Vanessa Cullen is the Principal of Forward Thinking Design, one of Australia's leading boutique interior architecture studios & has owned her own business since 2003. Vanessa holds a Bachelor of Design (Hons, UNSW) & a Postgraduate Diploma in Museum Studies (Deakin), is an Accredited Member of the Design Institute of Australia, is the Junior Vice President of the NSW Chapter of the Australian Shop and Office Fitting Association. She is also the face behind the plant based health and clean-eating website More Than PKD - a social enterprise she created to empower people to take control of their own health and to reach their full potential.
“My best advice would be to make sure that you take care of yourself first. And what I mean by that is that if you turn up to your business every day in an exhausted state, if you don’t eat right, you don’t sleep, you don’t exercise, you don’t spend time with your family. If you don’t even out your pursuits you can’t give 100% when you don’t have 100% to give. So it’s sort of like the whole thing about you have got to take care of the source. I mean if you have got dirty tap water because it is coming from a dirty source then what are you going to be drinking, and what are you going to be giving to your guests? Its going to be dirty tap water. You are going to go back to the source and make sure that the source is clean. And from there what flows will be clean and clear and useful and vibrant and healthy for everyone. And business is the same thing. If you as the source are not in a good state then how can you expect to service your customers well? To lead your team well? To execute whatever it is you do well? You need to make sure that you actually taking care of yourself first. And that is not selfish in any way, shape or form. That is just the only way that you are going to survive and it is the only way you are going to thrive in business is you need to make sure that you are healthy. Because you still want to be around at the end of it to enjoy everything that you have worked for”...[Listen for More]