Hi and welcome to The Ladybird Purse, my weekly newsletter about women and money. I’m not a financial advisor and am in no way qualified to give financial advice. But I can give you a good podcast recommendation.
I know we’re not supposed to talk about our dreams - actual sleeping dreams, not, like life goals - but I don’t get that at all. I think dreams are fascinating. We lie down at night and over the next however many hours stories play out in our minds - that’s amazing!
I have many, many dreams every single night. In my twenties, I tried to keep a dream diary, but it took much too long to write them all down. My dreams becoming riddled with filth was one of the signs that I was pregnant with my second child (another sign was an intense craving for chips and gravy - I am proper classy). I once had a sex dream about Mr Burns from The Simpsons. So I just don’t buy it when people say dreams are boring.
Obviously this is all a preamble for me to tell you about a money dream I had last week. I was playing but also in a game on my phone - it was a bit like Doodle Jump, which I was addicted to for a while there. Dream me was hopping up through the clouds, landing on rainbows, falling down through fire, etc.
And then bubbles started appearing and inside the bubbles were game gifts - extra time to play, gold coins, power ups, etc. And little game me (I was on a motorbike, did I say?) abandoned trying to progress through the game and went hell for leather(s) on grabbing all the coins.
And in the dream, I thought “Huh. That’s interesting. I must write about this on Substack.” And then I woke up.
Now I don’t believe that dreams automatically have inherent meaning. I also dreamt last week that a platypus ran up my trouser leg and I’m pretty sure that’s not trying to tell me anything. But. There’s definitely something about how I haven’t progressed in my career because I’m too busy scrabbling for tiny amounts of money.
I can’t really stop because, as small as the sums are, I’ve got bills to pay. But I shouldn’t be doing it at the expense of my career and life progression. And I think I am. Bugger.
(I’m hoping on Thursday to have a follow up with one of my favourite previous interviewees that contains a brilliant analogy about exactly this. I’d like to post it here now, but I’m not going to. You definitely don’t want to miss it. Consider this a nail-biting preview.)
Paid subscriptions enable me to keep writing these newsletters and not having to hop through dream-hoops, lurching for metaphorical coins. If you’re not a paid subscriber already, I’d love it if you’d consider upgrading. (And if you are, thank you, I love you.)
If you would like a paid sub, but can’t afford it right now, email me and I’ll sort it.
An interview with Lucy Werner
Lucy Werner is founder of HypeYourself.com, an education platform to help build your brand and get it out there.
Werner has taught hundreds of entrepreneurs through workshops, resources and courses for creative spaces like The Futur, Bayes Business School, Courier magazine and the University of Arts London.
Werner has over 20 years of communications experience and has written two bestselling books, Hype Yourself and Brand Yourself. She has been listed in Alt Marketing Power 100, The Dots Risings Stars and Start Up Magazine Female Founders to Watch.
She is a global Adobe Express ambassador and Domestika instructor and writes about self-promotion & creative living for her Substack publication with 7k subscribers.
What is your relationship with money currently?
A bit hot and cold. Sometimes we are doing super well and sometimes we are ghosting each other.
What’s your earliest money memory?
Hearing my parents argue about being able to afford our family home.
What advice would you give your younger self about money?
Save girl, for the love of God save. And buy less CDs because you are not going to keep them for forever.
What’s the biggest money mistake you’ve made?
Trusting my French builder when he told me I should pay for materials in advance because of prices going up and him going bankrupt with my money. He left an unfinished septic tank and a giant hole in my garden in time for the summer holidays as a goodbye gift.
Can I ask about the financial side of moving to France? It’s presumably a big financial commitment! Also have you noticed any different attitudes to money in France?
France was actually a money-saving move. We had overstretched ourselves with a mortgage in London that was six times our combined salary. That was before the interest rate increases. I thought it was a good lifetime investment decision, but we were constantly falling behind on the hamster wheel.
The property here is a lot cheaper. We are just tucked into the Var, and even this postcode prices immediately drop. As we were both used to working for ourselves remotely, though, we also saved the cost of living in town. Although, I did not consider the cost of petrol and how much we spend on driving now!
There is a lot more paperwork and administration in France, and regardless of whether or not you are self-employed, you have to file a tax return every year, so I feel like they are actually more financially aware than in the UK.
What’s the best thing you’ve ever spent money on?
Art. I have marked significant moments in my life with art and each one feels so evocative.
Do you have a pension? If not, do you have a plan?
Yes and No.
I have a small pension, 100% not enough. For now, I’m on only just getting into working very part-time after maternity leave and I won’t have full-time childcare for another 2.5 years so I’m making small pension contributions and into a high-risk investment fund.
Once I am full time, I will be looking to significantly increase my contributions. Part of leaving London for rural France was to reduce my living costs to be able to do that.
How did your business come about? What were you doing before?
I started off in a PR agency for work experience when I was 17. After my degree, I worked for some of the top PR & creative agencies in London before leaving to set up my own business in 2014. Within two years, I had accidentally set up a boutique agency and had a team of eight.
In 2018, I pivoted to a more project contract model rather than retained agency. The co-founder of my children joined and we set a branding division. We started a platform to go with my first book in 2020 on hypeyourself.com and split our time between agency and do it for you work and teaching / DIY side.
He was headhunted in 2023 to work in-house. I was on maternity leave and decided not to open the PR consultancy side again and go all in on education and training with Hype Yourself on Substack.
What would you do with £10,000?
Right now, pay off the rest of my septic tank.
What little luxury could you get with a tenner?
A box of macaroons from the local bakery.
If you could give women one tip for hyping themselves, what would it be?
One tip would be to write down who do you want to call you to work with you? It could be a podcast, newspaper, brand, dream client. Set that dream big goal for yourself and take the connecting steps to get there.
If you were me, what would you want to ask women about money?
Why don’t you charge more?
www.instagram.com/lucywernerpr
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucywernerpr
I am a person who is usually bored hearing about others dreams. So I try to be succinct when I tell them about mine 😂.
Last night I dreamt Sean Hayes told me the reason my husband is always sick (he’s not actually) is because our bed is filthy. I felt indignant and wanted to defend ourselves but didn’t want to talk back to Sean Hayes.
Love your dream stories. 🤣
And how wise your dream self is. That is so true about the collecting coins, not progressing. This is the impact of this economy and poorly paid work in the creative field, to some extent but I do also think it is a mindset/scarcity thing. I have always felt that, when you are self employed, you need to remember that as well as being the factory worker making the widgets, you are also the CEO making decisions about the running and the future of the company (you're also the marketing department, the cleaner, and HR, too) It's exhausting being all that, but we have to be if we are to grow our businesses, otherwise nothing changes. Trouble is, to play the CEO, you need to be able to pay yourself to take a break from widget making for a week or two, or longer. But you can't if you're only getting a widget wage! 🤷♀️
PS. I'm just gonna pretend I didn't read your comment about Mr Burns.