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Verity, can you please share a little bit about yourself?

“So, I’m a very small part of a very complex, accidental business. Essentially we are an active collaboration platform designed to support the wives and partners of tradies in the daily management of their businesses.

It started as business support, like being able to find a great accountant or a web designer or learn how to hire an apprentice in the trade. But through its development and through the changes of the trade industry over time, there's a big mental health issue within the tradie industry that's really come through from the group.

A lot of the time the women bear the brunt of dealing with everything that's going on in the household, whether it be with the business, their partner, their family. So the group has become a safe space to get support. And, know that there are other people with similar challenges.”

How do you define your ambition?

“I think the key is finding the balance between the three elements. It's setting realistic goals and also understanding that it's not the business 100% of the time. It's really finding that balance of family life, looking after yourself, because I really feel those things sort of flow into your business and where there's something missing or something not right within you.

I really feel like your business knows that. I think the key is finding the balance between those three elements, which really helps your business to thrive.”

Is there a piece of advice that you would give for anyone who's looking to maintain boundaries between business and personal life?

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“It's really hard having those boundaries when you're working together in business, particularly if it's something that you're quite passionate about. It's hard to stop talking about it and have those boundaries in place. But I think for us personally, what's worked is respecting each other's roles and trusting the other one to get their specific role done. It is playing to their strengths and things that they enjoy and not encroaching on each other's roles in the business.

Also, if you can, this is really difficult but setting work hours. Saying okay, we'll work from this time to this time and then after that we don't discuss the business and we will just talk about it within those hours, which is very, very difficult. “

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