Episode 37: Business Lessons From My Late, Great Father
In this very special tip episode, Fiona honors her late father by sharing one of her favorite lessons from him that she still applies to her business today. Get to know a little bit about Fiona’s wise dad and how he has influenced her and the people around him to look at life with more positivity and less worry about things we have no control over. Listen now and we hope you enjoy this special episode of My Daily Business Coach podcast.
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction [0:58]
Remembering Fiona's Dad [1:14]
His Best Advice [9:50]
What Are You Worried About Right Now? [13:28]
Conclusion [16:00]
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Episode transcript:
Welcome to Episode 37 of My Daily Business Coach podcast.
So today I'm coming to you with a little bit of a different sort of tip episode. I mean, it's still a tip and it's still relevant to anyone running a small business. But it's also perhaps a more personal episode. It is a more personal episode for me.
So this past Saturday was the 10th of October and the 10th of October was my dad's birthday. He passed away unexpectedly at the very end of 2019, and at the time he was living in a nursing home and his health was deteriorating. But right up until he passed away, literally hours before he passed away, he was still his very optimistic self. He is a very soulful, spiritual, inspiring and incredibly intelligent person.
He was one of my all-time favourite people to be around. And today I wanted to share something that he used to always tell me. It's a tip of sorts. And it's helped me immensely in my life and in starting and scaling my own small business. So bear with me today. I might have a shaky voice. I might get a little emotional. It is less than a year since he left us. And I found myself many, many, many, many, many times this year with everything 2020 has brought with it, the challenges like lockdown and the bushfires and all the climate change conversations and all the power and corruption and the immense devastation that we're seeing. And also on the flipside, all the great stuff that I personally have gone through this year. You know, some of the amazing client breakthroughs that I've been able to witness, my book coming out, my group coaching starting again, the Facebook group. I've had a lot of good things as well as negative things.
I think I found myself many, many times wishing that I could just chat to my dad, that I could just that I could have a little bit of his wisdom and that kind of wisdom that only comes with age and that comes with experience. And I really, really miss that. I hear it in my voice. He was an incredibly wise, wise, wise man. And, you know, not just intelligent like book intelligent. He had a Masters. And he read, he just read voraciously, but he was also a very wise man. I definitely think there's a difference between intelligence and wisdom. And he was both of those. And I miss him every single day.
So before I get too emotional, let's get into today's tip episode and find out what pearl of wisdom that he shared that I think will help you in your business journey.
So like I said, my dad and I were pretty close and up until his unexpected passing a few days before 2019 came to a close, he was a really central character in my life and someone I turn to regularly for advice. Now, my mom passed away very suddenly in 2017, and after that, dad was left by himself in the house. And I would make a point to phone him every single day. And I spent a lot of time at his house after that happened. And I eventually, you know, after a certain amount of time, I helped him sell his house. And together with my siblings, we were able to find him a spot in a private nursing home not far from where I live. And he had his own suite and it was really nice. And for the first time ever, you know, he didn't have to lift a finger. He had people doing his washing and ironing and, you know, all his meals were prepared and had a glass of wine with lunch and dinner every day. And he had all these great things around him. And he was content and he was waited on hand and foot. And he really appreciated that kind of relaxation later in life.
So dad didn't have the easiest life. He was toddler in the time of World War II. He was born and he grew up in Bray, which is a seaside town outside of Dublin. And it was cold and was harsh and climate. And he would often look at later in life when I told people, oh, my parents are from Bray, they'd like I'll be so beautiful. And Dad would be like, well, it certainly wasn't when I was growing up. So he grew up in this, you know, sort of small town. Everyone knew everything. There was very much a division between Protestant and Catholic. And he grew up in that. He also grew up deaf. He was deaf for a certain period of his childhood. And he actually was one of the first people to work with a revolutionary doctor at the time in Ireland who did kind of an experimental surgery and was able to cure him of the deafness.
But because of being deaf, he didn't make friends when he was growing up in his early childhood. And he devoted a lot of his time to reading because that's where he found pleasure from. And that's definitely something he passed on to us when he was 14, he witnessed his father die in front of him. And then from that point on, his mother, whose parents would have been chemist, and his mother was forced to turn their home in Bray into a bed and breakfast to make money to keep the family afloat. And so my father and his two brothers, one was 10 years younger than him and one was 11 months older than him. They would have to work on their B&B.
So Dad would wake up with his elder brother around four or five a.m. the morning they would work, they would prepare the food for the guests. They had food that they they planted out the back and they would do a whole lot of work on the house and working with their B&B. And they worked with them. And then from that point on, so he'd go for work on the business with his mum. Then he'd go to school and then he'd come home and he'd work again until, you know, lights out bedtime.
And at 17, he moved out of Ireland. He did his last few years at school. He combined them into a shorter period so that he could get through school quicker and be able to make money to be able to help his mum. So at 17, he moved to the UK and he was working in a bar in Shoreditch in London, and he used a fake letter that said he was 21 to be able to work there. And by 18, he was off to see and he worked his way up in the sea in the Merchant Navy from literally the lowest rung through to captain. And he sent every pay packet back to his mum in Ireland. And this was to help his younger brother get through school. As I said, he was ten years younger than my dad. So he was only seven when my dad left. And his other brother had left already to go and work in New York and again send money back. So he spent the next 30 years at sea while also raising a family and, you know, providing as much help as he could to his mother and his his brothers. His mother died tragically before I was born, and he then shipped four young kids. So I was the youngest of four. We moved out to Australia when my eldest brother was six. So four of us under six. And he moved the kids, you know, myself, my siblings and his wife off to Australia where we knew absolutely nobody. And he was told in no uncertain terms that if he had stayed in the UK because we were living in England by then as an Irish Catholic, he would not be promoted. So he was doing you know, he is doing reasonably well and a university there working on maritime engineering and safety. But he was told that as an Irish Catholic, you won't be promoted.
And it's bizarre now, it's really bizarre to consider that. But at the time, in the late 1970s and early 80s, there was still a lot of racism towards the Irish, the IRA, and the belief that the Irish were inferior in some way. And so he applied for two jobs, one in Canada and one in Australia. And he got them and he thought Australia might be a good option. It was a long way from everything, and it was a beautiful climate, good quality of life. So we moved here and dad worked various jobs. And in the end he was doing shift work at Port Melbourne Authority. So it was kind of like an air traffic controller, but for ships. And he would work 12 hour at 6am to 6pm or 6:00 pm. to 6:00 am.
And he would work a certain amount of days straight and then he'd have time off and then he'd work again. And that often changed up his hours so that he would go from working nights to working days and back tonight. He did this work, I guess, to really help my siblings and I get everything that we needed.
My mom also worked shift work. She was a psychiatric nurse. And so sometimes my parents would just be like ships passing in the night and they really had their work. And then everything else was their devotion to us getting us through school, sitting down with us every night to do our homework, taking us out for bike rides, taking us camping. They were just very focused on the family. And then also the work came into it as a way to support that family.
So Dad's health was never great. You know, since his early 50s, he suffered multiple heart attacks, he survived cancer in his early 70s. He had an aneurysm. He suffered a few strokes. And towards the end of his life, he found it very difficult to walk or do anything like that.
But despite all of this and I guess this is where I'm coming to today's episode, he was one of the most optimistic people I have ever met. If not the most optimistic person. And when I asked my dad and I asked him many times in my life, you know, why are you so eternally positive about things? You know, you've gone through so much and your life has been hard, very hard. You know, why are you so upbeat all the time?
And his response was always, what's the alternative? Worry about things you can't control? And he really meant that. It wasn't a flippant statement. He would literally say, well, what is the alternative? The alternative is to sit and dwell and to think, "Oh, poor me. Look at all these things that have happened to me.".
I can't control those things that have happened. All I can do is control my reaction to them and control what I do in the next hour and the next day. In the next week. The next month. So when running a small business, worry comes with the territory. It's absolutely part and parcel with running a small business, but it doesn't have to overwhelm or paralyse us.
And I know that this is a particularly hard thing to grasp right now with everything that's going on in the world. And to the small business owner, particularly here in Melbourne, where we are still in lockdown and we are entering our seventh month where we're in some sort of serious restricted movement ability if that even makes sense. But we have been in lockdown for most of the year. And I get that I'm not trying to flippantly say don't worry about anything, but I really want to say what good does worrying do?
worries go out of control and let us spiral into thinking about the absolute worst outcome? Now, worry looks different for different types of people and different types of businesses. I've had clients who haven't sent off an email for months, even though they know it would really help them move their business forward out of worry about what the response might be and might come.
As you know, I've had students who've done my course or who've come to a workshop and they've haven't made a start on the business idea, even as a side thing, even as to sort of a test, because they're worrying about what will happen when it gets too big for me to handle. And it's say it's not going to get too big. It's not going to go anywhere. If you don't even make a start and in my own business, I'm worried about all sorts of things. You know, this year in particular, I worried about things like, is anyone going to buy my book? Is the book even going to be published? Will I get, you know, the right people into the group coaching programme or how am I going to work with kids at home and my husband at home and a baby that doesn't sleep? And I've been there and I've worried. And I'm not saying worrying at all is wrong or we should sugar coat things, because I think that is also detrimental. But I do think that sometimes we can let ourselves go down a well of worry.
We can dwell on the negative and we can create these elaborate stories when in reality, the truth is we often don't know what's going to happen. I didn't know what's going to happen with my book. And, you know, it's done really well. I didn't know what was going to happen with this podcast and I let me be worrying about it stop me from launching this years ago when I bought the intro track. You know, one of my favourite singers to listen to is the great Mavis Staples. And side note, if you have not watched the documentary, Mavis, definitely check it out. I think it's on Netflix, but add it to your list anyway. One of her songs is called]Ain't No Doubt About It. And in that, the chorus reads:.
Sometimes I get so worried.
Then I don't know what to do.
But all the things I worry about.
Very few of them come true.
And it's true. It's not just a good song. It's great lyrics that are true. When you look back at the things that you worried about a year ago or two years ago or five years ago, in my case, when I started this business, you had all these worries about even would it go anywhere? So many of those things that I that have worried about or that perhaps you worried about a year ago, two years ago, either didn't happen at all or they happened. But to a far lesser extent than you or I had imagined.
So my tip this week is really to take a minute and ask yourself, what am I worried about right now?
Right now, what are my biggest worries? And not even biggest, but just what are those niggly thoughts? What are my worries? And then get the piece of paper and write all that stuff down, you know, take a few minutes to seriously look after you've written it down to look at every single item on that list and then ask yourself, could taking action alleviate this worry?
You know what's stopping me from taking action on this? Is this item really worth worrying about? And then thinking, you know, is it going to matter in five years from now? What's the best that could happen if maybe I change my mindset about each item? And again, I'm not saying, "Oh, my gosh, you know, there's nothing to be worried about." I mean, we're living in a global pandemic. Businesses are shutting left, right and centre. I'm not for a minute saying that you shouldn't have things to worry about, but perhaps some of the things that are on your worry list aren't necessarily worthy of your energy.
So my dad had an insane number of health issues over the past 30 years, really. He was in his early 80s when he passed away. And his first heart attack, I think, happened in his early 50s. And as we were, as it sounds, I often think that part of the reason he survived all of these health issues for so long was because of the way he thought about life. He was determined to see the positive in events and in people and in his day-to-day living. Even on the day that he died, he was up and he was having coffee and reading the newspaper and chatting to people, as he did every single day. He read the newspaper back-to-back every single day.
And my siblings and I, we were fortunate enough to be able to see him and sit with him until he drew his last breath. And when we arrived at the nursing home, the nursing home staff who were great said they were almost kind of shocked at how peaceful he seemed, how he knew what was happening. And he was okay with that. He was content. And I think as crazy as it might sound to be talking about this on a business podcast, my dad left the world the same way that he lived with it.
He was calm. He was content. He tried as often as he could to see the positive and not dwell too long on the negative or worry about things that he had no control over. And maybe if we could all do that to even just a little more, our business and our life would host far fewer worries.
So instead of worrying right now, consider, is this really worthy of my energy to be worrying about this? And what's the best that could happen? And I know, I know I know that this may be hard for some small business owners listening right now for whom this year has presented one challenge after another. But really, take a minute to consider what you can control and how your worries are serving you, if at all. So that is it for today's tip episode.
I know it's a bit of a heavy one. It's very different to my normal upbeat episodes that you might be used to. And if this is your first time listening, you know, this is not a standard episode. You know, don't be worried that I'm gonna get deep sad each time. But I thought I'd honour my dad as it has just been his birthday. And I'd also share some of the wisdom that I was lucky enough to get from him with you. So thank you for listening.
Thanks for listening to My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram at @mydailybusinesscoach.
