Nadia Finer - More to Life Than Shoes: How to Kick-start Your Career and Change Your Life

Nadia Finer and Emily Nash, 2011

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or otherwise be copied for public or private use, other than for fair use as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews, without prior written permission of the publisher.

The authors of this book do not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the authors is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual wellbeing. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the authors and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-84850-250-5 in print
ISBN 978-1-84850-542-1 in epub format
ISBN 978-1-84850-541-4 in Mobipocket format

To our mums, who have always inspired us,
even if we didnt realize it at the time.

With massive thanks to all the inspiring women who gave us their time, answered our questions, encouraged us and who made writing this book a truly amazing experience.

And of course thanks to our partners and families, who stuck with us on our long and sometimes bumpy journey to making this book happen.

If you want to change your life but dont know how, if youve got sock-puppets in your head telling you that you cant do it, if youre after a little less aspiration, a little more action: youre reading the right book. Come and join the revolution!

Its a sad state of affairs when the highlight of our day at work is buying shoes online, doing the coffee run or reading the paper on the bus. We spend half our lives at work: there should be so much more to it than this. We want to love what we do, not loathe it. So we wrote this book to help you get out there and damn well make your dream happen.

It all began in the pub, like so many great plans in history. We were fed up and having a moan. You know what its like: pulling sickies because you cant face the day, realizing a week has passed and you cant remember what happened between Monday and Thursday, wanting to tell your partner about your day but not coming up with anything interesting enough to make it seem worth it. Sound familiar? Parisians even have a phrase for it mtro, boulot, dodo literally, train, work, sleep. Yawn.

Nadia was working in marketing but fed up with her job and ready for a change. Emily was in television but dreaming of jacking it all in and becoming a writer instead. Neither of us was actually doing anything about all this, apart from complaining over a glass of wine. We wanted to love what we did with our lives, and we didnt. And loads of our mates didnt seem happy, either. Is it a girl thing to put up and shut up, to moan about work all week and splurge on new shoes to make ourselves feel better? We knew plenty of women who dreamed of writing books, getting promoted, opening flower shops or finally breaking into their perfect career, but none of them were doing it. Bills, babies and life in general always seemed to get in the way. We decided, after another glass of wine or three and some random scrawls on beer mats, that if we didnt want to spend our old age regretting the long duvet-day of our lives, the solution was to inspire ourselves and our mates with confidence so that we stopped focusing on the things that could go wrong and started thinking about how to make things go right.

But we needed help. We wanted to hear from girls whod done their thing and lived happily ever after. But where were they? Womens magazines are full of celebs getting their kit off and enjoying their 15 minutes of fame, but that wasnt what we were after we cant sing, and our boobs are our business. We knew there were other types of poster-girl out there, otherwise what was all that bra-burning for? But they didnt seem to be talked about that much and we couldnt understand why.

So that night in the pub we decided to go on a mission to find some girl-on-girl action, so to speak. Us lot are supposed to be good at talking, right? Well, wed find these wonder women, corner them and pump them for advice. Wed talk to the people we thought were cool neuroscientists and novelists, biologists and builders, entrepreneurs and engineers and wed find out exactly how they made their dreams come true.

So thats what weve done. Its taken a bloody long time, to be honest: over four years, in fact, since we started sending out requests to the famous and not-so-famous (for us, cool doesnt necessarily equal celeb) to ask if we could talk to them about their careers. During that time weve held down jobs and popped out babies, and thereve been times when our mission to inspire the women of Britain had to take a back seat. But then along came the chance to turn all our hard work into a book and tell everyone else what weve found out.

Because since we started our journey, weve discovered some brilliant things that there are thousands of women out there right now doing amazing stuff, and that theres really no excuse for us not to do it, too. But the most amazing result of our quest has been that in the stories of the hundred or so women weve spoken to weve noticed a pattern something brilliant going on behind the scenes, a way of living and tackling the world that produces results. Its accessible, sensible advice that were going to share with you so that you can do it, too.

Ladies, its time to ditch the drudge and kick-start our lives.