CAROL JOY & JACQUIE AGNEW INTERVIEW

Carol & Jacquie are the co-founders of Pro Talent Sports, a for-women, by-women football agency for top-level and rising-star women footballers

Jacquie was the founder of Lewes FC Women, and during her twelve-year tenure as first team manager, the team won seven trophies, including two as league champion.

Prior to her involvement with Lewes FC, where Carol raised significant sponsorship income for Lewes FC Women for the first time by encouraging local businesses to support the town's rising women's team, Carol co-founded and ran a successful management consulting business.

The Journey

while I couldn't honestly say there was something I did, I certainly recognised something that I wanted to do when I met it… keeping an open mind is slightly the opposite of living your dreams, because I didn't have any [dreams], but be ready to take signals that come in from outside from people who inspire you; take up some signals that might lead you somewhere that you hadn't thought of before. 

Finding Your Strength

I think part of the open mind is also knowing yourself and finding out where your strengths really lie because in the end, they will probably satisfy you.  It's a paradox because you think you're only going to be satisfied by achieving the thing you want, but actually, be satisfied by being good at something and successful because you're good at it. 

The Cultivators

I'm a cultivator, so I love to build things from scratch and I like to sew, to cultivate, to harvest, but primarily, I look at the environment around me, similar to what we do in the marketplace, and I go, okay, how can we build this in a way that we can add value to what we're trying to do. 

The Ribbon of Life

… life is too short when you look at your ribbon, and you need to be able to maximise whatever time you've got, doing whatever you do, to the best that you can do it.

DG

Thanks so much for being able to have a chat, having the time and thanks for your patience and rearranging once, so thank you very much for that.

I've chatted to you guys obviously at conferences and things that we've put on and I've really enjoyed our conversations.  I’ve been thinking about this idea of a careers talk that I gave about how to get into the sports industry and how to do the things that you want to do and engage your passions or your curiosities and I'm sure it's the same with you guys in that quite a lot of people ask you how to be a football agent and how do you get into other specific sectors, if it's music or tv or sports or fashion or whatever else it might be, and so I've been writing over the last year or so a sort of how-to manual, a relatively short’ish book, just around some of the things that have helped me  practically which could then maybe apply for other people as well.

In a way, what I didn't want to do is just live within my own echo chamber of the things that work well for me and instead to go out into the wider market of people that I've enjoyed speaking to just to hear some of your experiences and life experiences around a few different topics.

I'm not sure if you saw the calendar invite which contained a few of the ideas and thoughts that I had around those type of areas, and I'm going to stop talking in a second you'll be pleased to know, but it's really just to gain your understanding and your stories on a few different areas.

The one thing that I always say people must say to you is, ‘oh, I really want to be a football agent or I want to get into football or sports because I love watching the game and I love doing this, etc’, but what people have a harder time doing is then converting that curiosity or that passion into something which is a bit more substantive.  The way that I usually say it, which I know you guys have embraced in lots of different ways over the years, is, to build your knowledge and build your network accordingly, so I'd just be really interested to hear if that's been a conscious thing or if that's been an unconscious thing, if that's something you've learned, if that's something that's just been ingrained in you, or that's been taught to you from other people; how have you gone about doing that over the period of your working lives?

CJ

I'll kick off with an observation, rather than answer, if that's all right with you Daniel, and that observation is that when I read what you were trying to achieve, it seemed to me that there was a kind of underlying assumption or premise that life is a bit of a production line in that you start with this passion and this drive and this ambition to get to a goal and then there's some building work to be done, a sort of process where materials have to be applied in a certain way and you will end up with the product that you set out to achieve. 

It all seemed quite a rational thing and you were simply asking us for the building blocks for the construction, but I have a slightly more random view of life; I think stuff happens and part of what you can do is complement it, or not, by what happens externally, so there's this complex interplay with the things that you control and can work at, and I think that's what you're emphasizing, but the bit that's missing in my mind is the external things that happen to you, good, bad, or ugly, life is a bunch of different things and if you're going to take advantage of them, somehow if you're not born with an ability to recognize opportunities, it's great to put yourself in the way of people who will help you say ‘this is an opportunity, why don't you…’.

If you're not very good at anything and you don't really know where you're going, it's often external things that happen to you or people you meet that give you ideas and give you inspiration, so I start with this sort of an answer which says, it's a bit of a mixed bag life, it's not a linear conveyor belt where you just pick up tools and materials as you go along and, in the end, you get where you actually wanted to get to right at the beginning; I certainly didn't do that in my life.  Anyway that was just an observation and I'll take a step back so that Jacquie can reply.

DG

Can I just ask briefly on one thing, Carol, just while you've got your momentum, because I was really interested before Jacquie comes in on that last comment, which is how things haven't worked out that way in your life to a degree.  Now, with obviously going into particular things that you feel comfortable going into, I completely agree and I'm really interested in that whole thought of how you can plan and prepare for certain things, but then life gets in the way and throws you lots of different curveballs to take you in lots of different directions, positive, negative, whatever else it might be, but what you talked about which I was really fascinated about was almost this idea of a growth mind-set which  a lot of people have written about, two brilliant  female authors, Carol Dweck and Angela Duckworth, that I'd really recommend, and they talk about that positive mind-set of how when you think about yourself, that you're not defined by your failures and you're not defined by the things that necessarily go wrong, but you're always trying to control the things that are within your control to make the best out of what might sometimes be negative situations, I guess.

So, going back to your question about life going like this, and not a line like this, how have you coped with, in a positive way, trying to establish that growth mind-set and that idea of almost preparing for the unexpected?

CJ

I'm not entirely sure I can answer that with a ‘how to do it’ answer.

I echo your views which I either read about or heard you speak about on a podcast and I echo the views that say ‘be thirsty for knowledge’ effectively and ‘cultivate an inquiring mind’, ‘put yourself in the way of opportunities by keeping an open mind and talking to a lot of people’ because I've certainly found in my life that I've kind of bumped into people.  I know it's common wisdom to say you make your own luck but I feel I've genuinely been lucky.

I had no idea what I was going to do when I left university.  I was a generalist, I still am a generalist but I was at university just before Britain entered the common market; remember the common market, it was a long time ago.  I've met people there and I had no idea why I was in there, other than I had been selected to be an intern from university graduates in the first year of Britain's membership.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I met some fantastic people there who really inspired me because they were visionaries.  I wasn't a visionary, but I met people who had something that I thought was immensely satisfying to them.  It's high ideal stuff.  After the war, obviously the common market was set up to keep peace in the world, not to protect fishing rights, but I met people who had vision and they were absolutely driven and motivated and I thought, wow, this is really something special, what drives them forward?

I didn't have any of that myself and out of that, I started building a working relationship with a lot of those kind of people.  I got motivated myself, so while I couldn't honestly say there was something I did, I certainly recognized something that I wanted to do when I met it and so I think, coming back to the beginning, keeping an open mind is slightly the opposite of living your dreams, because I didn't have any, but be ready to take signals that come in from outside from people who inspire you, take up some signals that might lead you somewhere that you hadn't thought of before.  Those things happen randomly to everyone all the time, but if you're focused very solely on that linear pathway to get to your driven ambition because you're passionate about football, sport, music or whatever, you'll only have to work out what the steps are and you'll get there, because success and rewards come from all sorts of other situations.

Anyway I'll stop there.

DG

Jacquie, any thoughts from your side?

JA

I guess I started out in a very competitive family set which I guess then led to all the different things that I've done in my life.

Primarily I've been in a sales environment, so you're only as good as your last sale, etc, and that has given me a plethora of skills over the years that I've been able to transfer into a passion, which happens to be football, and I guess that competitive nature that I have has been harnessed.

It's not always been something that has always got the results that I wanted, especially in the football world, so I've had to learn as I go and adjust accordingly and to think about how the environment around me is changing.  You have to apply different tools and techniques and things like that, so I'm a little bit more the opposite of Carol, which is probably why we work quite well because our minds are thinking in different ways and then there is a common value that we both share, which is kind of why we work so well together.

I think my ethos has always been to win more than you lose, so in that sense, throw yourself into as many scenarios and situations as you can that can give you that personal growth, but I analyse the risk first and then I might be a little bit more tentative in terms of the way I go into it, whereas Carol's the opposite; I think she just has a look and then throws herself into something.  

I learn as I go along and then what I do is, I either detach things that are no good to me or I attach things that are good to me in that situation or in that given moment.

You’ll probably laugh, but I'm a cultivator, so I love to build things from scratch and I like to sew, to cultivate, to harvest, but primarily, I look at the environment around me, similar to what we do in the marketplace, and I go, okay, how can we build this in a way that we can add value to what we're trying to do.  So, that's me really, I'm a builder.

CJ

If I could just briefly follow one of those points on what Jacquie said in that last contribution about what kind of person she is; she's very competitive and I think one of the other things, apart from keeping an open mind, that I would want to suggest to younger folk is to know yourself.  I mean it's really important that you know who you are and what you're good at because sometimes what you're good at will actually make you successful.  In Jacquie's case, it clearly has.  She's highly competitive and doesn't let go.  She's very dogged.  If you're someone who isn't quite sure what you're good at, other people will tell you.  It's very good to ask other people what your skills are, not what your qualifications are, that's very easy, but what your talents are.

I think women are very good at certain types of leadership and I think other people will tell you whether you're achieving things by a non-traditional route.   Jacquie's someone who leads from the rear; she's been a football manager for how many years Jacquie?

JA

A few, yeah.

CJ

If you look at the tributes… suddenly someone putting tributes up to you on Facebook Jacquie, I don't know whether you've seen them, saying that everything had to be better than just okay and that the people you managed would have walked through walls for you, but that doesn't sit in a textbook.  You certainly aren't someone who barks orders or only rewards success and I think if you know your character and you know what you're good at, that should be part of your career planning, I feel, not just which qualification do I need to get that job, but, am I going to be any good at it?

Be realistic if you're not going to be good at something because you could be incredibly good at something different or parallel or that provides an auxiliary service into the thing that you thought you would end up doing.  I think part of the open mind is also knowing yourself and finding out where your strengths really lie because in the end, they will probably satisfy you.  It's a paradox because you think you're only going to be satisfied by achieving the thing you want, but actually, be satisfied by being good at something and successful because you're good at it. 

Anyway, enough on that.

DG

No, I really like that idea.   There’s maybe a question for both of you generally; in your experience, did it take you a while to find out what you were good at in order then to unlock what you wanted to do as a result?

CJ

You first Jacquie, I've been talking too much.

JA

In terms of what we're doing today, I had a bit of an epiphany when I was on a dog walk.  I had come out of managing and being part of a football club, non-league football club, but a club that was starting to shift through the gears in terms of the women's side, and I had all these traits and qualities but they weren't being utilized.   I thought, oh, that's just odd, I feel odd here, there's a void, what can I do?

On my dog walk, I had this epiphany and I thought, do you know what, I can use all of those skills that I've learned, to help players and get contracts in football clubs, and I thought, well I'm going to just pass it by Carol to see whether she thinks I'm a complete lunatic or not.  So I rang Carol and I said, look, if this is a silly idea, just tell me, but what do you think about this idea?  Anyway she didn't pooh-pooh it; she said, yeah, I think that's great and that's all I needed to hear.

Then, from there, we started to shape our business into what it is today and it continues to change as the environment changes because it's changing a lot in women's football, so that's kind of how that all came about and all started.

I think it was a bit of frustration of not being able to use those skills that I've learned over so many years and I felt like, at the centre of it, I could help female football players flourish in the careers that they've got ahead, so that was always at the centre of what I was trying to do.

CJ

To add to that and to answer your question, I think it does take time before you actually find out where your place is.

I won't mention my early experiences, other than that I've been through a very meandering set of jobs in employment and ended up running a business,  but it took me a long time; I won't bore you with all the details as it's more fun if I talk about my children.

My daughter left university having studied archaeology (completely useless subject except if you're going to be an archaeologist) and then wanted to be either a physiotherapist or a spy.  I was interested, Jacquie, to hear Emma Hayes, who's the manager of Chelsea Women, very successful, also applied to MI5 and MI6 and my daughter did the same.  After university, she then went to study A levels in biology so that she could be the physiotherapist and now she's a project manager at a digital media company, very happy, very successful at her job because what she's good at is, I think, a bit of what I'm good at, which is managing and organising, and it took me probably about 10 years or so until I found that. 

I went to business school because somebody recommended it.  There weren't very many business schools open when I did my MBA but then when I got my first job, I discovered that's really what I was good at, if you don't mind me a little blower to trumpet, I'm a generalist, and I think managers who are too specialist don't always see the big picture, and I think when I found that I did like to see a big picture and hold the reins while other people did the work, which is a great way to be a manager.  I found my calling if you like.

It did take a long time, so I think if you are starting out and try a range of things, you always learn something from every experience you have or you can do and then if you're fortunate, you will find something that really ticks a lot of boxes and they're not always ones you see right at the beginning of your career.

DG

Can I ask then the next thought that I had on that, and Jacquie maybe you could offer some… both of you could certainly add some value on it, but one of the things that I’m thinking about making a very core element of the book is this idea that I don't think is very fashionable, but I think hopefully will make a bit of a recovery at some point, which is ultimately that it's not about us as individuals, that actually, not only do I find that I get the most satisfaction and  inner warmth, or whatever you want to call it, from helping others and giving value to others and pushing people along their path, that one of the big elements of what I'm trying to write about in the book is that we're obviously talking about our own careers, but actually, I think a lot of the time, what people don't consider is the other person on the other side of whatever it is you're looking to do yourself; if it's, I need work experience, or, I want a promotion, or, I want something to go well for myself.

Usually the narrative can sometimes be, well, I need to speak to this person about that to see how they can help me, rather than sometimes thinking about actually how I, as a first instance, can go about helping others. 

I was fascinated, Carol, in your analysis there of leadership managerial roles, and again, Jacquie, when you were talking about leadership, obviously in your capacities too, about actually what active leadership or active management actually is.

To me, it feels like in my role, and in my firm as well, is actually being as empathetic sometimes as possible to the needs of others, so I'd be really interested in your views on that and how helping others in the end helps yourself as well.

JA

I've always been very player-centric, so as a manager, I was player-centric, so everything starts with the player in the middle of the circle, if you like, and then you build outwards from there, because if you want to develop whatever you're trying to develop, it has to start with that individual, not you. 

You get so many more rewards from doing that and having that kind of philosophy and one thing it does do is it creates a sense of ownership for everybody, for that individual that you put at the heart of the team or the members of the team, and then work your way out.  The circle gets bigger with whoever you need in it to make that team or that squad successful, so our ethos is still for us, clients at the centre of what we do, because it's not about us, it's all about them and providing them with the support and the tools and all the things they need to become successful.

Always, automatically, if they're successful, you become successful as a sub-section of that, so everything you do, I think you have to have the plans and strategies in place to be able to allow them to do their best work and to try and find an environment and build an environment that they can flourish in, because if they are in a safe and trustworthy environment that they can perform at their highest level, then, again, you're in a very successful scenario there, so them at the heart, every time.

CJ

I was just thinking a follow-on from what Jacquie was saying; it's not quite the same angle, but working with people that you want to help, it's not always easy, because some of them don't recognize they need help.  Some of them   come with a more confrontational set of attitudes, and another reason Jacquie and I get on quite well is that we're both gardeners and we found it very helpful to think of our interaction with clients and other people in terms of planting seeds in fertile ground, we hope, but planting seeds and standing back and allowing nature to do its stuff. 

If they're going to germinate, those seeds will take root and then grow into something and we've seen that is a way of helping people who either don't want the help or they don't think they need the help or need to actually get motivated themselves.

When people take ownership of something, it becomes theirs by true definition and they will become empowered to do something with the idea, so I think that's the way; maybe it's just a tactic or a trick of the trade to help people achieve but I think it is very rewarding to put that top of the list and, as Jacquie said, that's what we try and do.  It’s not that we want to take the glory or the fame or even the money (there’s not much money in the women's game)  for ourselves; we want our clients to succeed because that's a satisfaction of the highest order, well, it is for me, I mean other people might have achievement as their highest order and they could both be very satisfying things to do, but I do think you're right that it's a very significant part of career development that you, at least a good part of the time, are putting back, that sounds a bit too philanthropic, but  that you're doing something for other people, which in turn will reward you.

DG

I think that's right and one of the things almost interconnected with that, that I'd be really interested in your views on generally, is how it sprung to mind a few years ago after a book that I read called… it's not the greatest title, ‘how to win friends and influence people’ and the reason why I loved the book so much was that he gave a lot of time to this idea of active listening and the need to be more interested than interesting.  Be more interested in the other, rather than convey yourself as being as interesting as you possibly can be.

That idea of active listening, of garnering a lot of information, of understanding the perspective of the other, then leads to a lot of very interesting outcomes and outputs, for example, joining the dots, getting a bigger picture of the wider environment, understanding people in a much better and more holistic way.

I don't want to put you on the spot on it in terms of listening, but listening to me has been a massive benefit, more so than I used to do to a large degree maybe over the last six or seven years of my career; does that resonate at all with either of you?

JA

I completely understand.  I'm quite observational so I'll have a look at things like body language, facial expressions, good, bad, indifferent, the environment that people are in, and I'll try and pick up all sorts of signals there, and then file it and then utilize it maybe at a later date.  I probably get that from team talks before matches.  You can pick up a lot from your team in terms of whether they're up for the game and I carry that forward now into what we're doing today when we meet with clients.  You get a gauge of what they're like, what their aspirations are, how committed they are or what their commitment levels might be, by asking questions and listening to what they're saying.

The observational thing of matching the words with the body language is, for me, quite key because you can pick up a lot of interesting observations from doing that.

CJ

I'll add to that from a business point of view, which is that I'm a marketer by training; my MBA was in marketing.

It's absolutely vital that you listen to your market before you do anything, because if you put yourself into your customer’s shoes and find out, actually research and find out, what it is that they want or like or do, you're in a much more powerful position to actually present, whatever it is that you're presenting, what they want.

It's great dealing, as Jacquie said, with clients as you get to understand people before you interact, almost before you interact, with them because you're in a much stronger position if you get what they're all about.

It's certainly true with people in the football world and people at any level that if you make that effort to listen, you get a bank of information which you wouldn't otherwise get which you can use, and there's nothing wrong with using it but, if you want to call it manipulation, I don't mind, but it gives you a toolkit to use in your dealings with that person.

Listening is something people probably don't value as much as they should because they're rushing ahead with doing what they want to do and speaking their minds and not listening and it's a shortcoming really, to be single track like that.

DG

Jacquie, can I ask a quick follow up on your point when you talk about being observational; one of the things that I've been thinking long and hard about is how whenever I have meetings and I'm trying to understand and listen and work out what the other person needs to try and then offer my input and provide value or whatever else it might be, when you're, for example in that dressing room environment where you were looking at body language, tone, manner, verbal and non-verbal, and then you are computing all of those different types of observations; my view when I'm doing that networking is that I've got to write those down in terms of some type of longer idea. 

If I've got two or three hundred contacts or clients and I'm meeting different people at different times, saying, they said this, and this was interesting because of this, and then you can join a dot into here or otherwise; did a lot of your observations stay mental, i.e. were they building blocks that just developed in your brain or were you thinking ‘this person is like this today, they've been like this otherwise, this is what I think their personality is more likely to be like, and that's how I need to approach them in a short term, medium…’

JA

Yeah, I think you very much gauge because every player has a different body language.  They're all different; some look as though they're really engaged but not necessarily taking things in, some look completely disengaged but are taking everything in, and you get to know those personalities and I think what you're able to do then in that situation, and also with clients, is you dial things up and down. 

I call it mirroring; in terms of clients, you don't want to be too bombastic if they're not, because you’ll frighten the living daylights out of them.  With the team, sometimes the energy that you give and the energy that you get back, you're trying to level those two energy forces, if you like, so that you get the best out of that scenario.

I don't know how you measure that from a scientific point of view but I think your inner core gives you that signalling to be able to dial up or down depending on the situation that you're in. 

From a selling perspective, going back to my days at GSK, they teach you so much over there; you're just fed all this stuff and somewhere you lock it into your brain and then when you need it, you just pull it out and you apply it in a practical sense.

I was very lucky to have so much learning and development thrown at me in such a large organization that I've been able to transfer those skills into the football arena.  A lot of my past players will say I was pretty unorthodox sometimes and I didn't mind that because that kind of meant, okay, I'm doing things the way that I feel should be done to get the results that I feel that we need to get.  Not being afraid to step outside of what a normal manager would do was quite an entertaining side for me and I think for many of my players as well, because it can become very mechanical and somehow you want the personality to thrive.  As Carol said earlier, people buy people without a shadow of a doubt and you've got to be able to flex that up and down, sideways, whatever, to whoever you're speaking to, to get the best possible outcome of that interaction.  It’s not necessarily about you, it's not necessarily about them, but to have some form of productive outcome really, and it doesn't have to be positive, sometimes you can have outcomes that are negative, but they've been challenging and they have been productive in their own way.

DG

Can I just ask one brief thing there Jacquie about the unorthodox stuff that you do; would you be able to give us an example of what the players, or others, considered unorthodox in certain approaches that you took which were obviously different to the norm?

JA

Obviously you've got the game strategy and the unorthodox part is around taking some examples out of the football arena into real life.  Around decision making, I would say to my players, look, when you're making a decision, it's like you're in a car on a motorway and you're just about to change lanes.  You've got to be so clear that you want to change lanes, you cannot crack around on a motorway, so they were mostly in that analogy around those kind of things. 

I would just pull it out of football into the real world and then back into a football scenario but they kind of got it, ‘oh yeah, we need to be more decisive when we're making a pass’ or whatever the scenarios were, and lots of other things.

They would expect me to go in at half-time raging because they weren't playing very well and I would go in as calm as anything and just talk to them as human beings and then they go out and give a fantastic second half display, so I think that approach of always making sure that you don't always have the same approaches to an outcome that they think you're going to have, so they're expecting you to behave like this and you behave the complete opposite way.

I did that a lot, especially when they thought they were playing well and they would all look around and think, hang on a minute.  It was always around effort and the level of effort.  If the level of effort was good, they would be okay; if the level of effort was bad, they would not be okay.

DG

Carol, on the same point; when as a manager, and you say as a generalist but I think you're putting yourself down probably in that respect, when you were obviously interacting with a huge amount of people over the years and your experience and expertise and skill-set of managing those people and their verbal and non-verbal hints and tips; how best did you measure and gauge how best then to interact?

Was it something that you practised and got better at and that you retained quite well, or was it something that was more forensic, where you're like, well this person needs to do this, so I need to track these behaviours in a certain way and then deal with it in certain different ways?

CJ

I wish I could say there was a process, such as you described, which is building a visual map, if you like, of how people reacted and what approaches of yours made for a successful outcome and so you could store that, but I wasn't as organized as that.

I think it's just something that happened and it happened more as I got older as I saw what worked, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with the university of life where you see what works and you derive an objective rule out of subjective experiences.  Jacquie, I'm pinching these words from Emma Hayes again as she gave a very good summary of her story.  She was asked by someone with a very academic approach, ‘how did you do what you did?’ and she said, ‘well there is no methodology, so I have to deal with reality’.

I deal, like Jacquie obviously, with a lot of different people, and I see what works, and I started not knowing what works.  As time went on, I built up a rule of what did work, which I derived as something objective because it happened so often, but it grew out of subjective single experiences and I think there is no methodology, I think there's just, like she said, working out what works with that person over time.  You do need time for some of these things, they're not instant, they're not off the shelf, and you can't buy a qualification, but I think that's probably the way I recorded my ‘what works experiences’ and could make use of them.

DG

One more question, if that's all right, and then I'll let you go for the afternoon.

It's around this idea of disappointment, resilience and perseverance.  I know these are quite broad concepts generally, but I'm quite interested, obviously Jacquie in your perceptions as someone that on a weekly basis, and sometimes on a more than weekly basis, was dealing with the quite transparent winning/losing element of sport, but also more in terms of life and those type of life lessons. 

My thing about resilience is sometimes more difficult for me to talk about because as much as I've had certain experiences, my background is such that I’m still from a middle class family in Liverpool that have afforded me certain privileges, so it makes it more difficult for me to effectively articulate how perseverant and resilient I need to be in certain ways, compared to a lot of people in lots of different backgrounds or otherwise, and that's why, in a way, I'm trying to speak to a lot of people about that.

Obviously, that probably I’d have thought for you Jacquie in your experience has come right in the heart of a lot of weekly discussions in a way; how do you, in the right way, minimize those type of things, but also master them, if that's the right way of saying it?

JA

I think you broadly have to think about it as almost like a ribbon of life scenario really and go, okay, I've got so much time here to do X Y and Z, that you can't fester on things that perhaps have not been a nice experience for you.  I think I've always been somebody to look to the horizon anyway, that's just what I do, and however you get there, you get there, but when you have setbacks in your life, I think it's important to reflect on them.

I think it's important to feel any pain that you may have when you're going through them; you can't just ignore it, but I also think the quicker you get through it, the quicker you get out the other side, and the quicker you can get on to doing more productive things.

I think it's almost like a big slap around the face; it hurts at the time, you acknowledge it but you don't stew in it and you must get yourself up, dust yourself down and get on with whatever you're trying to accomplish.  With the ribbon of life, you don't have a lot of time, so you might as well try and make it as small as possible and you just move on.

That's the same for if you lose a football game; it hurts, and in the manner that you lose it sometimes, it's really hurtful, but it's true that you get to that first training session after a loss and you start to forget about it anyway, so the thought now is if you can get yourself action orientated after some bad experience, then that pulls you out of it, or pulls me out of it anyway.

DG

Ribbon of life?  Very briefly Jacquie, what do you actually mean by that?  I really quite like that phrase.

JA

I use it as a motivator, so you have a ribbon and you cut so much off for sleep or for this or for this and then you're left with your time to do your stuff and it probably only looks about that long, so you think to yourself, life is too short when you look at your ribbon and you need to be able to maximize whatever time you've got, doing whatever you do, to the best that you can do it. 

Don't stew because every day is running shorter and shorter and shorter, so you must make the most of life.

CJ

I'll support that.  In fact when you asked about what slogan would we put up on a billboard, I was very naughty and I said to Jacquie, ‘I know what I'll tell him’ and I have to borrow this from an Irish pub owner up the road who put a big notice up in his garden and it said ‘please do not read this notice’, which I thought was wonderful.

Behind my rather flippant remark was the sort of thing Jacquie was talking about; life is very short, if you make mistakes or have a bad experience, don't look back, look forward and move on fast, so that would probably be the underlying thought about my flippant joke.

DG

What do you actually think that that flippant joke actually means, in maybe a more stoic way, if that's the right way of putting it?  Or what does it mean to you?

CJ

To me, it was entirely light-hearted.  I linked the two because I just thought it was a linguistic impossibility, like Hieronymus Bosch's pictures; your mind grapples with them but never gets anywhere because it's logically impossible, so it's logically impossible not to read the notice that said ‘please do not read the notice’.  I'm sorry; the flippancy was what linked to the serious point, not the actual meaning.  I beg your pardon, I shouldn't have done that but the serious point remains, which is that life is short.  Just move on from the disappointments. Everything passes so just move on.  

JA

You could be stewing in something for far too long and then miss something that could be a positive experience, so you don't want to be doing that, you want to go through as many things as you can and experience as much as you can.

DG

Jacquie and Carol, thank you so much.