Bouquets of flowers from Botanica Flowers and Plants Yarrawonga were presented to Verity Rhodes and Sheree Spiteri following their excellent speeches at the AIM breakfast in Yarrawonga Mulwala Golf Club Resort’s Willow Room last Friday.
Photo by
Les_Garbutt
The much-loved AIM Breakfast series was back again last Friday with more than 100 ladies in attendance at the Yarrawonga Mulwala Golf Club Resort Willow Room.
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The breakfast’s two speakers, Verity Rhodes and Sheree Spiteri had very interesting stories to tell on their journeys into personal development and opening and running their own successful businesses.
Verity Rhodes spoke about her beginnings in the local region, the messages that were instilled in her from a young age and how she built Verity Rhodes Interiors into the business it is today.
“This is where this story starts. I started Verity Rhodes Interiors in Yarrawonga over 20 years ago. This career journey has taken me from out at the farm at Rennie, Savernake and Mulwala to Melbourne, back to Yarrawonga back to Melbourne, then Sydney and now in Albury,” Verity said.
“Being a country kid, working hard and giving anything a go was instilled into us from a young age.
“Selling eggs at 6, rearing cows at age 10, waitressing at the Rennie pub at 12, worked at the pancake parlour with my sister Fluer at 13 and 14 before years of ‘hospo’ work while studying.
“I had to work my way through and carve my own path. Like so many you just have to do what you can do.
“I look back and realise I don’t know who I spent all those years trying to prove to that the interior design job was legit.
“It’s just one of those things us women do to ourselves to put extra pressure on. If you are happy doing what you do, that’s all that matters.
“In the construction industry, it is very male dominated, so I didn’t know where I fitted in, I wanted to be taken seriously.
“If you have respect for each other on a construction site, you can create a really good team. It is really good nowadays.
“Nothing in my business randomly happens or is luck. Things can look easy but you need a game plan.
“Be adaptable to change. It’s about problem solving, you need to think quick when life throws curveballs.”
The wonderful AIM committee, Sam Ridley, Deidre Poll, Bernie McKenzie, Tracie Holgate and Libby Dowling welcome new AIM committee member, Tracey’s daughter Luella to her first AIM breakfast.
Photo by
Les_Garbutt
Sheree Spiteri spoke of her family life, her love of working with people while learning more about them as well as holding a short personal development workshop with the AIM attendees.
“Our awareness today is that we are not going to worry about the opinions of others,” Sheree said.
“Everything I have ever done, any work I have ever done has always involved people, the love for people and connection with people.
“I was a hairdresser for 25 years and it was always about making women feel great. That moved me into being a rep for a hairdressing company and that was where my personal development journey started.
“I met an incredible girlfriend Kel and we fell in love with the process of personal development and getting to really know people. We would travel Australia and internationally doing these workshops but we’d return home and unfortunately the local communities didn’t have access to what we got to do.
“We thought the best way for us to learn would be to teach so we founded our company SheKan.
“We did personal development and business development workshops for women all regional, all-around Australia.
“I am now at Miss Dolly which I love because it is another opportunity to make women feel great.
“Women will distort themselves, 30% to the negative when looking in the mirror. If we can just start to focus on the positive a bit more, we will be better for it.”
MC for the day and proud new mum Tracie Holgate, once again thanked the women of Yarrawonga Mulwala for their support and praised the two speakers for their insights into their lives.
“Leading into having my beautiful ‘Lulu’ and since giving birth, I really felt like I had such a village around me and have loved running into our little AIM family who have showered us with plenty of messages and well wishes,” Tracie said.
“Everybody has a story, even those we have asked who don’t think they have an interesting story to tell. I assure you, you do.
“Thank you very much to Verity and Sheree for today and all of our past speakers this year for imparting your knowledge. Getting around each other and celebrating other women makes our community even stronger.”
The next AIM breakfast is scheduled to be held on February 2 at YMGCR’s Willow Room with further details to come in due course.
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