Anthea Mumby | Disruption Serves! Anchoring Yourself to Pull Forward
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Well, before I introduce this week's guest, I have to say I'm so excited. I am so excited. Pod Chasers has contacted me to tell me that we are in the top 10% in our Listen score globally. I have to thank you, I have to thank you, listeners and viewers and anyone who's connected to us on Taking the helm. Our guests, incredible people who continue to change lives. Now, with that, if you are in a couple business and you have faced disruptions with your company which directly affects your personal lives with one income between the two of you, listen up. Anthea Mumby is our guest today.
00:00:42 Music Intro
Are you facing a crisis in your life or business? It's time to steer yourself in the right direction through the real experiences, passion and courage of our guests. We're taking the helm with your host, Lynn McLaughlin .
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And it's time to welcome today's guest, Anthea mumbie. While she's had some disruptions in her life, started working at the age of 13 in a family business. We'll talk about how all that transitioned, how she's now off in a partner owned business with her husband, the challenges, the disruptions that have occurred along the way, but how they got through it and how they're supporting other business owners, partners as well today. Well, Anthea, welcome another guest from Ontario beyond. Excited to have you today.
00:01:31
Thanks, Lynn. Great to be here.
00:01:33
Well, how about you start with just sharing a little bit about yourself and who you are and what brought you on this journey to where you are today.
00:01:41
Okay, so I always say I'm a lifelong entrepreneur, I grew up in a family business. I'm unemployable lifelong entrepreneur. Yeah. And I grew up in a family business, insurance brokerage. I worked for my parents for 20 years and then my husband joined the business and we continued on, purchased the business from my brokerage, from my parents a few years later. And the two of us have been working together for 25 years and, yeah, I'm a very proud mother. My daughter is 26 and she's now living out in Halifax, doing her residency for a few years. And yeah, Douglas and I are celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary this, this July, so and he has a milestone birthday as well this year. So lots of cool things going on this year for 2023.
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I'm just recalLynng why we connected so well. I've got a son in Kentfield doing his PhD. We're on our 33rd anniversary coming up. But I have to say, I think I can say this, my husband and he would agree with me. I don't know that we would be celebrating our 33rd anniversary if we were working in a business together 24/7. So I know you're going to share some insights with us, with us today, emphasis. So the challenges you must let's delve into that like being with someone at home and at work, but you figured it out. What are some of your secrets?
00:03:15
Oh, my goodness. Secrets are and some of this we learned, obviously through the school of hard knocks, and we had a lot of our own challenges over the years. But there's a couple of things, and a lot of it really comes back to the boundaries that you set that you agree on as a couple of business together. So you got to have good boundaries around when do the business conversations begin and when do they end? Because we were guilty. We were known for going from 06:00 in the morning until our heads hit the pillow at night, and it was just non stop. Non stop, non stop. So that was something that was really important for us to resolve. What else? The roles, like clarity. Right. Who's doing what, who's responsible for what, who has their own area to shine in, and their spouse has their area as well. So that way there's less chaos and confusion and stepping on each other's toes and the conflict that can come as a result of that. And we recognized it that we were competing in certain areas in our business years ago. And so we had to come up with a different way because my husband and I are both very competitive people.
00:04:50
I wanted to ask about the personalities because I'm a control freak. My husband's a little might work. I don't think so.
Exactly.
00:04:59
No, I shouldn't say that. I mean, the strategies that you're sharing with us could certainly help you if you put them in place before you begin to work together, I think. Right. And then you work through it as you have.
00:05:10
Yeah. Or even if you need to revisit it as time goes on and roles change and your business grows or your empty nesters, whatever it is, it's time to take pause and review and look at, okay, what are the next steps? What's the vision for the future look like?
00:05:32
All right, now let's go back to 2015. Pre pandemic. And you were really facing a difficult time in your business.
Yeah. We call it the staffing tsunami that we have at the outset of 2015. And this was when it was a series of personal challenges and difficulties that our team members were experiencing at that point in time. And because of those personal reasons, they all needed to step away. They all needed to take a break from working for us and deal with the challenges they were experiencing at the time. And so where that left Douglas and I is that within a matter of a few weeks, we were down. There were two of us and one his assistant that were left in the team. So it was tough. It was really, really tough.
Yeah. Because you have the same number of clients, the same number of demands, and three people are now doing the work. How did you get through Anthea?
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Well, we were very resilient. We were very committed to we had just drawn up a vision. It was interesting because we had just drawn up a three year vision right before this happened for our business. So we kind of said, well, we've decided this is what we want to do, so how do we become more resourceful? And what are some things that we could do that will allow us to get through this period of time? And, yeah, I mean, it wasn't all rainbows and unicorns. We didn't make perfect decisions on all of it, but we made enough of the right decisions that, yeah, we kept our business open and we got it back on track. And ultimately, we ended up achieving that vision that we had cast.
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So having something concrete that you could fall back on, can you give me one specific example of what you did? Did it involve maybe tech and streamLynning things some way? I'm just curious.
Yeah, it involved outsourcing our customer service for a period of time. So one of our insurance companies that we dealt with that had a lot of our clients, we had insured, many of our clients were insured with them. And they actually had a structure, a call center, and that allowed us to funnel the calls, the client calls, into their call center for a period of time because we had thousands of clients. There was no way. There was no way. And more so is the fact that my husband and his assistant were not licensed for the type of insurance that these clients had with our business. So literally, it would have all fallen on me. So thank goodness we approached one of this insurance company partner and said, here's the situation. Could you give us help us out here for a few months while we restaff? And they did.
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Not something you ever would have considered before, but it is how we get through challenging times, is trying to find different, unique solutions right, that will serve us and get us to that end point where we can breathe again. So kudos to you. Kudos to you. All right, so you are now helping partners, the businesses who are run by partners, spouses, give us some insights into what that looks like.
00:09:05
Yeah, so it looks like for me, it's about helping them get some of the structure in place so that they will be ahead of the game and don't maybe have to go through some of the challenges that Douglas and I did over the years. Because what we do is we cast a vision right at the beginning that helps them to have just clarity, and it's something that they can keep coming back to, just like I do. I share my story where things start to come off track and off rails, and it embodies the values that you agree upon for the business. So keep coming back to those values. You'll make better business decisions as a result of that. Business decisions that are in alignment with your core values.
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And I have been in hiding for about a month now, totally re envisioning my mission and my vision. Does that make sense? But really, working behind the scenes, I do this. I have this whole wall of brainstorming. Nope, that doesn't work. Oh, this fits here, that fits there. And, yeah, I can see the clarity now. I have a session, actually, next week with my resource team, the people that I go to, to say, what do you think? And we're going to throw it all out there. I guess you don't want to do that alone, right. Anthea, that's why you're helping people. The clarity comes when people throw ideas at you that you never possibly would have even thought about yourself.
00:10:36
Exactly. This is it. Things just show up that you never would have considered. Right. Or even hat your eyes open. Just light bulb moments, I call them. That's where it makes it really interesting and fun and gives them the opportunity to get outside of their own fish bowl. Sometimes we tend to do that as entrepreneurs. We get into our own little fishbowl.
00:10:58
And we need to or we grab the new fanciest thing that's out there that isn't going to serve us well. So if you have a clear vision and vision and maybe some goals set out not maybe goals set out, then you could say, no, that's not going to work for me. Especially when all of these vultures come at us all the time trying to sell us something, right?
00:11:17
Yeah. All day, every day.
00:11:19
So I want to go back to the beginning of our conversation, Anthea, where you mentioned you were working with your father in a family business, and that ended up closing. That must have been a difficult process. I mean, you went from a network of people to branching off on your own and taking your husband with you.\
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Yeah, it was quite a process. And it took some time. I felt I had fully prepared for that business sale, and I realized it was probably about a year and a half after the sale had closed that I was grieving. I was grieving that business and that I had gone from thousands of clients, and I had said, I'm going to go into the unknown and start over with no clients. Right. And things weren't being done the way I had done them, you know, and things were things were different. And it was really it took some time for me to realize, like, you know what? You're actually grieving you're you're grieving this business, and it's okay. Right. Like, again, I worked in it since I was 13 years old. Right. So it had really been a big part of my identity for decades, for sure. So to say it's okay, you're grieving this, and then to have a process to go through that and to come outside the other side and go, yeah, you know what? I'm all right, and I'm excited about the future.
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You just raised a very good point about delayed. Sometimes those emotions don't come to us right away. That's what PTSD is all about, isn't it? Right. It's things that hit us afterwards. So you found your way through, and you and I actually met at a retreat up in Oakville where we had several business owners trying to define what their future past were and be able to let some things go and then be very clear on where we were going. And it was a pleasure to meet you there.
Yeah, absolutely. It was a wonderful day.
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All right, so let's go back in time again, because we always talk about children's emotional well being. So with everything that you and your partner went through during those times, if you could go back and say, what could I have? And we don't do, should have, could have, would have. We're only asking these questions because we can help young parents today maybe do things better than we did. Right. No judgment. No judgment at all. Totally honesty. What could you have done for self care, maybe for yourself, that you would have been able to model for your daughter?
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Yeah, that's a great question. I think what I could have done differently or what I would offer to others is how to make that transition from your business to your home life at the end of the day. So I would come home, and oftentimes my husband would pick up our daughter from school. He'd be running out to get her before the school day, the pickup time, and I'd be running home, and I'd be running around trying to get dinner on the table. And I would give myself that break to just sort of, okay, let's take half an hour, like 20 minutes, half an hour to just, you know, decompress, like, go for a walk, meditate, journal, like, process that day. And instead, I would, you know, just go right into more activity. Like, let's keep the activity going. And I'd be famous for, like, I'd be cooking dinner, and I'd say to my husband, I really need to go to the Watchroom right now, but I got to get this done. And he'd say, no, what is this? And I'd be like, well, that past is boiLynng, or this is doing this. And honestly, if I go back in time, I think of my daughter. What would have been better for her mental health and her experience would have been a mom who was a little more balanced and had had some time to kind of let that frenetic work day go and be fully present at the dinner table instead of continuing on and talking about the challenges of the day and business. Still with my husband, there like, we're here, this little kid. So, yeah, I would offer that to others. Whether you're an entrepreneur or whatever, anybody have that find a way to give yourself that space between what you're doing in your in your work day and then transitioning into your your evening.
00:16:28
Don't just pause the treadmill. Stop the treadmill. So much of what you're saying is resonating with me and hundreds of thousands of listeners because that treadmill is going faster and faster these days. Thank you for those words of wisdom.
Yeah, my pleasure.
Okay. All right. So as we close out today, Anthea, what are you offering people?
00:17:37
Yeah, what I'm really excited about right now, Lynn, is helping these entrepreneurial couples get them set up for success by casting their vision together, their co created vision. And the other thing that I'm excited to offer this year is to provide help for insurance broker principal owners who may be going through a period of disruption where maybe there's been a health challenge or maybe they need to take some time off because they have a family member who's unwell or they just need a break. So I'm able to step in and provide because of my background in the insurance industry, I can help there as well. Yeah. Awesome.
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And how can people reach you? We'll put this in the show notes, everyone.
Yeah, my website is https://www.dreamteamconsulting.ca/
and I'm on LinkedIn and my name is very unique, so I'm easy to find.
Anthea Mumby. I love it. Okay, well, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your insights. We haven't had a guest yet in I think we're up to 112 of you who've joined us, who has talked about this topic. So much appreciated.
Oh. Thanks, Lynn. It's been a wonderful discussion today. Appreciate it.
00:18:57
All right, take care. And let me introduce our next guest in this way. She's written a book called “Thanks for Leaving Me”. Pat Butler was stunned by the departure of her husband. After 40 years. She's written this book, taken it a journey, rediscovered herself and everything happens for a reason. We'll find out why and much more. See you in two weeks’ time. Stay healthy and safe.
00:19:23 Music Outro
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