have either given up on work because they were bullied, excluded, um, it was unsafe for them because they were a person of color or they were queer and they were in unsafe places. Um, they were not treated, they. Well as a person with disabilities and had to find another way to manage their work, or they were simply women that had children and found themselves on the wrong end of the workforce.
Rebekah: Yeah, exactly. Through no fault of their own, because the system is unsustainably built.
Rebekah: So these sorts of things
Rebekah: that we're seeing even.
Rebekah: That obnoxious term, quiet, quitting. The reason why people are stepping
Rebekah: away from these sorts of traditional 25 year life grab a watch at the end kind of careers is because we're not emotionally supported, intellectually engaged.
Rebekah: We're not financially remunerated well enough and there isn't enough to offer us something. So we are reinventing work on our own level so that we can make up the shortfall, and if anything, I think we should be applauded for it instead of. Always treated by the system as something to be worried about or maligned,
Christine: Yeah.
Christine: Yeah. God, so true.
Christine: Seriously?
Christine: how do you keep across everything? Like, you know, I, I'm, you know, I try to do good. I try to do better, you know, but I still sometimes fail and it's still midnight or
Christine: something, you know, hence why I kicked my foot, obviously. But how do you keep across, you know, so all of this going on. Um, how do you keep across it? What's your go-to tool or, or, or
Christine: what, you know,
Christine: project management tool or what is it? Or you just incredibly organized clearly.
Rebekah: I wouldn't call it organized. I think I, I love my chaos and I enjoy it, and I play with that chaos. I allow myself to actually live in a big playground where I can pick and pull up ideas whenever I feel like it, to functionally work and to make sure boundaries are in place. I. Very simply use Google Chrome with the two profiles so that I've got girls on fire on one side and me on the other for the other projects.
Rebekah: I also use time boxing, which is where I jump onto a certain project for a short period of time in the morning, and then I pull myself out again. Um, I. To make sure that I'm actually keeping myself to concise bursts. So it looks like there's full-time coverage, but there's relatively not what's going on. The other thing that I do is I design everything either in paper or via Asana, depending on the particular project, to make sure that it is a task and a subtask that has priority and they are always short enough to complete. Um. Or I'm starting myself off with words that says Start the document rather than the document,
Christine: The uh,
Rebekah: So all of those kinds of things. So I get my little hit of dopamine. I have what I call a dirty list. I keep a
Rebekah: bunch of 10 minute tasks that I avoid completely in my top drawer. I pull them out. If there's a gap between meetings, I grab the dirty list, I knock off three, put it back away. Job sorted,
Christine: Oh, I like that. I, yeah.
Rebekah: right? I triage everything. Everything is
Rebekah: done in Moscow, which is must, should, could, would, but probably won't. So there's a category and I can look at what I need to do in terms of prioritization. And the last thing that I do is I am extremely T transparent. Right, so I don't bullshit people if things are running late, I just tell 'em what's happening.
Rebekah: I ask questions when I do not understand if I am struggling to set my own deadlines. I use peer pressure by putting up things and going, I'm doing this on Tuesday, so that the fear of failing in front of everyone works to my advantage.
Rebekah: And I only work with people that are values driven, who know what their values are and are similarly minded in getting shit done.
Rebekah: Because if you are with just your wrong kind of Muppet, we all have our little Muppet gangs that we can all hang out with. I have to be with values driven people. If I work with people that are. Uh, built around extrinsic value. So like the money and the prestige and the all the rest of it. It doesn't work for me if I'm working with people that are just like straight out, curious and creative. That also doesn't work for me. I need to be able to center back to values at all times, and I think it's something that we often forget with. Any project that we are doing, we must find that values alignment to be able to be successful because you can weather any storm as long as you've got the same values, but if they're outta kilter, you've got problems.
Christine: Yeah. Yeah. I like that.
Rah: Values are so
Christine: Hmm. And true, they.
Rah: Which is what I talk, I've talked about this so many times on the podcast before in terms of being the very independent piece of, you know, well piece of work that I am, you know, I wouldn't partner up with people willy-nilly. It's gotta, it's gotta feel. Right. Which is how the podcast has come to be because the values alignment, you know, we're on a very similar page, you know, with our own flavor to it.
Rah: Yeah.
Christine: Yeah. Ab,
Christine: absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
Rah: So
Rah: what do you recommend for people who haven't approached the Multipotentialite concept and have something or a few somethings that they're thinking that they could move, you know, into. How do, how do you sort of get started or, you know, top
Rah: ideas of how to work out, whether it's something to work, be really put some more effort into.
Rebekah: Yeah, sure. What I do is the minute I have an idea and it's worth running with, I put it on
Rebekah: pen and paper because I find that's a grounding exercise for me. Um, I've worked with a lot of people that just keep their ideas up here, and until you've. Pull them out of your head and crack them open on a page and given them a bullet point to actually curl around you, dunno what you're dealing with. So that's the first thing that I do with any of this sort of stuff. And the second thing that I do is I, I actually break it down into a little formula, which I'm an ex product manager. So everything that we ever did when we were articulating a feature through to building a large scale product for international.
Rebekah: Usage was to have a look on one page, what the background was, so like you know what the motivation behind the project is, what you're looking at in terms of outcomes and objectives, how you plan to execute, and then what a result will look like for you. And just bullet pointing that out and then going, okay, does this fit with my values or does this fit with the time I have available?
Rebekah: And all the
Rebekah: rest of
Christine: Mm-hmm.
Rebekah: And then planning from there. And I find that that's taught me a really interesting trick, which is also, I don't have oodles and caboodles of time. But I am very good at working in sprints. So if I've done this kind of mapping, I can literally pull the project up and, and just knock a few things off that I need to do, you know? Um, I can be the person that if you give me an hour, I can probably pull six rabbits out of a hat. In various different formats and bring them to you. I work fast because of that ability, but I also make sure that I spend the time to prepare myself, and I think that that's where most of us go wrong. We forget that that planning is not an indulgence.
Rebekah: It's not the incorrect process. It is your groundwork, and I love this story. It's a crime story, but. Clive Small, who was the lead investigator for the Ivan Millett case, actually sat everyone down and said, we have to put all the information that we have about this case into a big fat database and we need all of this information to retrieve.
Rebekah: 'cause they had folders and files and all of this stuff going on. Um, you know, Australia was not on computer with. Policing at that time. So they put this all together and then he made them do it, and everyone else was like, you are wasting time. It took 'em three months and they solved the case the next month because they had the stuff in front of them and they could pull it together, and they identified that it was someone within the Milat family from the fact that they'd gone through that process. Most police officers would probably spend 18 months or more getting to that point if they were just gum
Rebekah: shoeing it. So I think it proves to all of us really, that if you take the time to set up your foundations better, you can do a lot of stuff on top once you've got it done.
Christine: Yeah, yeah, that old. And also there was that, you know, thing about, you know, the successes based, it's 80% of planning before, you know, 20% of the actual work kind of, um, concept. And it's, it's really true. And, and, you know, things can be a slower burn because it requires more planning and thought. Um. And, but it, you know, it's really essential to nut things, nut things out. And I suppose too, it's also a way of identifying what you actually have capacity, um, uh, you know, spiritual, emotional and time capacity to do. It doesn't, and if you choose that, it's not gonna be the project. It's not because it's never gonna be the project, it's just
Christine: not an now project. Um, but yes, at
Christine: least you've also taken that out of your mind, you to clear up your mind for other. Um, important work.
Christine: Oh, I'll beg. This is awesome. Oh my God. I'm loving talking
Rah: know, right? I knew you guys would love her. She's
Christine: yeah. No, you were so
Christine: right.
Rah: know, I know, I know my shit. Um,
Rebekah: Careful of blush and call static.
Christine: Love it.
Rah: I'm looking forward to seeing
Emily: like I could just listen to you talk about this stuff all day and then like I would love to watch you talk to other people about this as well, like just as an observer being like.
Rah: That was my earlier earliest introduction into Beck was when I joined the Facebook group for the Freelance Jungle. And there were the free options for things that I could attend. And you know, I think Becky were at the tail end of using Crowdcast. I think it was. That was when I jumped on.
Rah: Um, and I think you spent the first five minutes swearing at it and going, I'm never fucking using this again. And ever since then you've been using Zoom. Um, which is also a lesson in agility. It's, you know, if something's not working, you move on. But. Every webinar that I've attended, um, whether it's a single session that was all about, you know, how to use rounded 'cause I took on, I learned about Rounded for as a cheaper and better for freelancer, um, alternative to Zero because of the Freelance Jungle.
Rah: Um, and I, um, saw that Beck was putting on a, um, lunch and learn sort of lunchtime hour session of here's how I use it. This is how you can make it work smarter for you and keep tabs on what, where you're faffing. And I was like, fuck, I need that. You know? And so having those live webinars as a single session, or there have been ones where it's like.
Rah: Sign up for eight. I think it might've been, um, you know, for lead generation, here's what we're gonna do, you know, and the way that, um, Beck runs her things and the way that she interacts with everyone and makes sure everyone makes a commitment and is invested. So, you know, no one's wasting their time, um, and getting their value out of it.
Rah: Yeah. Everything that, you know, Beck. Puts out for her communities. Yeah. Sorry, Beck. I am gen probably genuinely making you blush at this point, but Yeah.
Christine: But it's so important to value add,
Christine: like, you know, it's, it's not about, you know,
Christine: coming out and blowing your own trumpet.
Rah: No, 'cause I'll do that
Christine: nor should it be. Well, that's right. But, but, but you know, if you are gonna
Christine: get into somebody's seriously tight diary and they're
Christine: gonna put you in there, whether it's a free event or a paid event, you've, you've got to add value.
Christine: Um, to someone's day, week, month, whatever comes, you know, from it, obviously. And it's so important. I mean, how many, how many things blow across our screen and our bandwidth that is just blowing steam. It takes you too long to read, to get to the crux of, oh shit, there was nothing at all anyway, and you're just wasted 10, you know, an eight minute read of. So, so, um, or we've all, you know, tended something that's like, oh God, you know, I knew that, but it wasn't explained properly, so you didn't know really what you were getting into. It's important just to
Christine: value add Totally. To somebody.
Christine: Yeah,
Christine: Otherwise they lose interest and go somewhere
Rah: exactly. And yeah, the strength of the
Rah: communities that Becca's built Yeah. Is testament to,
Christine: Not beautiful.
Christine: So where do we find the communities be?
Rebekah: Um, you can find the Freelance Jungle primarily on
Rebekah: Facebook, but you can also find it on the web. It's the freelance jungle.com au and there's a Patreon as well, so that it's not just, you know, a project that doesn't get paid. I, I do order, pay what you can afford, model so that there's access for people. Um. Girls on Fire is Girls on fire.com au. or.org au. So it's just changed. Um, and you can see the events that are up there at the moment. And then there's a good death.com au, which is the death literacy stuff, and unashamedly creative.com au. If you need some coaching or if you want some strategy, or if you want to work with me on, um, you know, creating a spark for your business or putting yourself through the, the straps that you need to do to get to those ideas that you wanna do as a multi potential act.
Rebekah: that you wanna do as a multi potential act.
Christine: Fabulous.
Rah: like your Lin Manuel
Christine: You my God. Yes.
Rah: with those
Christine: You've said that before.
Rah: exactly. And side note, you're not mentioning it, but something that I have loved seeing evolve is something called the Freelancer Times and it's basically, it's if the far side or the chaser was created with a freelancer mindset.
Rah: So it's, you know,
Rebekah: Mm.
Rah: I'll make sure I'll put that link in the show notes as
Christine: Oh, definitely,
Rebekah: that's my stress relief so that I don't actually bore my poor partner to death with all of the stories about how it can be crap being a freelancer at times.
Rah: Yeah.
Christine: Yes. Yes.
Rah: like it's only taken 16,000 weeks for this to be approved. Um, you know, kind of like shit that people in our, in our lives would actually not appreciate as much as we would,
Rebekah: Absolutely.
Christine: Yeah.
Rah: Yeah. It's
Christine: Yeah. No, absolutely. Yes. Well. Beck, I've got a question for you. Final question. Unless the ladies need to, um, you know, something else has popped into their mind, but something I do, we have a question that we, um, ask our guests, um, each season. And the one that we're asking this season, 'cause it's always interesting to know, is, um, how very busy.
Christine: Business owners, um, have a day off. And so if you were to have a day off, what would be, well, how, what's the ideal way that you would spend your day off?
Rebekah: Yeah, we, I'm, I'm a regular, have a day off kind of person. I mean, it's, it's a necessity, I think for keeping your ideas generated. Long walk along Ang beach, having a coffee in bed and reading with a pen in my hand for an hour. Um, and then usually heading to the art room or playing with my, my puppy dogs, hanging out with my partner.
Rebekah: We do a lot of things. He's a musician, so we go and see a lot of live music and that sort of stuff. We're just checking out things that are in the ari that are, you know, happening that you can put on a fork or put in a cup, um, or you can put on a dance floor.
Christine: Love it. Yes.
Rah: that out.
Christine: It is. Absolutely. Oh Beck, thank you so much for joining us today. And we're obviously going to put all the stuff in the show links, all the links in the show notes, um, kind of thing so people can find you. Um, but absolutely thrilled. Uh, RA, you weren't wrong. This was awesome. Seriously
Rah: I'm just gonna take all the credit. Yeah,
Christine: you can take the credit.
Rebekah: Thank you very much for having me.
Rah: Thanks everyone. We'll see you next time.
