Voxy Lady Magazine - December

‘Inspiration

VOXY LADY MAGAZINE

December 9,

from the Female Voice’

Kirsty Spraggon – Writes about The emotional intelligence of sales i

Also in this Issue 10 Tips on How to Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way The Problem with Will Power Time and Energy – How do we Juggle the Urgency of it?

Women Driving Heavy Trucks in Coal Mines as a Career Need a Flat Tummy – Pronto?

2011

VOXY LADY MAGAZINE

December 9,

Welcome to the Christmas Issue of Voxy Lady Magazine The magazine has been produced to share with you some great advice by the speakers, mentors, coaches and entrepreneurs who are represented by Voxy Lady. We will aim to deliver to you quality articles and advice each month. This month we feature speakers Kirsty Spraggon, Lisa McInnes-Smith, Jill Chivers, Susie Burrell and Mandy Holloway. Also I talk to Lisa Bates who shares her story on her rather unusual career driving 200 tonne trucks in coal mines To sign up for our newsletter just visit the Voxy Lady website. Our newsletter will give up to date information on our new woman speakers as well as showcases and events and will always include a copy of our online magazine link.

This year I learnt a lot from many of the speakers represented by Voxy Lady, I would particularly like to congratulate Sally Anderson on her book “Freefall” which I read on a flight recently from New York. Freefall is one of those books that really touched me. Sally is represented by Voxy Lady and you can check out her profile on the website.

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and may 2012 bring you much joy and success.

Deb Carr, Managing Director Voxy Lady Women’s Speaker Bureau

For information on Voxy Lady contact Deb Carr www.voxylady.com.au Level 7, 36 Carrington St, Sydney 2000 Australia Phone: 02 8214 6344 info@voxylady.com.au

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December 9,

10 Quick Tips on How to Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way By Lisa McInnes-Smith

1. Be courageous. Leadership takes courage. Sometimes the most important communication you receive is the encouragement you give to yourself.

2. Encourage others. People who feel affirmed and encouraged are more likely to give you their best efforts. Remember that ‘put-downs perpetuate poor play’.

3. Be fun to be around. Take your responsibilities seriously but don’t take yourself so seriously! Be quick to laugh and turn a tense moment into an opportunity to smile. Participate at every opportunity. It makes you relatable.

4. Take risks and be willing to learn alongside your colleagues. No one improves without making mistakes. Learn to make new mistakes.

5. Focus. Put your energy and effort into one thing at a time for rapid progress.

6. Choose to shift. Select one area and honestly evaluate where you’re at and where you would like to be.

7. Watch your words. Every word you are speaking is either building up or tearing down someone or something. Say the words you’d like to hear.

8. Use your words like boomerangs. Remember that what you throw out is going to come back at you.

9. Encourage, compliment, smile and respect others.

10. Put your pin in! There is power and confidence in having positive posture.

Lisa McInnes Smith is Queen of the corporate stage and a master of audience participation. Along her incredible journey, Lisa has presented to more than one million adults across twenty-two countries and authored seven best selling books.

Lisa is also the first person outside of the USA to ever be inducted into the international Speaker Hall of Fame - the highest designation possible in the speaking world. This international recognition from clients and peers alike is due to her extraordinary gift to communicate, connect and transform.

Visit us at www.voxylady.com.au

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VOXY LADY MAGAZINE The Problem with Will Power by Jill Chivers

Anyone who has ever tried to break a bad habit or develop a new one has stumbled across this thing called willpower. It certainly comes up quite a lot in the “addiction” literature. And the general wisdom seems to be – willpower is a limited and exhaustible resource. Meaning: we mere mortals don’t have a great deal of it and what we do have runs out pretty darn quick?

Well, see, I struggle with that a bit. I have tonnes of willpower. How else could I have gotten through a masters degree by correspondence over a period of 6 years? How else have I built three businesses from scratch? How else have I managed not to become 200 pounds, despite my love of carbohydrates? Sure seemed like I was using willpower to achieve those things.

But here’s what I’ve learned. Just because we have willpower in one area of our lives doesn’t mean we have it in all areas. And finishing a degree, succeeding in business, and keeping my weight at a manageable level are all areas that I have willpower in. But that don’t mean I got it everywhere.

I’ll tell you this. I did NOT succeed with my own year without clothes shopping by using willpower. No way!

Willpower, I’ve learned, is something to be relied upon only in areas of my life that I’m already strong in. And I knew that I wasn’t strong when it came to my shopping habits when I started my own “year”. In fact, I knew I was weak. I know it’s unpopular these days to use words like weak – we prefer to use terms like development area and area for improvement. But it was a weakness. In December 2009, I knew I had a weakness – shopping. And I knew that willpower was not going to be the thing that kept me on the straight and narrow and allow me to succeed.

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Relying on willpower to keep you from shopping is setting yourself up to fail. So, it begs the question: what do you do, and use, instead?

Here’s my top five willpower-free techniques, custom built for over and compulsive shoppers: 1. Stay out of the stores. This idea is the simplest of the 5 strategies and could be categorised as Simple Avoidance. Nothing wrong with avoidance, and lots right with it. Why? Because avoidance works. You can’t fall in love with a gorgeous shaped jacket that’s 50% off if you never see it, can you? We don’t buy things we don’t see, so instead of relying on willpower when you are standing in front of something gorgeous that you just love – avoid that scenario altogether. Walk on by. Don’t go in. The simplest solutions are often the best and you can’t get any simpler, or more effective than this.

Remember that staying out of the stores extends to those virtual stores as well. Un-bookmark your favourite online stores, and unsubscribe from those online catalogues.

2. Chunk it down. This non-willpower strategy is that

you don’t bite off too huge a piece and attempt to chew it all at once. In our year-long program, I often suggest to members that they chunk down their challenges into one-month challenges, or even 7-day challenges. You can almost anything for 7 days, even things you think are just too hard to do. Our brains are amazingly receptive to these chunked-down suggestions – our unconscious mind (which is often the engine driving the train) are a bit like 5 year olds: they’ll believe anything we tell them. So, if you tell your brain that “it’s just for 7 days”, it’ll go with it.

Then when you get to the end of those 7-days, you recommit to that same, chunked-down, bite-size challenge. See how much easier that is to do?

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3. Take action – just do it and don’t think about it.

There’s no way to get around this non-willpower strategy: sometimes you just have to do it. Just unsubscribe from that online catalogue – don’t agonise over it. Just walk past that store – don’t look in the window. Just put it back on the shelf and walk out – don’t negotiate with yourself. What I’ve found important about this technique is not engaging in any dialogue about it – hence “just do it”. If you engage in discussion, then you’re calling on willpower, and these are the non-willpower approaches, remember?

This strategy is based on action where there is no discussion – you just do the thing. Keep walking, put it down, unsubscribe.

5. Keep going. Perfection is neither expected nor possible, and often we are hardest on ourselves. If you are slaying your own shopping dragon, then don’t set yourself up to fail by expecting perfection. There’s no such thing as the perfect journey anyway, so stop looking for it. If you have a set back then try this: pause, learn what you can from the experience, recommit to your goals, draw a line under it (close the file), and move on. There’s no sense sifting through the ashes once you’ve taken the learning’s out. The goal is progress, not perfection. So, all you need to do is keep moving in the direction of your goal. For today, that is all that is required, and all that is possible.

4. Prepare in advance. I’m a big believer in preparation. A stitch in time saves nine, and all that.

What’s great about this strategy is you prepare before willpower even comes into the equation. You sidestep the need for willpower by setting yourself up to succeed in advance. How? By anticipating where you might be tripped up, and putting in place a plan about how you’ll deal with it when that moment arrives.

Don’t wait to be tripped up – you’re not in a resourceful state then, and so whatever action you take may not be the best for you. If you know that shopping after work is your downfall – “I’ve had a stressful day, I’ll just pop in HERE for a little look-see” – then plan around that: schedule something else for immediately after work. If it’s receiving a catalogue in the mail that triggers you – cancel the subscription. If what trips you up is having a coffee with a girlfriend on Saturday at your favourite shopping place where you can oh-so-easily just stroll into the stores, change where you meet. Think ahead, be honest about your trigger and trip-up points. Prepare for them. Don’t fall into the same hole, especially not when you know where it is.

What these techniques add up to setting yourself a structure that acts as a foundation for success. Put the framework in place first, and then rely on that framework as you journey on. A strong foundation will hold up a lot better under pressure than willpower.

Jill is on a crusade. She completed her own Year Without Clothes Shopping and now helps other women break the bind that unconscious shopping has on them. Her 12 month online Shop Your Wardrobe Course encourages women to stop spending their lives and inspires them to live their lives instead.

To book Jill for your next conference or find out how she can help you contact info@voxylady.com.au or phone Deb Carr on 8214 6341

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December 9, 2011

Time and Energy – How do we Juggle the Urgency of it? Mandy Holloway

Leaders everywhere are busy dealing with the urgent matters and situations other people demand of them – everyone wants things done yesterday. Along with these demands leaders are inundated with a surge of information – email, social media, research papers, television, newspapers, radio or even conversations.

Increasing stakeholder expectations bear down on these same leaders from all parts of their lives – family, community and business. The bottom line – leaders face constant, often opposing and always ever increasing tension – should they focus on the long term or the short term; internal stakeholder needs or external stakeholder needs; the engagement and retention of people working in the business or the return to shareholders? It feels like we are always juggling.

In this paper we explore a very real and critical juggling act faced by all leaders – time and energy – where do I find the time and how do I create the energy to do all the “stuff” I need to do?

In our leadership program we refer to two well renowned frameworks and challenge people to explore both the time and the energy they bring to everything they do and face in all the roles they undertake in life so they can be the kind of leader they really want to be in each of these roles.

We refer to the age old time management matrix used in Dr Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People that is both simple, yet remains highly relevant given the current 24/7 world we live in. I was one of 1,500 people who got up close with him at his one-day conference in Sydney in early 2009. He spent substantial time talking about where leaders are spending their time. He referred us back to this well-researched matrix, disclosing that most business people express their frustration at not being able to move out of Quadrant 1.

He went on to disclose that most business leaders spend 67 per cent of their time in Quadrants 1 and 3; attending to the urgent matters. Their frustration is then compounded when they realise that at the end of a project or intense period of effort to meet a deadline for a client/customer/project they move straight out of Quadrant 1 and into Quadrant 4 allowing themselves time to play with trivia in order to re-charge their batteries. They do this instead of moving into Quadrant 2 to replenish their energy and plan for the future.

The other well renowned framework we refer to comes from the HBR article entitled “Manage your energy not your time “and brings a focus on energy expenditure and energy recovery. It depicts four main wellsprings of energy in human beings: The Human Spirit:

brings the energy of meaning and purpose

The Mind:

brings focus to your energy

The Emotions:

creates the quality of your energy

The Body:

brings physical energy.

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He refers to how he needed a new way of thinking about and looking at the world and at his own suddenly shockingly abbreviated stay in it. He also refers to the challenges he had been facing in the firm to change the culture and bring about a better work life balance. Sound familiar......many leaders within so many organizations and firms are still pursuing the same ambition of creating such change.

His experience in wanting to change the culture of the firm and wanting to deal with his much reduced life span lead him to explore this concept with greater richness and depth than ever before.

The essence of this framework is that time is a finite resource while energy is a whole different matter! It challenges business people to think about how we do not take time away to re-charge and replenish our energy reserves – instead we just keep expending it and wonder why we burn out.

What a fascinating juggling act we have created as business leaders; and for many it is steeped in tradition, beliefs, fears, habits and values.

Putting energy in as opposed to giving up time I have just finished reading a book called Chasing Daylight - written by Eugene O'Kelly just before he died in September 2005. At the age of 53 he was diagnosed with inoperable and incurable brain cancer and given 3 months to live.

When diagnosed he was in his prime - CEO of KPMG, father to two beautiful daughters and married to a loving wife. The lessons he shares about living consciously are amazing and he challenges each of us to consider putting energy in rather than giving up time. He puts what I have been talking about in our programs so eloquently that I want to share it.

Eugene explains that commitment in the business world had come to be equated with time (something of which he had so little now) - it is measured by the hours you are prepared to work and ultimately by how much time you take away from your family. He claimed that if you gave away huge amounts of your time then it followed that you had exhibited commitment. If you did not give so much time then it also followed that your level of commitment was judged as inadequate and you might be labelled as lacking in loyalty and drive.

His deeper explorations lead him to realise that commitment was not about time, it was not about reliability and it was not about predictability. He concluded that commitment was about depth, it was about effort and it was especially about passion.

He concluded so eloquently that commitment is best measured not by the time one is willing to give up but more accurately by the energy you are prepared to put in - by how present you are prepared to be.

He talks about the ‘Perfect Moments’ he missed in his working and personal life because he was too busy focussing on time – where he needed to spend it and what he was doing next with it. He forgot to be present and he forgot to be conscious of what was happening around him and for him.

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I know we experienced something similar in our family with the recent death of our family dog – I shared this in a BLOG entitled “don’t take things for granted “because his passing taught us all not to take things for granted. His excitement when we got home, his warm snugly coat, his beautiful brown eyes, his love of walking and playing. It got me to thinking about how this relates to our business life and what we take for granted each day: • • • • •

Customer relationships High performing team members Our boss will take care of our careers Colleagues’ support People understand our intent

And I am sure you can add things to create your highly personal list – like my husband knows I love him and my children know I am so proud of them every day!

And my challenge to business people and to myself has always been why does it take something so bad to happen – like being told you have 3 months to live for change to be initiated? Why do we have to wait for such an imperative before we are prepared to be courageous and stop accepting the status quo?

Eugene acknowledged at the end of his book that had he chosen to role model better work life balance himself as opposed to bringing in a consultant to tell them what to do to change the culture then maybe he could have initiated far more change throughout the business. What a powerful insight for courageous leaders to learn from and leverage from – what are you doing as a leader in your business to juggle time and energy – so you are not taking too much time away from those you love and that you are putting energy into those things and people who are critically important to you and your life’s purpose.

Mandy Holloway draws on personal experience, in-depth business understanding, real business application and passion to inspire others to be Courageous Leaders. This passion translates into the commitment to model courage both personally and professionally inviting others to develop confidence and conviction to do the same.

Mandy’s continuing personal leadership journey from emerging leader to partner at KPMG and for the last 9 years inspiring courageous business leaders, while juggling the roles of wife and mother, means she shares many stories and experiences with her readers to bring leadership alive with the reality of what people are facing every day.

"'Come to the edge,' He said.

They said, 'We are afraid.'

'Come to the edge,' He said.

They came. He pushed them...and they flew."

Guillaume Apollinaire

VOXY LADY MAGAZINE Talk About Breaking Through The Glass Ceiling – How About Breaking Through The Coal Mines?

By Deb Carr Recently I met an interesting woman when I was travelling on the XPT train to Taree by the name of Lisa Bates. We both were slightly frustrated as this train had broken down and in my case a 5 hour trip turned into nearly 10! However, I always try and see the bright side, and if this had not happened maybe Lisa Bates and I would not have started to have our conversation.

Lisa had just flown in from a midnight flight from NZ and the poor woman was now stuck on the XPT with me! Being the inquisitive person I am, coming from a recruitment background, I asked Lisa what she did for a living. “I drive the big 200 tonne trucks” she replied.

WOW, I usually meet the high flying corporate women earning the six figure plus salaries and here was a woman who was really doing something in a male dominated arena.

I asked Lisa how she got into a career driving those monsters. “I was working KFC in a place called Huntly, NZ, and my brother worked in the mines driving the trucks. He said to me, ‘Why don’t you do it?’ and I thought it was a good idea, so I applied”, she said.

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We work on a 7 week roster, we work 15 days per month, so half a year.

Debbie: What’s a typical day for you then?

Lisa: 6.30 a.m. start the day with a meeting, then at 6.45 we go to the trucks and take the coal to the stockpile for the 12.5 hours.

Debbie: How many gears has the truck?

Lisa: 6 gears and it’s an automatic Debbie: Have you ever had a scary moment driving these big machines?

Lisa: Yes, in New Zealand once my truck flipped, I didn’t get hurt nor did the truck get damaged but I was terrified, I thought the truck would flip back Debbie: So do you make good money?

Lisa: I do, over six figures plus bonus Debbie: So how long do you think you will drive these trucks for?

Lisa: The rest of my life Debbie: What’s the youngest woman driver in your company?

Lisa: 22

This is when I asked Lisa if she would mind me interviewing her for the Voxy Lady Magazine. With Lisa’s agreement I have transcribed our conversation.

Debbie: Would you recommend a career driving big trucks for women?

Debbie: Where are you working now?

Lisa: Oh hell yeah! Especially for females - if you want a go at it just do it!

Lisa: I’m in the Mudgee Coal Mines, driving the 143 tonne, in NZ I drove the 200 tonne. I’m going into the 200 tonne soon Debbie: Are you one of the boys?

Lisa: Yes, they treat us like one of their own, they never treat us differently.

Debbie: What sort of hours do you work?

Lisa: 12.5 hour day shifts and 10.5 hour night shifts.

VOXY LADY MAGAZINE The emotional intelligence of sales by Kirsty

Spraggon Closing the sale & traditional selling techniques are a thing of the past. The way to success in the future is through understanding how to connect and ‘open relationships’ for life through using your emotional intelligence.

Starting out in sales some 17 years ago, I realise now that the content on which we were training our sales forces back then has changed very little.

Most sessions still revolve around typical traditional selling techniques such as: • How to qualify the buyer • Have an agenda • Scripts & Dialogues • Handling Objections • 25 No’s gets you a yes • and of course How to close the sale Now none of this has much to do with genuine human connection and relationship building.

It astounds me that research on Emotional Intelligence has been around for over a decade and yet in my 17 years in sales I never once attended a session on this.

In Daniel Goleman’s book ‘emotional intelligence’ he quotes statistics that show us the IQ is responsible for determining about 20% of our chances for success.

The other 80% is determined by our social and interpersonal skills & our emotional intelligence. This is things like our ability to problem solve, get along with people, to understand others and build empathy & rapport.

There is no greater skill in life than to be able to build great relationships for life and business.

IQ determines 20% of our chances for success the other 80% is determined by our social skills, interpersonal skills & emotional intelligence and it is so valuable in sales. So where do we learn how to build relationship?

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There was no course on my high school curriculum for relationship building. I was lucky enough to have parents who were great role models in this regard.

My father was also in real estate and when I was about 16, I remember going out with him for a days ‘work experience’. I thought this was going to be a drag, admin, paperwork, computers...but I was in shock. We spent the whole day having coffees, we went from house, to house throughout my whole neighbourhood. It seems he knew everybody.

However when I started in sales it’s like it’s almost trained out of you and everything that came naturally to me seemed to be the opposite to the training. I forcing myself to try and remember every word of a script. I would right down religiously WORD FOR WORD every close and script I could. I couldn’t seem to remember them and nothing felt right. I just couldn’t say them.

I remember being in a training session where we were told to stop wasting so much time on what he called ‘Nescafe appointments’ where people weren’t qualified to buy now so why were we wasting our time on coffee’s, however when I looked at my current client list I noticed something. Out of the 10 clients I had at that moment 8 of them I had meet at a Nescafe appointment’ 9-18 months prior and that was the first time I thought ‘maybe this guy’s got it wrong and I’m onto something’. It seemed my way was working.

At times I began to wonder was I just getting lucky? but when I made it into the top one percent of individuals in RE/MAX’s global network of 121,000 sales people worldwide I realised I didn’t just get lucky and I was able to breakdown the process of how I did what I did and replicated the success again. I believe the key was ‘opening relationships’.

I’m often asked whether one way is easier than the other. In the short-term it may appear that just closing a sale with someone who has an immediate need is more effective than investing extra time and energy in building rapport and opening a relationship.

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You may even feel that you would be better off financially just prospecting for those clients ready to use or buy your service or product today compared with nurturing relationships and dealing with those people who don’t have an immediate need.

However, did you realise that you could be missing out on 90% of your potential market?

This is because you would be limiting yourself to dealing only with the very small percentage of the market ready and willing to work with you today.

Yet industry research strongly suggests that depending on your particular sales industry there is usually a 9-18 month incubation period from the first point of contact until the time when a new client actually purchases your product or service. 9-18 months. That means you would be missing out on a lot of business by only working with the ‘right here, right now’ prospects. Not only would you be making things a lot harder for yourself in the long run, but you would also be doing yourself out of all the extra repeat and referral business that would otherwise come your way effortlessly through clients feeling so well taken care of and appreciated.

If you choose to focus on closing sales you’ll be forever on the ‘one-off treadmill’: even years down the track you won’t be able to slow down or relax because you will have to be out there day after day working really hard to chase down the next piece of business.

Whereas, if you open relationships and invest the extra time building meaningful foundations from the outset you will find your business grows and takes on a life of its own in no time. Just like seeds scattered in the wind taking root and blossoming, referrals and repeat business will just start flowing in.

In the tough times this way of being in business takes on particular significance because you have a whole army of business ambassadors out there for you, advocating your service above any other because you go out of your way to look after them so well, even when there is no deal being made at the time.

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Contrast this to if your business is run on the hand-tomouth principle of closing a sale.

This approach makes you totally dependent on new clients and extremely vulnerable to market forces outside of your control. If economic conditions change or a new competitor enters the market you may well suddenly see your customer pool shrink or even disappear.

The only sure way to ride out economic ups and downs is to have planned ahead and built a stable database of loyal, repeat and referral clients because at the end of the day even if there are fewer customers out there, there are always some customers. It’s your job to make sure that you are the person of choice in such times of increased pressure and competition.

It is so important to prioritise meeting people as an activity. A prospecting activity. I think many of us undervalue this, I know I did. Society teaches us it has to be hard to make money and we should expect to work our fingers to the bone – not true.

I remember feeling guilty at one point that I was so successful with such minimal effort. I used to believe that success had to be hard.

I have learned to consider my coffee meetings and networking events as me being ‘hard at work’ and include this in my weekly schedule as prospecting time. You don’t have to be an extrovert to network, you just need to find the people you like being with and attract more of them into your personal and professional life. What kind of business do you want?

Because of this I love my work and my days are filled with catch-ups, networking events, coffee meetings, taking a genuine interest in people’s lives and chatting away having a wonderful time and they call this work?

Now I realise that you can make the journey to success as difficult or as much fun as you choose it to be.

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I have learned that it really pays to ask yourself this: CLOSED= trapped in a cycle of forever chasing new business without being able to take any time off to actually enjoy your success or OPEN = repeat and referral-based business spreading like wildfire by word of mouth and business actually coming to find you - in good times and bad

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marketing and so on – areas which were not my natural strengths so this learning proved invaluable to me.

I made lifelong friends with people I met through networking event’s and we all became in effect a sales team for one another’s businesses, like ‘raving fans’ spreading word-of-mouth referrals for each other.

Now to build relationships we must meet people. I dislike the word ‘network’ it sounds sound so strategic but I believe it is nothing more than focused socialising - and I love to socialise.

Remember to dip your toe in enough different organisations to find groups that work best for you.

The idea is to find people you are comfortable with and enjoy being around. You should also feel confident enough to recommend them and you want to build close reciprocal relationships with them.

Networking isn’t something we do once a week it is something we create. A ‘network’ by definition is ‘an interconnected system’ it’s about more than just dollars...yes we need sales but we also need a community to draw on for advise, wisdom & emotional support, to teach us, to share experience with, to collaborate and leverage from. Creating a pseudo family around yourself.

Just like personal relationships; we need to spend time together and get to know each other. If we didn’t spend any time with our friends or we only spoke to them on email or the phone we wouldn’t get to know them very well. Clients are no different we need to invite them into our world and spend time together outside of business to truly connect

I call this my family tree. Unlike our real family that we don’t get to choose this one you get to create. So who is on your tree? Who are your roots? Your support networks, the people you go out on a limb for & vice versa. Are you watering your tree by giving and nourishing it by taking time to nurture your relationships and understand their world. Is your tree more of a shrub or possibly dying rather than flourishing. What can you do to water and fertilise it this week?

A good network should fill in the gaps where you yourself are perhaps not quite as strong and enhance and support your business.

Financial benefits aside, there were many valuable reasons for me being part of a networking group. I was educated by the various different businesses on things such as: tax accounting; financial planning;

Through using your EQ ‘empathy, understanding & rapport’ we slowly get to know each other and you will slowly be rewarded with trust, loyalty and lifetime relationships.

Kirsty Spraggon - speaker, coach and author, is known for her expertise in building relationships who assists you to increase your sales, networks and connections for life & business success.

You can book Kirsty for your next conference through Voxy Lady Women’s Speaker Bureau.

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December 9,

Need a flat tummy pronto? By Susie Burrell

The Fluid Strip Soup

Feeling bloated and heavy is an unfortunate side effect of eating out and overindulging on high fat, high salt Christmas canapés but the good news is that there are a few little tricks that can help you to get rid of the bloat quickly and easily should you need to over the next few weeks.

Ingredients 2 leeks, white end chopped finely 3 zucchinis, sliced 2 cups salt reduced chicken or vegetable stock 4-5 cups water 2 garlic gloves, finely chopped 1 small onion, finely chopped 1 cup low fat milk Olive oil

1. Eat the right vegetables - vegetables high in potassium including leeks, onions, celery and garlic help to shift fluid so make up a strip soup (see below) and use this to flush out your system.

2. Get some special tea - try dandelion or licorice tea which also acts as powerful diuretics.

3. Swap to liquids – protein shakes, vege juices and soups with move through your digestive tract quickly which will help to keep your tummy flat.

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Method 1. Sauté onion and garlic in a small amount of olive oil. Add leek, zucchini and cook until soft.

2. Add water and stock to mix and bring to the boil, then turn heat down and add milk. Once heated through, transfer to a food processor and blend and serve.

4. Walk – moving as much as possible will help to move food through your digestive tract.

5. Go low salt – check labels and aim for <300mg sodium per serve and avoid all Asian foods including Miso and sushi which are all very high in salt.

The healthiest Christmas gifts There is no better way to set yourself and those closest to you for a year filled with health and fitness than a healthy Christmas gift. Here are some ideas – Golf lessons – great for the more inactive amongst us.

Magazine subscription – Men’s Health, Shape, Prevention and Whole Living are all magazines that offer great health advice.

PT sessions – a great way to kick start an exercise program as we move into the New Year.

Pedometer – we all need one to be kept mindful of how much we are moving each day

Susie Burrell is one of Australia’s leading dietitians with degrees in both nutrition and psychology.

Susie has worked in the area of nutrition for more than 10 years across a range of areas including as a paediatric dietitian at The Children’s Hospital Westmead, and as a sports dietitian to a number of elite level teams including the St George Illawarra Dragons, South African Blue Bulls, Sydney University Rugby and is currently the consultant sports dietitian to the Parramatta Eels. To book Susie contact Debbie Carr dcarr@voxylady.com.au

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About Voxy Lady Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Speaker Bureau Our expert women speakers come from all areas of business, politics, finance, women leaders, marketing, sales, communication, customer service, inspiration, motivation, networking, team building, health, fitness, family, networkers, time management, business owners, entrepreneurs, authors, indigenous and corporate speakers. In 2011 Voxy Lady was chosen as a finalist in the 2011 Stevie Awards in the category "Women Helping Women".

www.voxylady.com.au

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