THE city and the bush might be worlds apart, but the struggle is strikingly similar for women trying to make it, however falling over is often the first step in take-off.
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For regional wander-woman Edwina Robertson, the Savvy Birds Ignite to Fly event in Tamworth was about laying out some “brutal” home truths about being a businesswoman.
“I’m going to talk about all of the failures I’ve had before I became a wedding photographer,” Ms Robertson told The Leader.
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“I had four different jobs and I’ve been fired, I’ve been basically broke, I’ve burnt-out, I’ve been broken up with.”
But everything is stepping stone for the next place, she said.
“I think a lot people go in to business and think ‘oh, it’s easy and I should expect this happen in a short period of time’,” she said.
“But it’s taken a long time for me to get where I am and you’ve got to keep going and everything happens for a reason.”
Most people would know Ms Robertson for Wander of the West, where she documented an epic cross-country trek through remote Australia.
A voyage she counted as a success.
“That was a big personal project for me,” she said.
“It was something that I wholeheartedly believed in.
“I believe in representing the bush and being a voice for the bush.
“I believe I have some capacity to do that through my images and my stories.”
‘We learn the most from failure’
Fortifying following failure also hit home for metro-based journalist, and Ignite to Fly keynote speaker, Talitha Cummins.
“When you fail, you’re forced to sit back and really assess what’s going on with your life … and that’s where the growth comes from,” she said.
“I want people to feel like they can speak honestly about whatever is going on in their life whether it’s mental health, whether it’s alcoholism, whether it’s over-eating.”
Unabashed honesty is something Ms Cummins is well-versed in.
She pulled the curtain back on her national TV news career revealing her own battle with the bottle on Australian Story.
“I put everything out on the line and it wasn’t necessarily what people thought I should do,” she said.
Despite having her detractors, including a comment which said “there’s a strong argument that Talitha destroyed her own marketability” with the documentary, she said it has opened up a whole new world sharing her lessons and helping others.
“I sort of look at life pre-Australian Story and post-Australian Story,” she said.
Success through struggle
Savvy Birds co-founder Dimity Smith said the point of the event was to bring city-styled opportunities to the bush.
Ms Smith hoped it would make people realise their struggles weren’t unique.
“Hearing from people’s own journeys and how they’ve overcome struggles, it gives you the opportunity to think I could do the same,” she said.
“Regionally, it’s sometimes really hard to get business ideas of the ground and you think these people up-in-lights have it so easy.
“But they struggle too and I think having something like this, you learn about their resilient strategies.”
Ms Smith said businessmen and women would face the same hurdles when chasing their goals.
But she said leading ladies needed to back themselves more.
“I think it’s maybe a little bit more about women’s confidence,” she said.
“Men can be so good at backing themselves and just going headfirst into something, whereas women tend to be more reserved and worried about what people might think.”