Dear readers,
Welcome to my weekly newsletter.
To introduce myself, I’m Rebecca (Bec) and I’m an accelerator program manager, startup operator, entrepreneur, property and angel investor, blogger and athlete.
I am starting this weekly wrap as an accountability exercise for me to stop and reflect, and also to share my learnings with people in hopes to inspire and educate.
I hope you enjoy coming along on this ride with me.
A quick check-in
Word of the week: Momentum
We are now heading into week 5 of lockdown here in Sydney. Outside of my world at home, I feel that it’s starting to get very real and the pressure is really on for everybody wanting to go back to a normal life. I’m surprised at how I have been really great at blocking this negativity out and focusing on myself.
One thing I wanted to kick off and build a habit of during lockdown was writing. Writing a lot and writing often.
A lot of work has been done in these first four weeks to get the systems up, and that is something I need to take a moment to appreciate. This doesn’t happen without dedication, motivation and my drive to push this forward.
Something I learned this week
Lately, I’m been jumping on the trend of achieving fi/re (financial independence and retirement early) and following a lot of Instagram pages and reading blogs of people trying to achieve the same. I realized that there is not a lot of genuine content about what it means or having important data at your fingertips.
A new term around this topic I learned this week which I found funny was “DINK”
Can you guess what it stands for?
…
Haha, okay it stands for…
…
‘Dual Income, No Kids’.
Who would have thought right?
And then there’s “SINK” which stands for… you guessed it – ‘Single Income, No Kids’.
Yes, you’ll soon realise that I’m easily amused.
Celebrating Women in Law
Last week I read something worth celebrating so I thought I’d share that women now make up for more than 50% of the legal workforce in Australia!
I was also inspired by how women are so essential to the legal profession and I would love to see more of just that across all fields.
I shared this with a few of my female lawyer friends and while they were all very proud and happy, they all made a similar comment along the lines of “equal pay next”.
While Australia is leading in women taking over the legal profession, it should not be overlooked that we have a gender pay gap issue. In fact, our pay gap is among the worst across all OECD countries.
Let this be a reminder for us to remember to celebrate the small wins but not to forget about the bigger picture.
Ethics in Startups & Capitalism
This week at Launch Pad, we hosted guest speaker Michelle Bloom, Director of the Ethics Centre, to come and speak to our startups about Ethics and Capitalism.
Big thanks to Michelle for coming along and sharing her expertise on the topic. It was great to have a room of people so engaged in thinking about these issues and working towards making ethical choices when building their business.
One thing I took away from Michelle is the difference between ‘Moral’ and ‘Ethics’.
To me, it would seem that ‘Moral’ is more about what you stand for and doing the right thing (e.g. you value human life and hurting/killing someone is wrong) whereas ‘Ethics’ is being consistent, knowing your boundaries and sticking to them (e.g. hurting/killing someone for the purpose of self-defence can be deemed ethical).
We must remember that we are not just entrepreneurs but we are humans existing in a capitalist society. Being mindful of the consequences of our decisions is crucial to us and our stakeholders.
It was a great discussion and Michelle shared a lot of great resources for entrepreneurs to deal with ethical dilemmas such as a free independent helpline, Ethi-call and some free resources to start thinking about developing an ethics framework for your business.
Global Tech & Innovation News that caught my eye
Billionaires around the globe seem to be throwing themselves into space. Not only is Jeff Bezos building a launch site for Blue Origin in Florida, but Richard Branson has launched Virgin Galactic’s “Space Ship Unity” in Mojave California. Elon Musk has put his personal fortune into SpaceX and has been making regular test launches.
Now they are well on their way to creating an economy in space, starting with space tourism, it seems.
A lot of people make fun of the idea, but I’m genuinely really interested in seeing what will happen once we start building space stations that can house permanent human residences.
These billionaires are all investing to create an economy in space. Essentially, the goal is to build a boom that will mint millionaires and create a whole new generation of deep thinkers about life and ideas we may have never ever thought of otherwise.
So, let’s just say it doesn’t work out and they all lose their money. Even if we think that is a bad outcome, the fact that these billionaires are investing so much money is something to take notice of and pay attention to.
It’s likely there will be some great benefits for future generations as there always is when humans are given access to space, new technology and great ideas.
Would you tour space if it were affordable and readily available?
Hack and Tool of the Week
As I am new to Substack, this platform has got to be the highlight tool of my week.
I’ve been wanting to start a personal newsletter for a while now. What put me off starting was the set up to get the system up and running for me to easily write and distribute it via email.
So I thought to just give Substack a go. It is such an intuitive platform that allows anyone to create newsletters in a matter of minutes, and you can also track important stats.
This tool is so user-friendly and intuitive, it’s a great way for beginners to start their own newsletters without having to worry about managing an entire system from scratch.
And if you don’t want to use this specific service, they have an API that allows you to plug in other platforms too!
To Wrap Up
Thank you for reading for the first of many newsletters to come!
Any feedback, comments or suggestions? Would love to hear from you!
What did you read this week that inspired or helped you out? Feel free to share.
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