Redesigning Retirement: Kim Watty on Purpose and Community

Kim Watty

Nigel Rawlins: [00:00:00] Kim, welcome to the Wisepreneurs podcast. Could you tell us something about yourself and where you're from?

Kim Watty: Yeah. I am a 66-year-old semi-retired woman. I live down by the Bay and love to be in the bay each morning. I'm a mom of two adult children. I. And, I am fortunate enough to be very close to my family and, currently working with my daughter on a project, which we hope we'll talk about a bit later on.

Nigel Rawlins: We will. So which bay are you talking about?

Kim Watty: Oh, port Melbourne. So I swim the bay each morning with the Port Melbourne icebergs. I don't swim too far about a kilometers my limit, but this is not a com competition for me. I've had enough of that in my other stages of my life, but we swim. Probably swim six of seven days rain, hail and shine, cold and hot and I'm very proud I don't have a wetsuit so I just get in there and swim.

Nigel Rawlins: In winter as well

Kim Watty: in [00:01:00] winter as well

Nigel Rawlins: without a wetsuit.

Kim Watty: It's fantastic. The endorphins go through the roof.

Nigel Rawlins: Yeah, they would. Now for the non-Australian listeners, Melbourne is the capital of Victoria, which is in Australia.

Kim Watty: Yes. Yes. Excellent.

Nigel Rawlins: So tell me, you were an academic, so what was your study? If you could tell us something about that and something about your academic career, because you're now post academic.

So tell us something about what you did.

Kim Watty: For the first, I did an accounting degree and then I went and worked as an accountant for about 10 years. Then I had children and I decided that academia might provide me with the flexibility I was looking for, which was really not right. But anyway, that's what I thought at the time. So I went back into, working in academia. Just 0.2 0.4. As the children grew, 0.6 full-time, this is quite traditional way for females in the academic environment in Australia. [00:02:00] And I did my master's in accounting part-time while I was working and raising the children with my husband John. And I did my PhD part-time, which I finished about 2005.

So I was definitely in a different stage of life to some PhD candidates who come straight from, one former study to the next, but I was working, raising a family and studied accounting. I worked at RMIT University, the University of Melbourne, and finished my career at Deakin University where I am currently an Emeritus Professor, which I'm very proud of for Deakin University.

My, teaching area was in management accounting, and I taught undergraduate and postgraduate. I taught in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia. And Japan over the years and towards the latter 10 years of my academic career, I was involved in leadership roles around Deputy Dean of the [00:03:00] Faculty of Business and Law at Deakin University and chairing a number of academic boards and teaching and learning type committees.

Less teaching in the later part and more sort of leadership roles and my research area, which really gave me an opportunity to travel the world. To be able to present at research conferences, for which I was always very grateful, was in the area of accounting education. So it moved from graduate attributes, learning outcomes, technology, ai, and that type of thing.

So that was my research area. As part of my academic role.

Nigel Rawlins: So tell me what's an Emeritus Professor?

Kim Watty: Yeah. So an Emeritus Professor is a title that's awarded to someone who has shown significant and sustained high quality activities in research teaching and in academic leadership. So it's a title that you can apply for when you retire from a university. And it goes to the council and through the Vice [00:04:00] Chancellor for approval.

I'm very proud of that title, and it's something that I can use forever and a day.

Nigel Rawlins: Fantastic. That's wonderful to hear. So, did you have to retire or what happened there?

Kim Watty: yeah, no, I didn't have to retire it's probably 2018, 2019, my mum wasn't particularly well, so I wanted to care a bit more for her. She wasn't living with me, but I wanted to spend a bit more time with her. So I think it would've been 18 and 19, I moved out of the dean role and back into my discipline of accounting in the school as a professor, and I moved to three days a week.

And I decided in 2019 I really thought there was something else that I wanted to do outside of academia. I didn't really know what it was, but I felt yeah, there was something more so I formally resigned in, or put in my resignation about mid 2019, and I formally left Deakin mid 2020 as Covid hit.

So Covid wasn't [00:05:00] around when I decided that I'd retire. And my husband, who was a wee bit older than me we were gonna do a lot of traveling and lots of things together. Covid hit. Two or three years, started doing some other work, some courses and looking for other things and found out about 20, 23, 24 that the more I was looking for was actually co-founding a business with my daughter, aimed at helping women design their next best chapter with intention and purpose.

So that's the company that my daughter and I have been working on in the last two years.

Nigel Rawlins: Now that's an interesting move from say, teaching accounting to your business, which is called The Main Act. But it's not about business, is it?

Kim Watty: No, it's absolutely not. It's about supporting women to actually live their next chapter. So my daughter had created a couple of businesses. So for her, she's very much an entrepreneur. And the decision to do something together came over many months of thinking and different things that happened in their lives.

So [00:06:00] if for someone who was a professor of accounting and is an Emeritus Professor, to now be co-founding a startup with their daughter around supporting women to design their next and best chapter is something I would never have imagined I'd do, but I think this may be the more that I was looking for when I retired from academia.

I closed one door, took a while for the new door to open, but I always knew there was something else I wanted to do, and I think this might be it.

Nigel Rawlins: Okay, so is that a feeling inside that you have that's telling you this is it?

Kim Watty: It's absolutely a feeling inside great question and yes  it is.

Nigel Rawlins: And I think that's the thing we have to listen to. One, one of the areas that I'm really excited about is the extended mind and listening to that internal feeling that you've got that I think it's called interoception, and it does tell you something.

And if you can hear it or listen to it and act on it, I think that's really important. And that sounds like what that was. Ok, your daughter is entrepreneurial and you've both decided [00:07:00] to run a business. How did your accounting background look at that idea?

Kim Watty: My husband who passed away very recently in July last year quite suddenly. So that's been a very sad time for my very close family. But in 2023 when we started talking about the main act, John, who was more of a practicing accountant, John would say those that can do, and those that can't teach, which really was a bit rude.

But anyway, I took it on board. And John had also been Prue's accountant for the other business that she ran, an events company that she started in New York. The answer is John did a lot of the groundwork around setting up the company as a subsidiary of my daughter's established company. And it's now fallen to me, but I'm really not that interested in it.

So I've convinced my daughter, Prue that we should hire someone to do the books because I'm not going back to that again. I did that for 10 years. I worked 30 years, or 20 or 30 years I taught. I wanna focus on the other part of the [00:08:00] business, which is the business development. John set us up, but forever grateful and we now have a small business accountant who helps us out.

But, I keep, I do keep the records in terms of income and expenses pretty accurately. So that's a help.

Nigel Rawlins: Oh, I think some of the accounting programs nowadays are just so fantastic.

Kim Watty: Yes.

Nigel Rawlins: are using Xero or something like that?

Kim Watty: Yeah. Yeah.

Nigel Rawlins: I've gone to a really small one, a small Melbourne based one which I love. It's about half the price 'cause I don't have any payroll or anything like that. And I don't collect GST and it's a little ripper program again, it does most of what Xero does, so people are probably wondering what we're talking about.

We're talking about online accounting programs for a moment anyway. Obviously you understand business. John, your husband obviously was very clear about that, so you must have some sense of what's working and I don't know how to describe this, a sense that what you're doing is worth doing but from a business perspective as [00:09:00] well.

Kim Watty: Yeah. What we are doing is worth doing because it feels right. And Nigel, you talked about that feeling, but that feeling, of we are in the right place and what we're doing is needed comes from research that says if you pop in the browser retirement for women, nine out of the 10 references will be around finances.

So there's a lot of information out there about finances, and though I'm an accountant, give absolutely no financial advice whatsoever. We leave that to the expert. So it feels right. The market tells us that there's not a lot in the area and in the manner that we are offering it, there has been a lot of interest.

I think by the time this this podcast is aired, I will have done a interview with a woman on Radio National ABC, who contacted me and was very interested. They're doing a series on the good retirement. She's very interested in what we're doing and my story. We've done a couple of articles in [00:10:00] online journals or online, sorry, online magazine.

So there is interest there. We've had a couple of other podcast requests, so there's definitely interest for our story and what we are doing, and we honestly believe there is a need for it. We did a pilot program in January, which we ran and learned a lot from. We're starting our first program in May, next week, actually May the sixth.

And we're gonna learn a lot and be you know, love working with women in that space. We will be donating 8% of our profit to organizations that support women. But I can assure you, Nigel, that is a fair way down the track and we are not focusing on the dollars. And fortunately I'm in a position where I don't have to, and that is really important.

The other thing is it's not a big capital investment from either of us. It's our time and it's a minimum, a minimal investment for resources and advertising and the like. So I'm again, quite privileged to be in a position where we can actually start this business and see where it takes us.

Nigel Rawlins: Now I think that's really quite important, what [00:11:00] you've just said there. You've started off small. It's an area that you're most really interested in. There is a need for it, and you've been able to connect to the people who are searching for that. Now, obviously not everybody can do such a course as yours, so let's start talking about that.

What is it that you're actually doing? Tell me about the business, the name and what it is you do.

Kim Watty: The business is called the Main Act, and as a mother-daughter, co-founders, there was a lot of discussion about what the business name should be. I thought we'd never agree, but fortunately we have a very, very strong relationship, my daughter, Prue and I, and we work very well together and compliment each other.

I think I'm more the business side of things. She's definitely more the creative side of things, but the business, The Main Act is set up as a space where women can come together to work through transitions in their lives. And the first transition we're working [00:12:00] on is retirement. The next transition might be retirement and another cohort that looks at transitioning to solo living or transitioning to empty nesting or transitioning to a new career.

But we decided to use retirement because that's what I'm living at the moment and I feel quite authentic in talking about what I'm doing in retirement to help. To help guide other women in their retirement. So the main act is the business, and the program that we can talk about is the Retirement by Design program.

It's an eight week program, which is founded on the work of Evans and Burnett from the Stanford Business School. So they have a very strong research evidence-based methodology, which they have used over a number of years. So we are looking at that, tweaking it to the Australian environment, changing it to fit retirement particularly.

But their life design course, which I have undertaken is really the foundation for the Retirement by Design Program, an eight week [00:13:00] online program at the moment. One hour a week. Weeks 1, 3, 5, and seven are all about content. And weeks 2, 4, 6, and eight is where the group comes together to integrate and reflect on what they've learned in the previous week and how that's impacted their life and how they're using the tools and techniques along the way that are based on life design.

Also, every second week, weeks 2, 4, 6, and eight. Prue and I offer a one-on-one accountability call to the women. So just to have a one-on-one conversation to see how they're going. So it's very high touch, very hands on. And that to us is very important. That's the model we have at the moment. The other thing we're currently offering at the main act is one-on-one coaching.

So I've done a lot of coaching courses over the years and my daughter pers just done a very I wanna say the ICF Coaching Program, and I should know it, but I don't. So we also offer one-on-one coaching, which is separate to the Retirement By Design eight week signature program.

Nigel Rawlins: So [00:14:00] what you're telling me is instead of retiring and going playing golf or just hanging out down the beach or the cafes. You are putting a lot of time into helping other women come to terms with retirement and look, you mentioned before, you don't really need the money, which is helpful I think when you're starting out, 'cause this is one of the biggest issues for, say, for people who've retired or women who've retired is having enough capital to get started with something. What have you found, obviously you've got a design process there. What did you change from your January cohort that you did as a trial and now this is the formal one. Is there much difference from that?

Kim Watty: I think the main difference was really adding in the accountability call because in the trial program we felt that it was too easy. There's no homework, but there are prompts to do something between each week, and [00:15:00] it was just too easy for the pilot program people to attend the content weeks and then all of a sudden, the next two weeks was upon them and not much had happened. And we didn't wanna call it a coaching call, we wanted to call it an accountability call. So it's a strong word and it's not meant to be, but in some ways it's appropriate. So it's saying, have you filled in your journal it, have you done your reflection?

And we're not saying every day you do this, it's just, have you thought about what we talked about in the content week? And how it might impact your life. Because to be honest, Nigel people are paying for the program. We want them to get a lot out of it. We believe in the program. So we can't guarantee success unless people engage with us.

And that's really important. So we actually interview for people to come into this very small course to ensure, as best we can, that the characteristics of the women that are participating align with this, real important mindsets of being curious and bias to action and [00:16:00] reframing problems and trying things.

It's really very important because some people may think that you enroll in a course and your life design is fulfilled after eight weeks and life just isn't like that.

Nigel Rawlins: A couple of things I really liked hearing about how you designed that course is where you've got some formal training and discussion. And then you've got the group coming back to discuss with each other. So what you've got is a supportive cohort that gets to possibly relate to each other, which is very important.

One of the biggest problems I see out there, and I think it's very evident now, is a lot of online courses people don't finish and it, and on, I think I saw something on X this morning about, in Australia we have our technical training courses. Only 13% of people finish a TAFE course. We're talking about the fact that some people do not finish courses that they start. Now, I've paid for a whole lot of courses that I think sound really good, but I haven't even started them and I paid for them two [00:17:00] years ago. Eventually I may get around to it, and then I see another course and I buy that one too.

Kim Watty: Yes. Shiny things.

Nigel Rawlins: But the thing is, you are keeping it nice and short, eight weeks focused and so I, I think that's got a better chance of working, hasn't it? It'd be exciting to see how this cohort finishes. And where they go. So the other thing you've mentioned there is that you are quite careful about who you invite to the program. Was that a specific reason there ?

Kim Watty: Yes. Because it is a small cohort and we really want women who are going to be of course respectful and most people are respectful. But also, as I said, those really key mindsets, for life design around being curious, open to failure, willing to participate, ie. bias to action, not inaction, reframing problems. It's too late, I'm already set in my ways. No, it's never too late, the future is what you create it to be. It's always difficult to say, no to [00:18:00] people, but it is worse if you have a small group of people and don't have a similar curiosity because we don't want everyone thinking the same because the challenge with women is always where there is great debate and interest and challenge and that type of thing.

So we really believe in the power of women coming together in a thoughtful manner and the power of that particular group. And that group can be undermined really quickly if there are one or two people that just don't have a similar approach to the eight week program. So again, it's not easy to say no to people, and we do it very rarely, but we absolutely have a discovery call with every person who participates because we want to ensure that alignment of thought.

Nigel Rawlins: That's very important. What was I gonna say? I had something in my mind. Oh, I was going to say so where are these women based? Are they Australian?

Kim Watty: At the moment, they're Melbourne based because we are trying to have a couple of catch ups. So [00:19:00] we thought with this cohort we would make them all Melbourne based. It's online, but we will have a couple of face-to-face opportunities for the group, which we think is really important. But Nigel, again, in a small business that's starting, you also limit your reach if you make it just to Melbourne and most of it is going to be online. And to be quite frank, if we are as successful as we'd like to be in helping women, there's nothing to stop us going more global. That's just the way of the world and what technology allows us to do.

But. We still wanna just keep control of what's going on at the moment. At the moment it's Melbourne based women mainly aged between say 45 and 65, 70. But we have someone on our waiting list for July, who is 78 and said to me, Kim, it's not for me, I'm pretty settled, and I said, you could have another 20 years to go.

Do you wanna think about planning what the next 20 years might be like with more intention and more purpose? So that's the cohort at the moment. I think it's roughly 45 to [00:20:00] 68. A few people. And there are people contemplating, planning, and just retired at the moment. They're the group and we wanna mix it up.

We don't wanna have just everyone who's been retired for 10 years or everyone that's 10 years out from retirement. But I was reading something, it's a great quote and I'm not gonna be able to remember it exactly, but it was something like when is the best time to start planning for your future?

And of course, the best time is right now, and it doesn't matter whether you're 20, 30, 50, or a hundred, it's right now.

Nigel Rawlins: Yeah that's really a wise thing. I keep thinking now that I'm I'm 69 and I'm thinking, wow, if you are 40. You are contemplating your future. 'cause one, one of the big issues is relationships, in your network. I noticed that when I first quit teaching over 25 years ago, there was a person I knew who had retired in business and he'd lost contact with all his business people and then [00:21:00] they retired as well. And that's the biggest danger I think is if you decide you want to do something when you are older and you've let your network go, you, and they're not different ages and they've all retired. All you can do is catch up for coffee, but it's not that helpful.

No there's research out there of course that talks about the importance of maintaining community and social networks in some way. And the research we looked at said 60% of women didn't plan for their retirement and they regret not planning for it. But again, I just wanna reiterate, and we talk about this in the course, that the the definition of retirement, of stepping back, isolation, those types of words just doesn't fit with the sort of women that we are dealing with.

They want to do different things. It mightn't be a 50 hour week and you're paid at X, Y, Z. It doesn't really matter. But if you can unhook remuneration from your work and not feel [00:22:00] locked into that identity, it actually opens up the thought, that work can be creative work. It can be some paid work, it can be volunteer work, it can be board work, it can be community.

It can be caring for your family. It can be caring for your friend's dog. It can be whatever you choose it to be. And for me, that's the beauty of this stage of my life where I have more control about the things I want to do. And we talked before about, and I thought it was a great question, about how do you feel about this new business that you're creating?

And I said it just feels right And you know that sense of asking women to think about what brings them joy can be quite challenging. 'Cause they haven't actually really thought about that in, in that way. What brings you joy? How do you play? Those sorts of questions are really helpful.

Yeah I was reading a book around Ikigai, which is the Japanese philosophy of life and you know, retirement is not a word in the language in Japan because people go on and they live there's a lot of blue zones in Japan and [00:23:00] they live a long life, and retirement is not something that is in their discourse. And as people get to different stages of their life, they do less paid work, but they absolutely have a lot of community. They work in community, they exercise, mild exercise, none of this HIIT, or killing yourself. There's mild exercise, lots of walking, et cetera.

It's quite interesting to think this word retirement has such negative connotations in our, I would say in the Western world, and that's a generalization, but I feel comfortable saying it that people sometimes get a visceral reaction when they have to say, I'm retired, because I think people are gonna ask that question, which is, what do you do all day

Exactly.

Kim Watty: with that rising intonation?

So you know what do you do all day?

Nigel Rawlins: That's the thing that's just popped into my head. I'm just thinking if you weren't involved in the Main Act, what would you be doing?

Kim Watty: Okay. So I did the Australian Institute of Company Directors program, and I was on [00:24:00] about four or five boards. A lot of work, doing a lot of board work. It wasn't quite, it wasn't that 'more' I was looking for, as I said, I retired from full-time work thinking there was more. And then what would I be doing? I don't know. I'm now on three boards and they're mainly education related, which I do enjoy. That's my board work. I love exercising most of the time and my swimming. Had John still been with me, we would've done a lot more travel.

We had traveled a lot in the last decade or so. And we probably would've continued that. So I don't think I'm able to answer that question. I just don't know. I would find something, but what I'm doing now just feels so right.

Nigel Rawlins: Yes, you can see the motivation. You look like a young person, and I think that's the energy that comes from doing something that feels right and that you've got the support for doing it. So working with your daughter, that must be wonderful [00:25:00] too.

Kim Watty: It is, it was interesting. We were speaking to someone else who asked the question, now how do you work together? And my daughter had said the question was coming up and she's very thoughtful and she said, mom, I might mention about that feedback. And she's right. 'cause I tell her, one of my many failings in life is around feedback.

I don't think I receive it well, and I'm very conscious of it. So she said to me, working with mom, sometimes I can give mom feedback, and she doesn't always take it on board and gets defensive. And I said to Prue, that's quite right, working with you, you also very much think everything that you say is correct.

So we have a number of conversations around some of the wording or some of the documents that we wanna share with people. And sometimes it gets a bit quiet, but we are very good at bouncing back and saying, we'll leave that for now. Let's get onto the next bit. So I think there's a mutual respect.

And I'm very cognizant of her creative abilities, and she's aware of my abilities, having been in [00:26:00] education for 30 years of constructing courses and developing things for participants. It's working well. It's been nearly 18 months, two years, and we're still doing it. And I feel quite privileged to be able to work with her.

It's a good dynamic also Nigel, because, cross-generational thinking, cross-generational learning is really important. So I see things differently, to Prue, and it's really interesting to share that with people. I quite like that, I think that's a really strong part of The Main Act that we respect difference, and we're also able to contribute from different generations about how we've dealt with different challenges in our lives, let's say.

Nigel Rawlins: The other interesting thing I see there too is from 18 months ago, you are not the same person and the learning that's occurred. So tell us something about that.

Kim Watty: That is interesting. I'm not the same person. I suppose I'm not, I think of my characteristics, I'm a lifelong learner, I've always enjoyed learning. I generally have a [00:27:00] positive attitude and a pretty high energy, which is genuine energy. I can also acknowledge that things aren't always tickety boo and you have to deal with life's complexities.

I'm not really sure how I'm different. I'm definitely more aware of startup businesses and the challenges. When I'm starting to get a bit concerned about something, Prue is very much able to say, just hold your nerve, mum. It'll come through. Before every major breakthrough, and I know this, I've read it before every major breakthrough is that feeling of that visceral feeling of, my gosh, what are we doing?

I must say, given her experience in founding businesses prior to this one, that's been absolutely fantastic. So not sure how I'm different. I might have to take that one on board.

Nigel Rawlins: I was thinking what are things have you had to learn that you didn't use when you were at the university?

Kim Watty: I think, I think the different sorts of things I'm reading, so I'm not reading accounting journals. I am reading literature around The 5:00 AM [00:28:00] Club, Ikigai, mindfulness journaling, trusting your vision, working with women. So I'm looking at a whole different body of literature than I was five years or three years ago.

So that, that's absolutely true. I'm definitely more thoughtful in terms of how I'm living my life, that's very different. I do journal now, not as often as I'd like, but I'm much better. I do meditate, I do yoga. I wouldn't have done any of those things five years ago, so there is a difference. Yeah, I go, I swim now, which I hadn't done previously, so it's a different kind of genre of things that I'm looking at than I was when I was working in academia.

Nigel Rawlins: You are a different person.

Kim Watty: Yeah.

Nigel Rawlins: I've been in business now running this marketing services company for 25 years. I find reading anything about business, really boring

Kim Watty: Yeah.

Good.

Nigel Rawlins: I look, I do read some marketing books and I'm thinking, nah, [00:29:00] that's just repeating the same old crap. And same with a lot of strategy except for Peter Compos book, which I really love.

And I spoke to Peter Compo on this, on the Wisepreneurs podcast about about strategy. He doesn't like that word at all. See he talks about emergence and things like that, and aspiration and bottlenecks. It's a more practical way of looking at stuff. His was fantastic and really again, I get those internal feelings just like I have with The Extended Mind and another author Luc P Bourdain that I've been reading about Cognitive productivity.

I keep, I'm 69 and getting really excited about this stuff.

Kim Watty: Yes.

Nigel Rawlins: So what books have really excited you the most? You mentioned Ikagi.

Kim Watty: Oh yes. Robin Sharma's the 5:00 AM club I really enjoyed and I quite like listening when I'm out and about in the car. So I'm currently listening to the. Wealth Money Can't [00:30:00] Buy by Robin Sharma, and I'm almost finished that, I'm just looking, there's three hours left, it's probably been about eight hours. I love that, I'm up to 82 different things to think about in your life. I do read a few novels every now and again, Helen Garner, but I've read the book called Super Fans.

I can't remember the author. Did quite a bit of reading around story brand and brand script. So to be honest when I go through that list, Nigel, I have absolutely changed 180, if not 360 degrees in terms of the type of reading that I now do.

Nigel Rawlins: So a mix of fiction and some nonfiction.

Kim Watty: Yeah. Mainly nonfiction. It's mainly related to fiction, sorry, fiction. Yeah.

Nigel Rawlins: And are you reading on a Kindle or Real books?

Kim Watty: I have mainly maybe 70% real books and 30% is my audible when I'm walking. I love that because I can put something on and if I actually get into a state of flow I can just keep walking. And before I know it, I've walked for an hour and a half rather than 20 minutes. But, [00:31:00] and I'm absolutely committed to just starting because I know how important it is.

Don't really wanna walk after dinner. Put on the shoes, headphones. Get out the door. If it's 20 minutes, it's 20 minutes more than I would've done. If it's an hour and 20 minutes. Woo-hoo. I could have done, I'm really happy with that. Quite like audible. I know not everyone does, don't like Kindle. Gee, quite like Audible at the moment.

Nigel Rawlins: And we should say that you're very lucky living in Port Melbourne because you've got a beautiful beach walk that goes for miles. You can get all the way down to Brighton, I think, can't you?

Kim Watty: Absolutely. You can. Very nice. Yeah.

Nigel Rawlins: One thing I've had to do lately is when I go for my walks is not listen to something actually listen to my feet tapping on the ground or the birds or the wind , I live on a bay but I have to walk on roads and along a clifftop and a bit, but it's still lovely. I love seeing the water, but I've had to stop myself listening to podcasts all the time.

Kim Watty: I love that. I love that because I have felt the same and the last six months I [00:32:00] walk for my morning coffee, got a great coffee shop that thank goodness opens at 6:00 AM which is just fabulous for the community and I absolutely do not have anything in my ears for that morning walk. And what a difference that makes.

It's amazing. So I the audible is usually the evening walk that can get, be from any time between four and six, I'll head out, particularly as I live a solo life now so I can eat when I choose to and walk when I choose to. But my morning walk is all about nature, the birds, the smell of the ocean, and my very favorite coffee in the morning, which is worth walking for.

Nigel Rawlins: Surprisingly we have a coffee shop near me. So I'm in a little country town right down the end of a long road near the bay. And just around the corner from us, we have a little coffee shop, somebody from Brunswick moved down here and set up a little coffee shop and we've got a beautiful gelato shop.

Now [00:33:00] anyone who wants to come to there has to drive quite a while to get there. Obviously, the locals nearby will go to it, seem to have a lot of housing near here. But yes, having a good coffee shop, but gee, having a gelato shop is really good too.

Kim Watty: Agreed.

Nigel Rawlins: So coffee is very important. And the funny thing is I talked to him 'cause I was in Japan about, oh, a month or so ago, and I had the most fantastic coffee in a little Japanese Um, I. cafe somewhere. And I think he made it with a drip system. So I told my local guy and he said, oh, I'll make you a drip coffee. And it was fantastic at the, and I was in there the other day and I noticed he's got the same drip machine that I've got.

Kim Watty: You'd save yourself $6 every morning.

Nigel Rawlins: I thought, oh, bugger that. Yeah, it's crazy. Alright okay. Retirement by design, what advice do you give to women? About retiring and when? When should you start thinking about [00:34:00] it?

Kim Watty: Yeah. I think we chatted briefly before we started taping about 62% of women wish they'd planned for retirement, so they felt a bit lost and a bit fearful of what retirement might hold. And there was another statistic that said one in two wish that they had planned earlier for their retirement.

When is retirement? Whenever it suits you, because retirement isn't about finishing work, it's about taking more control of the different activities that make up your life. And I think there does come a time where financially you have a, if you're fortunate enough, there can come a time where financially you do have a little bit of flexibility.

In terms of how you fill your days, it doesn't have to be remunerated. And yeah, I think that's very important. So what we say to women is difficult to say in a few sentences, but I think the fundamentals are that now it's your time to take control of what your next chapter might look like.

And it doesn't mean that the last 40, 50 years [00:35:00] haven't been interesting and fulfilling, but it just means that you have the opportunity to take more control of what the next 10 years, 15 years might look like. And that control comes from thinking differently and designing the next stage of your life with that intention and purpose, which is really very important because you don't come out of the eight week program with your life designed for the next 20 years.

You come out of it. We actually do three odyssey plannings at the end of the program. So we odyssey plan for three different lives and you can look at how life might look with no constraints, full constraints, strengths, and medium constraints. So after the eight weeks, you come out with a better way of thinking about life and understanding a bit more about yourself.

And we will do some odyssey planning and you will come out with a design that you think could work for you. And then in a few months time you go back and have another look and you add to it and you change it and you say, this worked or it didn't work. But I think it's giving women the confidence and tools, the tools to be able to [00:36:00] do this sort of work, but also the confidence in themselves, which some women don't always have.

Some people have said to me. I don't think I could do that eight week course. I say, my goodness, you're a curious, you're intelligent. Why on earth would you think that, oh it sounds like it's outta Stanford. I said, absolutely not. You're a smart woman. So it gives them the tools to be able to review their life as they move through it.

And again, people who think that after eight weeks your life design is completed aren't being realistic. 'cause life throws up lots of unexpected challenges along the way and opportunities, we are very positive too. We look for the great opportunities.

Nigel Rawlins: You mentioned a word there, confidence. And I must admit I've heard that and it scares me when I hear highly intelligent women say to me you've given me the confidence and I'm thinking, I'm some dumb bloke. I'm not as smart as you, but they will tell me. That I help them with some confidence, [00:37:00] just like it's very, obviously you are going to be very supportive and give them the confidence they need.

But why do women say that they lack the confidence when you know, you look at their lives and what they've done and you think, unbelievable. I never did half of that.

Kim Watty: Yeah, I think it's embedded in our social structures and the way the business world works. And I think it is changing, but women remain in this, in the service industries, in education, in social services, in child minding, et cetera. There is structural variation between the genders, there's no question about about that. There are more men on boards than there are women and there are more men in the top 100 income earners than there are women, and that's no reason that should happen other than the opportunities that, that they've been able to enjoy along the way.

So there is structural difference that I think keeping women in their place is too strong because I certainly think that there is opportunity for women to [00:38:00] move in any direction they choose. But I do think there is structural differences in context, in the environment, and certainly in business.

Where women are not necessarily encouraged to, to recognize their own abilities and to actually move forward, move up, put themselves forward, there's evidence to suggest that. So I agree with you. When this woman said I'm not sure I have the confidence, I was absolutely shocked. And I said, don't do the program if you choose not to, that's your call. But please don't do it because you think you don't have the ability to do it. And I said, my goodness, you could contribute so wisely to the conversation.

Nigel Rawlins: That's it. Wisely can contribute because that's what age brings us that wisdom. We call it crystallized intelligence that deep with a lot of tacit knowledge there that we don't always recognize what we know. Okay. So tell me about The Main Act and how people can find out more about you where they may [00:39:00] be able to read something about the main act and.

You know the next cohort that's coming up, 'cause obviously this one's gonna run.

Kim Watty: Yep. So our website is www.themainact.com au. We have a Instagram page, but you can find us the website I think is the one to go to. I will be posting on the website references to the couple of articles that we've had published and also I will be putting a link on next week to the interview that I did with Tegan Taylor on the ABC Radio National.

So I think our website is probably the place to go. The website also talks about our contact details, so Prue and myself, and I'd be very happy for anyone to drop me an email. I'm just Kim at the main act, all lowercase.com au. And Prue is similar, but I'd be happy to hear from every, from anyone. So we have our Autumn cohort, which is starting on May the sixth.

And then in July we will start our winter cohort and [00:40:00] the intention is to have a spring cohort also. And Nigel, we might think about reviewing some of the structure based on this, 'cause we have had, I must say, a number of people who said we'd love to do it. But I'm off traveling to far fun places and I can't commit to eight weeks.

So we actually are thinking of how we can possibly repackage it so that eight week weekly commitment isn't necessary. And while we do record the sessions for those who are part of the group who can't make it. People like to be involved and we want them to be involved too. So at the moment it's eight weeks.

We may continue that with winter. We may chunk it into 2, 4, 2 week parcels to be decided. But we wanna respond to the market consistently and con and continuously along the way.

Nigel Rawlins: That's all part of that learning. You didn't mention LinkedIn. You're on LinkedIn, aren't you?

Kim Watty: Oh, I am on LinkedIn and so is The Main Act. So I'm on LinkedIn, Kim Watty, and The Main Act is [00:41:00] also on LinkedIn. Yes.

Nigel Rawlins: That's great. Now, is there anything we haven't covered us yet that you'd like to talk about?

Kim Watty: No, I think we've covered lots, Nigel. I think it's been a really interesting conversation, so there's nothing extra that I'd like to add. I really enjoyed the questions that you asked, some of them, I'll go away and think about too.

Nigel Rawlins: Thank you, Kim, for joining us. That's been a wonderful conversation.

Kim Watty: Thank you, Nigel. It's been my pleasure.