581: Staying Authentic in a Cancel Culture World with Jacqueline Nagle

Cancelled. Shamed. Rejected. All words that fill entrepreneurs with dread.

For Jacqueline Nagle, it was a harsh reality. But she didn’t just survive the onslaught of Cancel Culture — she has thrived on the other side.

In this powerful episode of Influence By Design, Samantha has an intimate and inspiring conversation with Jacqueline Nagle, exploring the intricacies of cancel culture and her extraordinary comeback story. 

Jacqueline shares her tumultuous experience of being publicly shamed and the long road to reclaiming her narrative. This episode isn’t just about survival — it’s about thriving in the face of adversity, refusing to let others dictate your worth, and finding the strength to stand tall amidst the chaos.

Jacqueline’s story is a testament to the power of resilience and the importance of self-trust. If you’ve ever felt the fear of being misjudged or cancelled, let her journey remind you that it’s possible to rise, thrive, and make a resilient comeback. 

IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL DISCOVER:

• Jacqueline unravels her story, highlighting the importance of your inner circle (01:46)
• The inevitability of failure in business (03:15)
• The emotional toll and the power of resilience in the midst of cancel culture (13:35)
• The deeper fear of being misjudged rather than being cancelled (16:42)
• Research reveals the exaggerated fear of cancellation compared to the actual rate of occurrence (18:50)
• Samantha recounts her own fears of being misjudged (20:24)
• The concept of being “uncancelled” and how to navigate and overcome fear (26:10)
• The importance of knowing yourself and building self-trust to withstand any storm (29:53)
• Why everyone’s struggle is significant, no matter the scale (32:30)
• The critical role of having a reliable support network during tough times (34:28)
• The Uncancelled Movement (38:29)
• It’s possible to thrive where you are, despite the challenges and setbacks (41:06)
• The importance of forgiving yourself, moving forward, and giving yourself permission to rise (43:08)

QUOTES

“The people who want to be successful in business need to play a big game. That big game involves a lot of experiments, where things are going to fail.” – Samantha Riley

“Being cancelled is not creating fear in and of itself. What is actually creating the fear is we’re afraid of misjudgment.” – Jacqueline Nagle

“I want people to understand you can have everything in place and do the right thing, and it still goes to shit. And actually, that’s okay. Because you’re better off doing it.” – Jacqueline Nagle

“We do what we do because we want to make a greater impact.  An impact on other people’s lives, an impact on our lives and the people that are around us. If we sit on that, then that is regret.” – Samantha Riley

“Know who you are, have your pit crew, shut the door to the rest of the world, and shut out the noise. Get that strategy in place because it works every time.” – Jacqueline Nagle

“It’s a really important thing, that not only do we show up, but we give tools to the people who love us so that they can also call it out around us.” – Jacqueline Nagle

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ABOUT JACQUELINE NAGLE

A Fifth Generation Entrepreneur with a fiercely strategic brain who holds the global designation of Certified Speaking Professional, a qualified Executive Coach and Master Practitioner in Neuro Linguistic Programming, Jacqueline brings her unique lens on navigating relentless change, opportunity and crisis to her work as a speaker, educator and trusted advisor from the start up trenches to the C-Suite.   Jacqueline’s strength is anchored in teaching others how to reposition themselves through the power of language and she has personally coached and trained 1000’s of entrepreneurs, experts and difference makers in Australia and the USA to step into their power through speaking – by sharing her proprietary frameworks which underpin her client’s success, creating speaking-centric breakthroughs that ensure they are seen, heard, remembered and paid.

WHERE TO FIND JACQUELINE NAGLE

• Website: https://anygiventuesday.com.au/ 
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacqueline-nagle/ 
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anygiventuesday_/ 
• Apple Podcast: Speaker Driven Business / Raise 1000 Voices
• Spotify Podcast: Speaker Driven Business / Raise 1000 Voices

CONNECT WITH SAMANTHA RILEY

Facebook: Samantha Riley

Instagram: @thesamriley

LinkedIn: Samantha Riley

Twitter: @thesamriley

TRANSCRIPTION

Samantha Riley  00:00

Welcome to today’s episode of influence by design. I’m your host for today, Samantha Riley. And I’ve invited a very good friend of mine, Jacqueline Nagel, to join us. And we’re going to have what I’m foreseeing is going to be a very deep conversation all around Kancil culture. And I think that this is such an important conversation to have, because there’s so many entrepreneurs out there that are feeling this, and maybe don’t even understand what this feeling is and what it means. And even having the conversation with Jacqueline before this episode, it’s opened my eyes to, I guess, some perspectives that I hadn’t seen before, in this way. So Jacqueline, welcome to the show.

Jacqueline Nagle  00:37

I’m so thrilled to be here and have this conversation with you.

Samantha Riley  00:40

Now this is been I think I invited you on to my very first show. So we’re probably talking about 800 episodes ago, I said, Hey, come on to the show. So I’m so glad that we’re finally doing this. And I think timing is so perfect. You know, you’re actually an amazing speaker, coach. We’re not talking about that today. If you want to hear about speaking then definitely head on to Jacqueline’s show speaker driven business. We’re not going to talk about that today. Head over to our podcasts if you want to hear about her speaking tips. But Kancil culture? I mean, if someone knows Kancil culture, it’s you. Yeah, obviously, we need to give a little bit of context to this. And I was saying to you before we started recording, there was something big that happened. I was on the sidelines. As a friend, I knew there was stuff happening. But I actually didn’t read any media. I never actually spoke to you about it. And I didn’t because I felt like as a friend, I didn’t need to do that. I just needed to be there for you for whenever we chatted. Yeah. And you said, hey, well, let’s start with

Jacqueline Nagle  01:44

that. Yeah. And I think it’s really important because what you’ve got to have in life is people around you who do exactly that. They shut out the noise, they’re there for you. And they’re willing to say, whatever you need whatever support, and they’re not looking at the noise, and they’re not looking at the chatter, and they’re not looking at the quite frankly, the BS that’s going down. And the reason why I said I think we need to start there is because number one, so many of us don’t make sure we have those people around us, right. And number two, when stuff goes does go down, we forget to see them, we don’t look up and around to see them, we get so involved in the frenzy that’s happening in our world and the destruction that’s happening in our world, we actually forget to look up and see that there are people just like you around. And I think it’s I just felt like we need to stop there. Because especially when there’s something bigger than in the public arena and the public domain, you feel as though everybody lives embrace that, and you forget that some people don’t. Right. And so in the danger in that is, is because you feel like everyone’s living and breathing it, you kind of let it become your identity. And you have to allow the cracks in from the people who know you and who are standing with you and are saying, I don’t care what they’re saying, I know who you are. And we don’t have enough of that in the world. And I also think we need to think about who that is for us. But also who are we that for others, like who are the people in our world that wouldn’t care what the world says we’ve got their back. And it’s so rare, and we need especially in business

Samantha Riley  03:14

100% Because when we’re in business, we need to play big game or the people that want to be successful in business, we need to play a big game. That big game involves a lot of let’s call them experiments. Yeah, where things are going to fail. They’re not going to go right. You know, you and I both went to see from Bartlett. We both went to Brisbane, I actually met him in Adelaide. And one of the things is he said, if every 10 Things you try one will work. Yeah, that’s a whole lot of failures that you need to get really used to coming out. The other side of thing is that some of those are going to be little Yeah. And some of them are going to be really big.

Jacqueline Nagle  03:53

I think if I can also add to that, like, you know, especially as women and businesses, a lot of conversation, especially the scaleup zone about VC funding venture capital funding and not going to women and the funding. And what’s really interesting was that I actually had been in an angel investor rooms where there’s the whole room full of very big level angel investors and going through the pitchers and things like that, and they expect one in 10 to make the money. They expect two to three out of 10 to break even and they expect the rest that they’ll lose their investment. Right. Wow, that’s a that’s a rate of failure that none of us think about. Right? The sophisticated investors that sit around venture capital and angel investment tables, they know that one in 10 will be a superstar, two to three out of 10 will break even and the rest will fail at some point. And we sit here as business owners and entrepreneurs and experts. We need 100% success rate. Even the people who are giving money to what they believe is a sure bet know that they have a one in 10 chance of this actually being with something really special. So if you put that together with that perspective from Stephen Bartlett, then you’ve actually got to be willing to fail. And if you’re not, then please go into the safety of equipment, even a career now you can be willing to fail. Right? Right To Be willing to fail, or as you can’t get anywhere in this world. Also, failure may be as simple as what you were doing yesterday doesn’t work today. Yep.

Samantha Riley  05:21

100% Things move so fast. So you someone that really goes all in I’ve always known that ever since the day I’ve met you. It’s like, okay, so for everyone else that goes, let me think about that check was like done at your your rate of action is like point oh, one seconds. Now, going back to one of the big projects that we were talking about to give context to this. I know that you can’t speak a lot about it. But it was something big that you took on? Yeah. Can you just give us four contexts? I guess the outline of what happened here? Yeah,

Jacqueline Nagle  05:57

absolutely. And it’s one of those things. And so one of the reasons why I don’t speak much about it is I do have a global gag order on me. And I do have a company in receivership. So we’ll we’ll talk about the impacts of that as we go. So I made an idea. I was the CEO of a traffic control business. And I was exiting that because there’d been a change in infrastructure spending at a government level quite complex. But we had to downsize the business to a GM operations and for me to exit so I effectively oversaw a process that saw me redundant. In that period of time, my children were all in their mid to late teens, they were all in good places. I was okay, I was single, I was like, What am I actually going to do when I grow up? You know, as you know, I’ve done lots of big projects. I’ve run lots of big things. I’ve done some great stuff. I’ve done some not so great, but I was like, What am I gonna do when I grew up. And that question led to a series of conversations and decisions and contracts and a range of things. And we launched in early 2016, I wanted to launch a professional development business for women. So professional personal development for women who are in leadership and entrepreneurship. And I want to launch with a bang, I wanted some noise. So I had really great partnerships and programs that were going to come behind our launch. And those programs were, we had opportunities with entrepreneurial boot camps with Marie Claire and channel seven, we had chambers of the State Chambers of Commerce, we’re going to outsource their programs to us. So there was a lot of stuff that was that was already negotiated. But to launch with a bang, I wanted to launch with this roadshow conference series across Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, beggar witness style conferences and get as many women in as possible. And with another event in Auckland, and the headline act, the keynote speaker and it wasn’t going to be you know, and we’ve got it now even more like this, like this cacophony. There’s run out of like 20 speakers in one day, just giving you sound bites gives you lots of things, you take lots of notes, you walk out of there, you kind of like over fool. So the whole idea was we would run actual facilitated workshops from stage where you would really go deep on something that you needed over the two days. And so that the headline acts, and I pitched her I had to go through an agent, but I pitched her the headline and act was Reese Witherspoon. And she was to be our roundtable VIP roundtable prior to the gala dinners, and then the keynote speaker at gala dinners. And per the contract, she was also going to do a q&a. The person who was helping me with all of this was Max Max and his agent in Sydney. He’s the first person who brought out celebrity stars to Australia to do these sorts of events, the model is proven. So whilst he seemed high risk and crazy to everybody else, I knew that the model was proven except and this is where I can’t go into much detail. She and her team didn’t deliver the core component of that contract. And what that mean, so the methodology, and the model for this is and you would have seen it a list celebrities coming out to a country, they do a national media call, you see them everywhere, as the events get announced on all the mainstream media, and it sells out your event. So based on that sort of exposure, we only needed a point zero 1% conversion of inbound digital traffic to sell out all of our events across Australia. There were certain things that went down behind the scenes with that, that I can’t speak about. And it ended up that on the 16th of I think it was the 14th of June. Yes, it was Tuesday, the 14th of June, someone pointed out to me the other day, my business name now is any given Tuesday, and they’re like, of course your gag order was on a Tuesday because I hadn’t. on that Tuesday, I thought we had actually negotiated an outcome. Instead, I got hit with a global gag order, which is ad infinitum. And it’s global. And it led to a serious events that meant within 48 hours, everything was canceled. My company was placed into receivership. And it was fast. It was rapid now because we’ve had so much publicity and because all media had been involved at all levels. It was brutal. So there was a perception that I had run away with people’s money, which I hadn’t done. There was a perception that I was an economist, it was headlines across every major news outlet across the world. My worst day of trolling was 1100 messages direct to my inbox in one day. And they were brutal. And that was without shutting down my social media. At one stage, I had 73 pages on Google screaming my headlines, none of them were true. My agent from Sydney Max put me into lockdown basically at Anfield at the calls. And it was a crazy, it was hundreds of calls he took in the first 24 hours. And it was a brutal attack. And most of it not true. It was also interesting, I would watch people commentating on media articles on social media about how I’d taken their money from the tickets and everything. And if anyone is in business, which most This podcast is, you know that if services aren’t delivered under a merchant agreement that they’re going to refund. So I was like, watching these comments. And in front of me, I had the receivers reports and all the merchant refunds that have been made and knew that that person had got full refund within 24 hours of the announcements. So but because I also couldn’t speak about my receivership because of the deed that you signed with the Commonwealth with the government. I also couldn’t push back on those things. So it’s runs rampant. And even just last year, somebody tried to hurt me again. So it was debilitating. I knew it was a big risk. And I knew that if it didn’t go well, it wouldn’t be great. But I had no idea how fast it would be. And I have to admit, Sam, I’ve always wondered about the backlash from the media, because it was there was so involved all the way through, especially with what was happening behind the scenes. And in the last couple of weeks, I think I’ve landed on it. So when we actually first realized we were going to have to cancel the conferences, we put an announcement up that due to circumstances beyond my control, we were going to have to cancel simpatico conference series and all tickets would be refunded that was before the gag order. So 24 hours later, after we did that announcement, the website, the gag order was put in place, which meant that my insurance couldn’t trigger. Oh, because they couldn’t compel. Because the gaggle was out of the California court, my insurance couldn’t compel a true and accurate record of the lead in and therefore my insurance failed. So therefore, there was no money to pay to venues, there was no monies paid ticket holders. So the initial assessment from our insurance was Yeah, not a problem. You’re insured for this. But when they actually when the gag order came down, it shrouded everything and they couldn’t compel me, I couldn’t move fast enough. If we were given three months, we probably could have moved fast enough, but we didn’t have that time. And so it’s been a really interesting scenario to watch. So literally, for eight years, I’ve had no control of the Google narrative. Now, when you go search my name now you’ll find a lot of the work that I’ve been doing last few years, but some things still pop up. I’ve had no control of the public narrative for eight years. And the first six years of that I had no control whatsoever, the media will also if they can put racist name, my name and a scandal or possible scandal together, they will do so. And when I’ve confronted and gone all the way to Asia Pacific legal level, it’s literally been we know it’s probably and we know, it’s unproven. We know it’s probably not true, but so us. So literally the combination, and the headline will have my name in it, but the photo for the click through will have racist photo. So it’s literally clickbait. So for six of the eight years, last eight years, I’ve had no control of the narrative. And the last few years, I’m starting to get that control back. So that’s the context.

Samantha Riley  13:34

You know, and when I hear that, like I was having trouble breathing through that I’ve got like, goosebumps, I can’t imagine for a second, what that would be like to go through that. And I sure hope that I don’t ever have to either. I can tell you. I can’t imagine what that was like. And it’s been amazing. Watching you come out the other side in the courageous way that you’ve come through, it probably doesn’t feel courageous to you. But for me watching from the outside, I’m just like, wow, like there’s some inspiration right there. I just wanted to say that we’re talking about canceled culture. Yeah, that is canceled culture to the absolute like that is the top of canceled culture. It is there’s a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs that is sitting in fear, because they’re afraid of being canceled. You actually brought something or highlighted something before we were speaking, that they’re actually not afraid of being canceled. Right. Can you speak more to that? Yeah, absolutely. is gold. Yeah. And this

Jacqueline Nagle  14:41

is actually what we’re now going to lead with where these understandings come from is if I can just kind of walk people through why I’m going where I’m going is I realized that I was starting to get control of my narrative back and I thought okay, so I can start to get visible again. Right. And I pulled in a major strategist and He worked with me. And one of the things she said to me, she said, I don’t know of anyone who’s been through what you’ve been through, who actually does come out and thrive in place. So her point was a lot of people come out and pop up somewhere else. But I’m still in the city where it went down. I’m still an entrepreneur, and I’m still doing work very similar to what I was doing, and have created great relationships. I’ve also any trauma, any trauma high impact event, I’ve also made some really shitty decisions, this has not been a smooth ride, right? Like in the middle of mess, you make messy decisions that you allow messy people in. So in amongst all of that, she came up with a concept, and we’ve just trademarked it, and I’m really proud of it is called uncancelled. And it was about almost like the antidote to cancel culture and you can be cancelled, and you can come out the other side and be uncancelled, right. And so, to put it together and send me know my processes, I don’t like people who are sound bites, I don’t like people shooting from the hip, if you’re going to speak on something you need to know. So I went down some rabbit holes, and I went researching and all that stuff. And all of the research I could find whether it was university based research and Kancil culture, and that was the first thing that happened. There wasn’t a lot of actual research on Kancil culture, and yet we talk about it all the time on social, right. So it’s like, hang on what’s going on here? Because and there was no hardly anyone speaking on canceled culture and less our people who’ve been canceled, and still in the middle of it and quite rebellious, right. And I do want to speak that way. So when did a lot of research and a lot of reading, there’s actually a really good book for anyone who wants to go further into this. There’s a book by Jon Ronson called so you’ve been publicly shamed. And that gave me a lot of leads into where I needed to go. And what I discovered was, we’re not afraid of being canceled as such, if we know we’ve done something wrong, we don’t want to be caught out. Absolutely. We don’t want to be caught out. But we’re not canceled culture is being canceled is not creating fear, in and of itself. What is actually creating the fear is we’re afraid of Miss judgment. And what I mean by that is, but what if I do the right thing? And I get called on it, and I get Miss judged for it. What if I say the right thing, and I still get canceled. So our fear is not being canceled? Even though that’s how we label it. Our fear is, I’m going to do the right thing. And I’m still going to be misjudged, that’s our fear. Because that also leads to another misjudged, I’ll be excommunicated, I’ll be disconnected, I’ll be you know, removed from where I am, my safety anchors will go, my connections will suffer. And so it feeds into that really primal need that we have to belong, right. So the fear of Miss judgment is so strong, because we feel that the consequences that will no longer belong. And we’ll lose while we’ve built. And I did lose what I built. And I’ve lost it before as well, which is a different conversation. But it’s one of those things where you just go, I couldn’t believe that was I felt like it was too simple. But it’s also so complex. Right? So we are not, we do understand that by so well, we may yell and scream. And one of the things I say now to people is people are actually hijacking Kancil culture, and people go watch it and hide it or hijack Kancil culture. And it’s when people have done the wrong thing, and are paying a consequence. But they want to somehow still get connection back in and not be completely railroaded out. And so they’re claiming to have been canceled. But if you’ve actually done the wrong thing, then that’s a consequence. That’s very different. But if you actually have done the right thing all the way through, it’s very different. Right? So the thing that keeps us bound as entrepreneurs and experts and all of the people that sit in your audience, Sam, the thing that keeps us bound is this fear, right? But what gets really interesting is the little bit of research that is around on cancel culture. There’s one of the universities that I can’t remember whether it’s Penn State or Princeton, but it’s one of those has some research. And they have discovered that the fear of being canceled, compared to the rate of being canceled is 31 to one. So for every 31 People without is an ever present fear, only one person gets cancelled. And I bet if you apply this definition I’ve come up with about cancellation versus consequence. And it’s even less, right, which means we’re all not making decisions on whatever aspect of our life or our business based on a fear. That is odds on not to happen. And because we have these few big hero stories, I mean, there was a clothing brand. In the US I can’t remember who was leather and jeans and everything and it was kind of similar feel to Harley Davidson. It was huge. And they got canceled this five or six years ago through some social media and action. We’ve seen it happen with people in their careers. We’ve seen it happen. So because we got these great big stories of falls and mines one of them mine mines up in the zeitgeist, we think that that is the normal but it’s actually not we have one in 30 which is what three and 100. We have 97% of the population if you extrapolate that as a generalization 97% the population and not making the decisions they need to make and having the conversations they need to have. And being as visible as they could be. And being as brilliant as they could be based on a fear that is not real. The fear is real, but the consequences not it’s not true.

Samantha Riley  20:16

And this feeling of being canceled, keeps so many amazing, smart people that are out there that can be making such a huge impact, and it keeps them silence. I know back in, and I’ve never spoken about this back when the Black Lives Matter happened. I remember it was COVID. And I’d been invited to an online global forum to discuss global issues. Well, this broke out, I think, two days before the conference. And I remember at the time watching some really big names be cancelled at the time for the way that they had spoken about it. And I had this absolute dread and fear that I didn’t 100% understand what it was. But I was also afraid of asking the questions so that I could understand what was going on. Because I was afraid that someone would point the finger and say you’re insensitive or, you know, you don’t care or whatever it was that they were going to say I didn’t even know what they were going to say. So I was so fearful that I actually reached out to the organizer before and said, Look, I want to know more about this. But how can this be brought up without me being the full guy, but the one that’s actually asking the questions. Now what ended up happening was because I did do that the conversation was brought up and it was the it was given context. Yeah. And it turned into an amazing conversation. But I felt sick, and even trying to bring this conversation up.

Jacqueline Nagle  21:45

And I don’t want to take away from anyone the reality of how you feel like and I felt that everyday for six or seven years getting out of bed, is the reality is how we feel the fear is real. But the consequences are not. And I guess one of the reasons why I want to start speaking into this is because I’ve stared it down and I’m through the other side, and I’m not fully through the other side. If someone messes to clean up, I’ve still got shit, I need to get clear, I’ve still you know, there’s still legacy stuff. Because when something hits you that hard, it takes you a long time to get out of the mess, right? And so you kind of compound the mess for a while and I did that like you know I run it things that I run out things I always do things on a big scale. When I’m in Miss I do miss at a big scale as well. Um, so I don’t want anyone listening to this and going well, you know, she hasn’t cleaned this up. And no, I haven’t. And I’m quite honest and open about that, right. But it’s really important because I see people every day, in my work, people that I meet people, I listen to people, I’m inspired by who pulled themselves up from being everything, they could be often making the difference they could, because they’re afraid of what if? Well, I stared down my wife. Right. And I remember when we first were going to go and pitch to raise Max Martin said to me, he said, You need to think about this, because the upside is brilliant. My method is proven. But if it fails, it fails. Right? So he did tell me. And he told me that I couldn’t bring him back and say yes, let’s go ahead for seven days. Because he wanted me to go through the roller coaster of hell yes. Hell no. Right. So it wasn’t an unconsidered decision. Does that make sense? Yeah. 100%. And I think also, the only reason I’ve been able to keep moving through it is because I did consider every step of the way, we always knew what happened was the greatest risk, we just didn’t think it would happen. And so, so I want people to understand as well, like, you can have everything in place and do the right thing, and it still goes to shit. And actually, that’s okay. Because you’re better off doing it. Like I am a stronger communicator, I have so much more empathy now, you know, and we have people coming into our world now because they go, hang on, you’re thriving again. I want some of that, right? So it’s not a quick fix to come through it. And some people don’t take as long as I do. Sometimes I think I am a slow learner. It’s not a quick fix. But we need to have a conversation because we’ve got to stop pulling ourselves up. Right, we’ve got to stop pulling ourselves up, because 90% of the world or whatever it is, will pull themselves out rather than take the risk. Because when they feel that feeling that you feel sound, right, they give in to it. And what the worst part about that is like you talk about that led to a great conversation because you reached out the organizers. So that led to a great place for you to be right now, it may not lead to a great place. It might be something that leads you to a worse place. But great place or worse place is still actually better than sitting with your stomach churning. Yeah, because if you sit with your stomach churning, it never goes away. If you don’t make a move and it gets better, it dulls it goes away. If you make a move and it’s worse, you actually break and you got somewhere to go from but if you say hit with that sick feeling in your stomach, you can’t escape it, it becomes your address.

Samantha Riley  25:04

Yeah, totally. And you can’t make change from that. And I think at the end of the day, that’s we do what we do. And it’s risky. And you know, we have to put ourselves out there everyday. But we do what we do. Because we want to make a great impact, an impact on other people’s lives, but also let’s be real and impact on our life as well. And the people that are around us, and if we sit on that, then that is regret. It’s ignorance. It’s all sorts of things that most of us don’t want to sign our name to. So it is about moving for all of the people that are listening and nodding along and going, yep, I understand this. There are those times where I felt like I was going to be canceled. You’ve just talked about the fact that that’s not necessarily the outcome, but sometimes it’s going to be Yeah. How can we? And this is such a big question, but how can we embrace this to be uncancelled? Yeah,

Jacqueline Nagle  26:01

there’s a couple of things here. And I want to start actually, with also acknowledging that, you know, sometimes have blockbuster canceled stories, but happens every day, right? You a business partner goes off the reservation, right, and you lose everything. And marriage falls, marriage breaks down as sister dies. Like every day, something happens that gets people estranged from their families, a stranger in their communities, like kicked out of the places they thought they were always going to be safe. So being canceled or being disconnected and excommunicated, happens every single day, right. And it doesn’t have to be something that makes headlines, it can be something that just completely shifts your world and you feel like you’ve lost connection to who you are. So how do we do it? And the best way that I can talk about this, so even though that was a really big story, and the reason why it was about being canceled every day, I was cancelled cre social media form. In 2004, when my two IC took her own life. So she was my second in charge at a multimillion dollar family owned business. And I was the general manager. And through a series of events, and including bipolar collapse and a whole range of things. She ended up being successful and taking her own life in 2004. And I was publicly blamed at the week for killing her. Now, people knew that that wasn’t true. And it was unfair, but no one knew what to do with it. So our multimillion dollar business haft in two weeks, right? Our people, our team were horrified, terrified, I had to bring a full time psychologist, it was horrific. And wherever we went, is kind of like people walked away from us, because they just didn’t know what to do with these things. So it wasn’t, I was being cancelled and disconnected because people thought that to be true. It’s like they literally didn’t know what to do with it and was so volatile. Um, her ex husband, her students, a RecSports. And her husband, it was so volatile, right? So all of a sudden, we’re in this black space where no one was reaching in and people kind of almost pushing us back into it. So I think about when you ask that question, like, how do we embrace it, because that hurt really badly. It took me a long time to recover. I had to almost subvert my own grief process to be able to get my team through it, right? And my clients, because I’d all known her. So how do you embrace it when you actually have been there before you got muscle memory that this hurts, or you’ve never been there before? And the thought of it is terrifying. There’s a couple things. Number one, know who you are. If you never did this thing again, know who you are in the quiet. Right? Values, relationships, what matters know who you are. And that’s one of the reasons why I haven’t walked away because I actually know who I am. Right? That’s number one. You’ve got to actually do the personal work. And people think they’re doing personal work all the time. I don’t mean just talking to your girlfriends. I mean, go deep. Get rid of your demons, understand your values, understand your TrueNorth get really clear on that know who you are. The second thing is know who your support crew are. A support crew is not a roster call of dozens, it’s the 123 people that you can sit on the floor with, and throw an axe at the door, and hope that no one walks through it is those people you can trust implicitly, with everything. And I mean, everything. What was really upsetting for me with simpatico was I thought I knew who those people were. But two of the three proved to not be those people. And that was also another really hard body hit because I let them in, I put them on the side of the door. The other thing is get good at shutting out the noise. Right. So use social media and digital to market. Absolutely. You know that I people think I’m all over it. I don’t do that my team does. Right? I don’t google myself. I don’t respond to things. I don’t whatever. And so it’s shut out the noise. Right? So it’s literally know who you are. Have your pit crew shut the door to the rest of the world and shut out the noise. Get that strategy in place because it works every time. And the fear that you Have that stops you from making these decisions is a mirror. And what I mean by that is if you have a fear of being canceled or being misjudged, it’s because it’s actually not about the misjudgment and not about the cancellation that almost sounds like an oxymoron. It’s actually because you don’t trust yourself enough to get yourself through this. So that’s why I say you have to know yourself, because your self trust is the only thing that will get you through. And self trust breaks over and over again in these processes. Right, but build self trust, build resilience, build a knowing of who you are, because it’s a self trust, is a reason that you don’t do it. Right, I now know, I don’t want to go through that, ever again, the last eight years, never again, I’m very careful about that. But I also now know that I can get through it. And I won’t take as long next time if it were to happen if I was crazy enough to do something like that again. So I have built up my levels of self trust, if that situation were ever to happen. So work on yourself, trust, do that deep work, get rid of the imposter syndrome in your head, get rid of the inner critic and know who you are. Because without self trust, it will take you out, right, the fear, you will never make the decisions you should make. Because the fear will always be stronger than your own level of self trust. And if the worst happens, and let’s face it, as we said, one out like Steve Bartlett, and that venture capitalists, you’re going to have failure, if you leave, you’re going to have failure. Right? So understand that when it happens. It’s just part of the process. Yeah, I think does that answer the question? It really does.

Samantha Riley  31:33

And just that piece that you said, and I’ll put it in my words, this is not the word to use. But when you’re wobbly, when things aren’t great, because there are some days, and I’m not talking that I’ve been through anything big like that. But like you said, we’ve all been through stuff. And there are days where you’re like, Ah, I’ve got the slides behind me. And then the next day, you’ll wake up and you’ll be like, Oh, no, it’s not. No, it’s not. And it’s those days where you don’t trust yourself that definitely I have learned over the last few years, step away from social media. And like you, I’ve got my team looking after it. So I’m not saying I’m stepping away from it and not showing up there because it’s so important to be visible. But personally, am I going to go and have a look to see what people have commented, or am I going to go and get into a debate online? Absolutely not? Absolutely not.

Jacqueline Nagle  32:24

Yeah. And it’s really important. Like one of the things you just said about, you know, some days I wake up, like it’s not behind me. And that happens quite frequently for me. But the other thing that you said before, that is actually where I want to go, you said you know, I don’t have something on the scale of yours. And for the first three to four or five years, because a lot of people knew and wherever I went, it was kind of like, I remember someone engaging me for speaking engagements. And they’re like, Oh, we can and they gave me another call. And they’re like, we just didn’t have a conversation, we kind of feel like you need to put the elephant the room like, because people are going to be if they connect the dots, and they Google you, they’re going to find the staff and I was like, make a speech starts off with that. Because literally the elephant is in the room and you trip over it if I don’t speak about it. So people were always saying like, it’s not as big as yours. It’s not as big as yours. It’s not as big as yours. I wish I could really swear out loud. I don’t give a flying. Uh huh. That it’s not as big as mine, because it’s all relative. So you might have a piece of news that to anyone else seems really minor. And it knocks you on your feet. Right? And so I actually started almost coaching people say, Can you please stop comparing? Right? Like, yes, mine is very visible. But every day we have something people have things that blow up their worlds, like literally something they might see out of the corner of their eye, that completely destroys their vision of the world. Right? And to the outside world, it seems like nothing that is completely destroyed. They’re in a version of the world, how they see the world and how they think they belong in it. So the whole Yes, I have a blockbuster story. But that doesn’t make it any bigger than someone who can’t get out of bed in the morning because they had a fight with their best friend the night before.

Samantha Riley  34:04

It’s Wow. And you don’t need to be the one to be coaching us over that as well. You know, like, I always was like, you’re almost putting yourself in the position where it’s like, no, I need to protect you from the big story. Like we all just need to just deal with our own stories. That’s what I’m taking. Yeah,

Jacqueline Nagle  34:24

just to with our own stories. And, you know, we talked before about you know, the people in your corner and my world is getting a lot but it’s expanding again. Now finally, because I’m not as fearful of letting people in. But one of the things that happened a couple of weeks ago, and I just want to touch on this, while it’s on my mind is a new client onboarding. She’s quite high profile, and a lot of people in her circle, who know my backstory, challenged her on why she was working with me on a private level. And she defended it really, really well and she wasn’t bothered by it. She was just like, relaying it to me and going oh, kinda curious. This happened. And I said, you know, I said next time you get anything like that, and I now tell all my friends Is this necessary or anything like that? Just ask them if they have my number in their phone. And she got it immediately. Because if you don’t have my number and your phone, you do not know me enough to know my story and to comment on what went down. And I think also, we need to actually start to call that 100%. Right. So there is so many people who talk about us, and it’s not just about it can be in the school. Yeah, like hands up mums in business. How shitty is that experience being a school mom when you’re in business and not a nine to five? Right? Like, it can be anywhere, right? It can be gossip that happens in your community, it can be how you’re treated in the schoolyard with your kids, it can be in a sporting team. And it’s like, literally, like, if you are hearing something about someone else to say, Have you got that number in the phone, in your phone? Because if they don’t, and if they can’t stand there in front of you and call them, they don’t know you. They don’t know you. So it’s a really important thing, that not only do we show up, but we give tools to the people who love us so that they can also call it out around us that important that last

Samantha Riley  36:06

piece, give the other people around us tools as well. Because that is what happens. You know, people will say, Oh, did you hear? Or did you know? Well, as I mentioned to you, right at the beginning, I didn’t know your story, your number is in my phone, we do call each other, we do know each other. And when people said things, I was just like, it has nothing to do with me. Your friendship has everything to do with me, your well being has everything to do with me. Are you okay has everything to do with me, the details have nothing to do with me. And that, I think is something that I want to not just be that person, but I am that person because I want also other people to do that back to me. Yeah, it’s like it goes back to the

Jacqueline Nagle  36:51

oldest premise in whether you believe in universal power, or God or whatever it might be. But a higher power is like Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself. Right? So you know, so that’s an ancient scripture writing, but it’s so right and so powerful, you know, and if we can actually start to create some of that we also build our own strength. We also build our own, you know, reservoirs of strength, because if you’re playing at any sort of game, and you know, we all say you don’t just play a bigger game, and we want to play a bigger game and all that stuff. You know, what, if you want to play a small game, right, if you’re just putting your foot on the field, right, you’re gonna get hurt. It’s a contact sport. So build your reservoirs, right? Build your reservoir. So even if you just put your foot over the sideline, on a footy field, you are still in the field of play, you are still going to get hurt. So if you want to play a big game, great, but if you’re playing a small game, and quite happy to play a small game, don’t think that that’s an inoculant. You, right? From two things from things going wrong, but also from the fear of getting it wrong. And it’s the fear of getting it wrong. So the fear of not the fear of getting by, but the fear of getting it right, and being misjudged. Anyway, don’t let that stop you. Do not let that stop you.

Samantha Riley  38:07

You have trademarked and cancelled, this is something that you want to lean into. What does this movement look like going forward for you?

Jacqueline Nagle  38:19

I actually really don’t know. Okay. And that’s the honest truth. I feel like I’ve pulled a thread. And I’ve got no idea where it’s going to pop, right. So you know, you pull a thread on a tapestry or something. It just keeps sort of rebelling and going right. What I do know is that, you know, and you know, I used to speak on resilience, and I’m fabulous storyteller. And I feel like this is resilience on steroids. I feel as though if we can find ways to navigate the fear that the need to be resilient will start to disappear. Right? I like resilience to be a state of being rather than a destination that we need to get to. So I also think there’s a conversation we need to have because you can stare down your worst and survivor you know, one of my clients, he was paramedic on a rescue helicopter and did 4000 missions so quite often winched out the bottom the helicopter to rescue people and attend to people medically. And you know, he said every day in my life, I was meeting someone on their worst aim. And so, we are all going to have that. So I want the conversation to start so that we can actually you know, lean into fear we can navigate fear we can understand that even if the worst happens. So when I was in the midst of understanding that this thing was not going to plan with Rhys events, I met with Philip who most people have Australia probably won’t know him, but he’s one of Australia’s most successful entrepreneurs. And I met with him and I said, I said I don’t know what to do. I said it’s like it feels like it’s a freight train. I’m not sure where it’s going to pull up. And this was just towards the end and he said the most brilliant thing to me he said, what’s the worst that could happen as a company in receivership huge publicity personally bank Right. So okay, great. I’m like what you said, those three things, go home and make a plan for what you need to do if any of those things come true. He said them put it in the bottom of a drawer, he said, but plan for the worst and work for the best. Right. And his whole point was if I got it out of my head, and into a plan, I could let it go on, it could stop taking up space and creating fear, and I could actually make better decisions. And he was right. He was right. And it also meant that when the worst happened, I actually already had a project plan for the receivership and the lockdown that I needed to do. Rather than trying to do it in the middle of chaos, when I’m absolutely slaughtered and bleeding out on the ground. I literally pulled out a checklist that he made me create. I moved my way through it. So there’s a whole range of things there. But so it’s an important conversation. But I think the reason why I want to do it is I want the other thing I’m finding my research is a lot of these stories of recovery from being canceled or having a high impact event that tears at your reputation is that there’s very few examples where people are thriving and place in Australia. Christina Holgate is one, you know, she got absolutely smashed with her roll, and she’s absolutely kicked ass in the same arena.

Samantha Riley  41:17

Well, good for her. I say she should. Yeah, absolutely.

Jacqueline Nagle  41:22

Absolutely not. You know, that was insane. Yeah, but it happens every day. Right. And as you said, like even just watching some of the stuff around the Black Lives Matter, like it is really scary to be witness to. But what I’m finding is a lot of things that are held up as recovery and making it through from cancellation more particularly, is people are not thriving in place. So they’re like, removing themselves from where they were. And they’re popping up in a totally different character and a totally different occupation. And that’s okay, and that’s well and good if that’s what you choose to do. But a lot of the time, my sense is, is because they can’t figure out how to navigate where they were. Right? And I want you to believe that if the work matters, or your position matters, or your relationships matter that you can make it through. You can I think like if you talk about like, where do we want to take people to, I want to take people to a place where they know they can stand on their worst day, stead and the worst event and find a way to thrive in place. You don’t have to blow up the rest of your world. Like when you will blows up in one zone, you don’t need to make it a nuclear blast across the rest of it. You can learn to thrive in place. I think that’s what I want people to understand. You are It’s inevitable. Something’s gonna hurt. It’s inevitable, you’re gonna fail at something, it’s inevitable that you might be misjudged. And it’s inevitable that that might make it into the social media and mainstream media Zeitgeist. But just because there’s a blast in one’s place doesn’t mean you need to nuke the rest of it. And you can thrive it in place. You can absolutely thrive in place. And I’ve done that I feel like I’m thriving in places. You know, I just got married. I’ve got great relationships, I’ve got great friendships, but it’s got messes to clean up because part of that thriving in place was I said in the message too long. Right, because I thought I should. I thought I should. We’re wired to feel guilt and penance. And we’re wired to feel. So I felt like I had no right to rise again. I thought that my price was to carry the weight of this for the rest of my life. And for as long as I thought that I stayed in this, I made messy decisions. I let messy people in. I messed up with people that I love. Because I stayed in the mess because I thought it’s my press today. And there was a day when I flicked a switch. And it literally was I got to the office one morning we’d had particular particularly bad run of media being reignited this couple years ago. And some of it was true enough, it was true that I couldn’t outright put it to bed. And but it was again, it was hurting and lots of stuff. And I just I got to the office that morning and I looked at Martin, my husband and I said just today, I’m going to pretend that doesn’t exist unless someone brings it to my attention just today. And everything changed from that time. It still was rough still hurts, I still muck up. But that’s when it started change when I actually went. Actually, I’m just going to think about this differently. And there’s a lot more behind that as well. But part of me staying in mess for so long. was one it’s hard to recover from. Right. It’s really hard to recover from. But the second thing is, is because at a certain level, because I played a big game and I got crucified publicly. I thought I deserved to stay down. That

Samantha Riley  44:44

is so powerful. And for anyone that’s listening, like I am physically shaking, like just the the emotion that’s in that not just to hear your story, but to also give the permission to ourselves to say we don’t need to continue to live this. We don’t need to continue to punish ourselves for whatever this thing is. And that’s just so so friggin amazing. I can’t wait to see where this movement takes you. Thank you, Jacqueline. Thanks so much for coming and sharing this story and for sharing everything that you do. You’re absolutely amazing. Thank you.

Jacqueline Nagle  45:27

Thank you so much, Samantha.