Tamara Loehr - Balance is B.S.: How to Have a Work. Life. Blend.

The following people made valued personal contributions to the book: Daniel Bonney, Emily Diamond, Monte Heubsch, Gina Mollicone-Long, Sue-Ellen Watts, Aaron Zamykal and, of course, Florian Loehr.

Thank you to Jeff Hoffman, Keith Abraham, Paul Dunn and Michel Kripalani for your inspiring work and for permission to use your words.

An extra-special mention to:

• Kamina: Thank you for taking my journal rants and vision for this book and making it come to life. Your talent is admirable and our new-found friendship is treasured. PS: You were a blender before we met!
• Emily: Thank you for your life/business coaching and dear friendship. You've transformed so many lives, mine included, so thank you for taking the time to turn your invaluable methods into two-page exercises for this book. Continue your path of positively impacting the world!
• K (Kylie): Thank you for showing me what unconditional friendship looks like. You lift me up, make me laugh, never judge, and lead with such a big heart. Blessed to call you bestie.
• Florian: Thank you for empowering me, supporting me, and being my rock and the best role model to our children: shared values, constantly evolving, creating memories, and being adventurous.

I met Florian when I was 31.

At 31, I had a plan. I'd grown my marketing agency to be one of the top agencies in Australia. I'd been working as a singer/songwriter for 15 years and had a couple of hit singles and toured Japan. I'd been married at 22 and divorced at 30. Everybody thought I was crazy when we broke up, but I think the partner you're with should think you're the best thing in the world. He didn't. And I didn't want to settle any more.

My plan was to wait until I was 35 and then become a single mother. My best friend and I had looked up sperm donors on the internet. It wasn't that I didn't want to get married again, it was just that I didn't want to compromise. And growing up in a mining town, I had certain perceptions about what marriage was: it seemed like everyone I went to school with got married, got pregnant, and had no inspiration to leave town. So I'd made a different plan for my life.

Florian wasn't in the plan.

I was 31, and I'd decided to retire from the music industry. My last gig was in Morocco, at a festival in Essaouira. Then I was due to fly to Japan, but there was a typhoon in Japan so I got stuck in London for a night. I really didn't care for London (mainly due to the weather), but I was put up in this beautiful hotel. Florian was working at the front desk.

Florian's a real romantic. He'd just gotten back from his grandparents' 60th-anniversary party and he was working behind the desk at this hotel. He saw me walk in and thought holy shit and basically pushed people out of the way so he could serve me.

I handed my passport across the desk and he saw that our birthdays were one week apart. He took it as a sign.

I said to my travel companion, I am going to give him my number because he's cute and we're having butterfly moments, and she said, he's gay! Man, you can't even pick it any more!

I gladly proved her wrong.

We started talking every day. He'd fly over and meet me and we'd rendezvous in wineries. I was scared to show him my businesses and my block of units, my real life. I had this stupid theory that successful women scare men away, so I tried to downplay it all.