Lise Carlaw - Forty Favours The Brave

Dedication

This book is for all the women between youth and old age who begin to wonder ...

Introduction

The most curious of things happens around forty. Like a meerkat on sentry duty, you pop out of a tunnel and begin swivelling around on high alert, looking behind, around and ahead, trying to grasp the lay of the land.

It dawns how quickly the last few decades have whizzed by without you noticing; how is it possible to stand on the precipice of middle age when it feels like twenty-six was just yesterday? And if the first forty years were a retrospective blur of time marked with the ego and decisions of youth, the question is: will the remaining half of life be more of the same?

So much of our life we slide into we slide into jobs, we slide into relationships, we slide into our friendships and having children. Forties is about deciding, I want to decide not to slide.

Angela Mollard

This is the point at which we found ourselves.

But first, lets step back in time

***

While pregnant with our respective second children (who were born two days apart in 2013), we began following each other online. For any future generations perusing our story, that may read as distinctly stalker-ish, but the truth is wed both amassed large audiences through our individual writing and musings on life, connecting with women across the world. On a resum, we would describe this as being freelance authors, but the truth is we had blogs.

Sure. Look, regardless it was a way to stay creative and hold a little pocket of space and time for ourselves while on maternity leave, muddling through life with tiny children in tow.

At thirty-three, when the babies were four months old, we finally met in the flesh; the dress code for our date was pyjamas and slippers in Sarahs lounge room. Lise rocked up with a wheel of warm brie from the convenience store and it became a marathon five hours of non-stop talking and discovery. The similarities were uncanny and went far beyond being born in 1980 and living a suburb away. There were old mutual friends one of whom invited both of us to her wedding in 2006 but Lise was living overseas, and Sarah ended up at the same table as Lises future husband. In 2008, we married men with first names starting with D (although Sarah has called her husband Wills, their family name, since they met). Our mothers were born in December, our mothers-in-law were both named Ann. We had the same fertility issue (a luteal phase deficiency, which resulted in miscarriages) and were under the care of the same doctor at the same time. And on it went from near misses during university years and model castings in the small pool that was our city.

From the very beginning, ours was the most wonderful kind of no-frills connection, and we often say we fell in friendship love that night. In fact, it changed the course of our entire lives. We were catapulted into each others every day, and so began a frantic catch-up of the younger years we missed knowing each other, which was unexpected given we both had and continue to have close heritage friendships spanning decades.

Its tricky to explain why there was such a burning need to know each other, and with such urgency. Each immediately understood the other and there was a clear recognition of being creatively unfulfilled as individuals whose talents and skills had slowly faded into the background as we flailed about in the common reality of asking, Is this it? in our thirties. We figuratively clung to each other like overboard sailors would a pillar buoy, before deciding to rescue ourselves.

It came one day when Lise blurted out a daydream shed had. Nobody likes a dream story, but this one was different. Her minds eye had wandered off to a random place where the two of us were standing on stage holding microphones. To cut a long story short, despite us having no public profile and still wearing nursing bras, Sarah thought the idea sounded solid and not at all delusional.

That was all Lise needed to hunt out an opportunity. After seeing tickets to an exclusive event screening for The Bachelor Australia finale, she cold called the venue manager and asked if they would perhaps enjoy the free services of an emcee duo whod never worked onstage together before, had no prior clients under their belt, but happened to be mad fans of the series. As it turns out, Lises call (from Sarahs back deck, with her nervously pacing around) had interrupted their planning meeting about the event, which included finding hosts. They said yes. You couldnt make this stuff up.

While serendipity was on our side, so was strategy. The simple fact is, we recognised a gap in the market for representation around female friendship. Remember, this was 2015, and while outgoing and fun male co-hosts were a dime a dozen, the same space was not held for women to be smart, natural and witty, with free-flowing banter. As a general rule, wed noticed the women who were emceeing events were always incredibly polished and slick with popular appeal think newsreaders and journos who did magnificent jobs of delivering the set script but werent afforded the same freedom to showcase their personalities the way their male counterparts were.

In hindsight, there was a bravery in two women backing themselves and unapologetically fronting up to offer a different alternative. And it worked subsequent word-of-mouth from the 200-plus audience at The Bachelor Australia event resulted in a slow-but-steady stream of growth from unpaid gigs to paid client work. The first joint fee we received was $300 to host an Australian designers VIP fashion night, and our excitement was off the charts. We had commercialised our friendship and, within a year, clients were paying up to ten times more for us to front up, on stage, with microphones. Lises daydream had become our reality: the Those Two Girls brand and company was born.

Sidebar: We realise the Girls element may be problematic to some as we grow older, but we chose it at the time knowing descriptions were landing at you know, those two girls hosted it what are their names, Lisa or Liz-someone and Sarah? Thanks to Lises French heritage, its been a constant struggle for the Aussie masses to understand her name rhymes with cheese, trees, please and fleas. Hence, we are Those Two Girls forevermore thanks to its humorous origin at a moment in time its not politically correct, but Lises name is a cross we bear. It also cost us $10,000 to trademark, so deal with it.

The aim was for Those Two Girls to be a full-time career when our youngest children started Prep. As it turns out, it happened a year ahead of schedule when, out of the blue, we were contacted by the founder of Australias largest womens network, Mia Freedman.

For those outside Oz, Mia has been a media heavyweight since her early twenties when she became the youngest editor of Cosmopolitan magazine and is a name firmly entrenched in the zeitgeist for women since the 1990s. Turned out shed been watching from afar and subsequently offered us a contract $30,000 over four months to create content for her company. It was the first tap on the shoulder from a big gun, and the external validation we desperately needed to confirm we were on the right track

We then expanded into producing and hosting our own sell-out panel events for 400 to 500 women held in theatres, overhauled prestige showrooms, hotel ballrooms, industrial lofts and converted warehouses, netting upwards of $35,000 per night which was not chump change eighteen months in. Our gut instinct was correct: women (like us) did want to witness female friendships played out in public forums; we were simply the conduit to see themselves reflected in our relationship.