Rebecca (00:02.188)
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Champagne Lounge Podcast. If you're new to the show, this is where I introduce and interview our fantastic members of the Champagne Lounge about who they are, what they do and why they do it. Today I'm joined by the amazing Susan McGinty. Welcome to the show, Susan.
Susan McGinty (00:19.318)
Thank you, Rebecca. I'm very excited to be with you today.
Rebecca (00:22.58)
It's very, very exciting. I'm excited because your depth of knowledge and the work that you do is fascinating to me. And I'm sure it'll be fascinating to others. But before we dive into what you're doing now, you've only just started doing like your own business in the last few years. So give me a little bit of a background as to what you were doing before that and what started you on your entrepreneurial journey.
Susan McGinty (00:48.278)
Yeah, absolutely. So it's interesting. So I never would have imagined myself to be an entrepreneur. Five years ago, I would never have equated myself with that word, but now I can't think of doing anything else. So when I finished high school, I went to university, studied science. I studied a really specific degree called medicinal chemistry. It was all about drug design.
And I loved it so much and I loved research and I loved generating new scientific knowledge, particularly related to human health and drug design. So I went and did a PhD in drug design. I spent about 10 years in research and then I moved out of research into the defense space. So I joined the public service, worked in defense and I worked in a lot of different science and technical areas there.
working on various policy issues related to defence, related to Australia's international obligations and treaties, and that was a lot of fun. But as I was... Yeah, look, it was complicated, but it was fun because I got to work with amazing people on really important issues internationally and something different every day.
Rebecca (01:50.688)
It sounds very complicated. Your idea of fun and my idea of fun are very different. Ha ha ha.
Rebecca (02:07.62)
amazing.
Susan McGinty (02:07.782)
And I also got to be a little bit creative. And that's really where I learned that actually I really love helping other people develop themselves. And I really love helping people learn and grow. And I love to learn. So, you know, I was always looking for roles that enabled me to learn. And I really, really started to get really passionate about leadership. And I spent a lot of time watching leaders around me figuring out, well, how do I become a great leader? And, you know,
observing the impacts of really great leadership and the impacts of leadership that maybe wasn't that great. So I started, I moved into leadership roles quite quickly in my career in the public service and learned along the way, made lots of mistakes, but I didn't really have any, I didn't have many mentors and I didn't know that I needed to seek them out. But it got to the point where I had a lot of women, science and tech women coming to me saying,
hey, these are my barriers, these are my challenges. And I did a coaching certification. And for me, that was like turning on a light bulb in the dark room, because I just saw the potential for that particular skill set to unlock other people's potential. And so I jumped right into coaching. And so I was working in the public sector. I still, I started kind of coaching professionally. And the women around me were telling me about their struggles, the same struggles I'd had
Rebecca (03:12.814)
Wow.
Rebecca (03:22.754)
Yeah.
Susan McGinty (03:36.174)
fitting into leadership roles, having confidence, knowing how to build leadership skills, what to do, what not to do. And there was a real, I don't know, gap at the time, and there still is in STEM and security spaces around the number of women in leadership roles. And I was doing all I could to get women, mentoring them, coaching them, getting them promoted, but there was this fundamental gap around how do we get more, how do we have...
Rebecca (03:55.843)
Uh huh.
Susan McGinty (04:05.558)
more women? How do we do it on scale? I can't work with every single, you know, person. So I actually, okay.
Rebecca (04:10.6)
If only we could, right? If only we could help as many people one-on-one as possible, but time is finite. Finite.
Susan McGinty (04:16.594)
Exactly, exactly. And I was so passionate about it that I developed, I went away and developed a leadership program for women in STEM and also in the security space. And that's how I really got into business. So I ran my first pilot program in 2019. And so until 2022, really, I was working part time and doing that part time. And then I just realized, oh, this is what I love. I'm so passionate about it. I just have to be doing this.
full time. So about, I don't know, 15, 16 months ago, I jumped riding with both feet, left my corporate job. And here we are, I'm an entrepreneur.
Rebecca (04:54.996)
Yeah, and here we are. Yeah. I think it's pretty phenomenal that you've been able to, and I've got several questions, so I'll try and remember them in order and remember them as we go, but you said that you really struggled to, not struggled, you said you didn't know you had to seek out mentors. And so did you actually seek out mentors? Or do you think something changed so that the people around you coming through under you, the sort of the space,
requiring mentors and the conversation of mentorship had started circling more because you had people coming to you for help and guidance. How did they find you? Does that make sense? How did they know to ask you when you didn't know to ask others?
Susan McGinty (05:34.551)
Yeah.
Susan McGinty (05:38.506)
Yeah, so I think you make a good point actually. There was a lot more conversation happening around mentorship and mentors. And so I started to seek them out, but I wished I'd known that much earlier in my career. And so the people that were coming to me were people that were in my sphere. So they physically could see me every day. So across my organisation, some that worked for me, some that worked in other parts of the organisation.
Some that were referred to me by others that knew me. And so, I also put a lot of effort into building a women's network within the organization that I worked, specifically for and across government, specifically for the women that worked in my STEM area. So that was another way they kind of had access to me. But there actually is, yeah, there's much more awareness now around the really important role of mentoring for women.
Rebecca (06:35.276)
Yeah.
Susan McGinty (06:36.094)
in giving them confidence, ideas and experiences about how they can build their own leadership. But even if it's not about leadership, how they can work towards their goals.
Rebecca (06:46.1)
Yeah, 100%. And for people that are listening going, I've heard what STEM is, but I don't really understand it. Can you give us a little bit of a sort of overview of what actually is STEM when you're talking about it in the way that you are?
Susan McGinty (06:58.154)
Yeah, absolutely, Rebecca. And apologies, I should have done that first up. It must honestly be one of the most used words that comes out of my mouth. So STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. So anything that is in the field of science or technology or engineering or mathematics can be considered STEM. You know, some organizations are science, technology, engineering or mathematics organizations.
Rebecca (07:01.991)
No apology required.
Susan McGinty (07:26.958)
Other organizations have those elements as functions within them. So STEM pretty much touches everything we do now. When you think about how technology kind of really is so integrated into our life. You think about how quickly technology is changing with AI, for example, nothing's staying the same. Technology gives us access to information. It allows us to run our businesses. It provides our finance options.
communications options, and then of course, you know, if you think about engineering infrastructure, it really touches all elements of our life.
Rebecca (08:01.792)
Yeah, it's massive and so important to raise awareness of and have women involved in it, which is really why you're doing what you're doing, right? To be in that space, having more women at leadership levels and leadership roles within development of varying different programs, technologies, and all those things. I'm curious, your entrepreneurial journey, I know you and I chatted about this, and I think at the time we were drinking champagne, where you decided...
that actually you were gonna jump in full time into your business. And you were sort of having that conversation around how you were gonna go leaving a steady, solid income that was a salaried income into doing things solo. So if a listener's listening now going, yeah, I've got an idea, but I'm in a salaried job. And I really quite like the cushiness of that, but it's not fulfilling me anymore. What were the things going through your mind that went,
Susan McGinty (08:54.529)
Yeah.
Rebecca (08:57.908)
just go for it like how did you navigate that and how did you navigate that with your partner as well?
Susan McGinty (09:02.154)
Yeah, absolutely. There's such good questions. They're really fundamental things we have to think about and plan for. And I advocate people to think carefully, make a plan, which is what I did. I mean, it might work if you've got if you've got money, a bit of money behind you, you can jump straight in, you've got the space for that. That's lovely. But I didn't have that. So I had to, I probably knew about 12 months before I left my corporate job that that's actually what I really wanted to do. I wanted to leave.
And so I had to build up the financial runway, which I managed to do within the part-time capacity in which I was working in my business. There are a couple of other things involved though. So my husband was really supportive, really supportive of me doing this work. And he saw how much I loved it. He also saw the potential in the business. He left his...
job during COVID. So because I was working full time as well as running the business part time and I was actually, you know, really, really stretched. We also had two kids and they were being schooled. So he left his job to support us as a family so that I could keep focus on the business while I had to be working full time.
Rebecca (10:17.624)
So you made this decision as a sole breadwinner of the family almost.
Susan McGinty (10:22.506)
So we were dual income and then we decided to go one income because I earned a bit more and the business was part-time, you know, building up money. That would then be like, yeah, our opportunity. When we got to a certain, we set like a financial goal. And when we got to that in the bank, the business account, then I'd likely be able to leave. And we'd kind of thought it might be
Rebecca (10:24.885)
Yeah.
Susan McGinty (10:51.262)
you know, towards the end of 2022. And in early 2022, I was, you know, working my job. I'd actually gone to three days a week at that point. So I could do the other four days a week in my business.
Rebecca (11:04.792)
I love that you've gone straight into, no joke, seven days a week working. Like that's the reality. It's the reality of building a business whilst having a full-time job, right?
Susan McGinty (11:08.518)
Also, yeah, but what?
Susan McGinty (11:13.758)
Yeah, so I was working seven days a week from pretty much the beginning of, well, yeah, early 2019. Yeah. As I was doing both. Yeah. So we, I came and I came home one day and I said to my husband, I don't think I can do this much longer. Just because like my job was good, it was great. I worked with amazing people. I was pretty lucky to have a job, have the job that I had, but it wasn't fulfilling me. And actually,
Rebecca (11:24.545)
Yeah.
Susan McGinty (11:42.706)
I just really wanted to jump into the business full time because that's where my purpose and passion lay. And so we decided, okay, into the financial year, that's what we'll do. And the financial year came and I left and we had the buffer that we needed. And yeah, so that's how it happened. But there was a lot of planning that went into that. And yeah, it was a courageous decision. A lot of people...
around me was saying, Oh, you know, it's great that you've got this business, but how can you leave a solid, reliable, steady income? And what I actually said to a lot of them was actually, it's not courageous of me to leave, it would be more courageous of me to stay because to me, leaving just felt so natural and that there was just such a strong pull to it. That's it to stay, I would have needed to be really brave to stay.
Rebecca (12:39.76)
Yeah, and it's, I've seen you go through that journey and come out of it and you're right, you don't want to be in a space and no matter what space, whether it's a business, whether it's a job, where it's a constant grind to get up and do it every day where you've got to actually, you know, psych yourself up to go in and do the job or do the role. So yeah, so you couldn't have done this alone, right? Like I know you and I met through
Susan McGinty (12:53.016)
Yeah.
Susan McGinty (12:58.134)
Yeah, absolutely.
Rebecca (13:04.928)
Um, a mentoring, uh, mastermind we've, you know, the power of community, which we talk about in the champagne lounge a lot is absolutely massive. And I would say has been pretty integral to you being able to navigate this whole new direction of your world. What has being part of a community of like-minded people meant to you in that space and how have you actually utilized it and asked for help along the way?
Susan McGinty (13:27.306)
Yeah, look, you make such a good point. I could not have done this by myself. And so I knew that I needed a community and I was really lucky that I found the community I found. And it has been integral to my ability to build a business because I knew about my content, I knew about STEM, I knew how to teach leadership. You've got a master of leadership, but I didn't know how to run a business. I didn't know the first thing about all the elements of running a business. And...
You know, some of them, you know, can be can come quite organically and you can, you know, get the accountant and you can get the marketing person, etc, etc. But there's so many things that I had to learn around just getting really clear on what my, what my value proposition was. And then how do I think about telling people about that? How do I make it something that they understand they need?
Um, me knowing that I've got a great product or service to sell is one thing, but being able to communicate that to other people. So that was something that I've really learned a lot from our community. Um, but a lot around the, you know, the, the support mechanisms, um, that came from that amazing community that we have, Rebecca, you know, on the down days, people to kind of pick me up, people to say, Hey, have you tried this? So here's something I'm doing right now. It's working really well. Why don't you give it a try in your business? Um, but also the, um, the mindset.
because when you're a solopreneur, it can be pretty challenging. I'd always worked in teams and I'd run teams and I always had very smart people around me. And so I never had a problem I couldn't solve. And I never had to, I never had to solve a problem myself. I could if I chose to, but mostly I would choose not to because I like to get other people's perspectives and I get so much energy out of working with other people. So for me, working by myself was a challenge.
Rebecca (15:05.645)
Yeah.
Susan McGinty (15:16.522)
And so knowing that, you know, there's people on the end of the phone that I can just call and have a chat to, I've got this idea, can I just test it out on you? That was really valuable. So that's something I've really tapped into. But I like learning from learning from the people in that community, not just about their own journeys, but about, you know, like how they celebrate life. You know, something I've learned from you, Rebecca, and we've talked about this is.
Rebecca (15:25.732)
Mm.
Susan McGinty (15:43.606)
you know, living each day to its fullest and really, you know, getting everything out of life. So that's been really valuable to me and the friendship and the support and knowing that, you know, if I'm having a bad day, there's someone there who's had just as bad a day, if not worse, and they're there to support me and pick me up.
Rebecca (16:02.141)
Yeah, definitely. It's the whole thing of community for me, you know, if we summed up in a sentence there and described all of what you just said, you're not lonely in it, right? Like you say, you're not alone. You're not feeling lonely in it. There's someone to call. There's someone who's been there through it before and can pull you up through the outside. And I think, yeah, the amount of things you can learn from others in just a conversation can be super powerful, super powerful. Yeah.
Susan McGinty (16:23.758)
Oh, absolutely. And I guess, you know, the most important thing for me is I'm surrounded by inspiring, incredibly smart, incredibly successful women. And so that motivates me every day.
Rebecca (16:39.224)
Yeah, yeah. You mentioned there that you, you know, through me, through our conversations, through celebration with the women in that mastermind, you took on, at the beginning of starting your business, you took on my champagne and post-it notes theory, which was way pre-the-champagne-lounge starting, and it's something that I've done in my business since the get-go, so to see you do that was just phenomenal. And you've celebrated some amazing goals in doing that, in terms of winning, you've had awards on those post-it notes, you've had some...
Susan McGinty (16:53.306)
Bye!
Rebecca (17:08.052)
revenue goals on them. What are the things that you're putting on your post-it notes as a starting up business that you go, these are my goals and this is what I wanna smash? I can obviously you celebrate them with champagne at the moment, but are there any other things that you do to celebrate your achievements as you go?
Susan McGinty (17:24.99)
Yeah, look, so I celebrate them. I guess I celebrate the little achievements as well. So the end of the day, just with my family, hey guys, this happened today. This is really awesome. Like, let's give me a high five because it was really cool. I give myself like many high fives along the way. You know, yeah, we'll just go out to, we'll go out to a nice restaurant because it's worth celebrating. So on top of the, you know, on top of or alongside of or instead of the champagne, if it's something that's not on the champagne bottle, sometimes I'll just grab a bottle of champagne and stick a sticky note on it.
and that's mine to open. Yep. But yeah, like you said, like revenue goals, I've hit, I've got others there still with bigger revenue goals that I haven't quite hit yet. I had, yeah, some awards on there. I had, you know, a certain number of speaking events. I had a book earlier in the year that was on there. And there's a few remaining from this year that I haven't yet been able to open. And...
Rebecca (17:54.869)
Just so you can do it. Yes.
Susan McGinty (18:23.278)
Yeah, they'll go over into next year probably and that's just fine.
Rebecca (18:23.296)
Yep, that's okay though.
That's okay. I've had a few in my fridge for a while. You know, like they're big goals that aren't necessarily going to be achieved in 12 months, but over time they do happen. Yes.
Susan McGinty (18:38.986)
Yeah, and yep, just love popping those champagne bottles.
Rebecca (18:42.216)
Yes, I love it. So in terms of, you know, community you've jumped into, we're still in the mastermind together, still definitely building that with the community that we've built. And for me, the Champagne Lounge, as you know, because you've seen me build it from scratch, because you've were in the same mastermind, you've watched me do it from scratch. It's that whole piece of bringing together different communities and different people from different walks of life without the need to learn anything. What is it about being part of this community that you love so much?
Susan McGinty (19:11.45)
oh, look, the diversity is one of the things that you just identified that's so important. You know, I don't mind being surrounded by people who do similar things to me, but actually I like more importantly to be surrounded by people who do different things to me because I mean, I can't help but wanna learn. So just by having conversations with them, I'll learn. And they bring fresh perspectives and actually.
They're just incredible women who are building their own businesses on their terms. And so I've always got something to learn from them. And whether they're like a multimillion dollar business, or they're just about to make their first hundred thousand, it doesn't matter to me. Like I just love listening to their journey. I love listening to their passion. So that diversity really is what's really, really rewarding for me.
Rebecca (19:57.644)
Yeah, amazing. I love that. And I'm sure people are listening to this podcast and hearing your story and having conversations with you as well inside the lounge that are equally going, wow, that's like inspired me to try something different and do something new. And as you say, lead into something without having the courage to stay. I think I'm gonna take that away. It's the courage to stay and you left that and you took a leap of faith and backed yourself, surrounded yourself with the right people and your smashing goals, which I think is
Absolutely phenomenal. Susan, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I know there's some beautiful resources in terms of leadership, in terms of the STEM work that you do, all those elements I'm gonna stick into the show notes because they're all valuable resources that anyone listening right now wants to dive into a little bit more into Susan's world and what she does. Can you click on those links and find out more? But I've thoroughly enjoyed having you on the show. So thanks for joining me.
Susan McGinty (20:51.138)
Thank you, Rebecca. I had a fabulous time talking to you and I look forward to seeing you in person soon.
Rebecca (20:56.408)
You will indeed. Amazing, look at us.
