E2. hacia atherton

00;00;02;00 – 00;00;24;06
AJ
We’ve always been driven by big, inspirational goals. Flying. Developing medicine. Walking on the moon. And while big goals are exciting, it’s actually the little details, the small things that, when done correctly and repeated over time, helps us achieve them. As business leaders face a new set of challenges, I am on a quest to find the small things they need to keep in mind.

00;00;24;15 – 00;00;36;12
AJ
My name is AJ Kulatunga and this is one small thing brought to you by Book Speakers Direct, the revolutionary way of selecting the best speaker for your event.

00;00;38;26 – 00;01;01;14
AJ
My guest today is Hacia Atherton, an inspirational and courageous female leader who believes in the power of progress over perfection. She is the director and chief commercial officer of A.E. Atherton and Sons, the first female in five generations to work full time in the national family business. Hacia has an incredible list of professional accomplishments, including receiving a CPA designation.

00;01;01;24 – 00;01;25;18
AJ
But perhaps the greatest achievement is a personal one. In the winter of 2017, while training for a dressage competition, Hacia was thrown from and crushed by CC, a beautiful 600 kilogram horse who she had personally raised and trained since it was a weanling with a badly broken pelvis and severe nerve damage. Hazel faced the very real prospect of never walking again.

00;01;26;04 – 00;01;43;16
AJ
However, Hacia refused to accept someone else’s perception as her own reality and began the long road to a full recovery. And she’s here today to share some insights on how we can all turn our dark moments into an opportunity to grow and develop. Hacia, welcome to One Small Thing.

00;01;44;28 – 00;01;48;05
Hacia Atherton
Hi. Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here.

00;01;48;07 – 00;02;11;02
AJ
That makes the two of us. I want to start off this conversation with you by saying that I honestly believe, like even though we both have a beautiful love and passion for business, we both came from entirely different backgrounds growing up. However, I suspect that if I came around your place as a kid and I went up to your fridge and had a look on your fridge, there’d be a beautiful cartoon on there.

00;02;11;17 – 00;02;13;16
AJ
Can you tell me what that cartoon might be?

00;02;14;29 – 00;02;35;22
Hacia Atherton
So I’m very grateful that this cartoon was on my fridge because it was actually something I dug into as an inspirational image in one of my very, very dark moments in hospital, which I’m sure we’ll get there. But it’s this cartoon of a pelican, and it’s got this little feisty frog stuck in its mouth, and the frog is strangling it.

00;02;35;22 – 00;02;47;08
Hacia Atherton
And the big words underneath never give up. I think that’s just beautiful. Against all odds, this frog has no prospects in front of it, and it’s still fighting strong.

00;02;47;18 – 00;03;03;00
AJ
That is that is such an incredible image. It’s funny because when I read that, I, I, I remember seeing that cartoon. I’ve never seen it before. I remember seeing it a couple of days ago. So it was very fresh in my mind who put the cartoon up?

00;03;03;00 – 00;03;22;24
Hacia Atherton
As with my dad. So my dad, he dabbles for a while in professional boxing and in South Australia he played quite high level footy. So he’s a very determined man with a lot of achievements behind him and he loves all those never give up, no guts, no glory state.

00;03;23;12 – 00;03;27;15
AJ
Wow, that is incredible. Is that where you get your fighting spirit from?

00;03;29;00 – 00;04;04;19
Hacia Atherton
I’m lucky I get my fighting spirit from both my parents. Okay. They’re very different. Yeah, they’re very different in the way they have fighting spirit. I think my my dad is a very mentally and physically tough person and he fights fights through in that way. And my mum is a lot more of an emotional person. So she taught me a lot of the emotional resilience and how to fight through emotions, by not fighting through them, by feeling them, by being with them, appreciate fighting them and acknowledging them and then letting them go.

00;04;05;01 – 00;04;09;14
Hacia Atherton
So both of them have taught me to fight in different ways.

00;04;10;03 – 00;04;29;21
AJ
That is that is incredible. The emotion. What you said just then, the emotional stuff, you know, fight through them. I find that that’s a lesson that I’m learning and later on in life. And why do you think that we’re not? Why do you think many people aren’t aren’t sort of taught that earlier on?

00;04;29;21 – 00;04;58;05
Hacia Atherton
I think it’s very complex. And I’m no psychiatrist or psychologist, but I think especially males and working in a male dominated environment that taught to not feel their emotions, to always be strong, to be tough, to resilience, is not feeling. Is this concept that often is out there in society for men and for women? I think women are allowed to be a little bit more emotional than men.

00;04;58;23 – 00;05;17;11
Hacia Atherton
Than men, which is which is sad that that’s the reality. Yeah. But I think, again, even in the corporate environment, women have a lot of expectations and a lot of pressure on them not to show emotions because we’ve got to pay lots of men, we’ve got to be strong, which is absolute B.S. in my opinion. And I think so over time.

00;05;17;11 – 00;05;44;10
Hacia Atherton
And look back 30, 40 years ago, even 50, 60 years, guy kids were saying not heard. They weren’t allowed to express their emotions or the feelings in the household. So we’ve got those generations sitting above us which were taught that adults don’t respect the feelings of children because children should be the same, not heard. And so those generations sits above us and they’re kind of now working out how do we be emotionally intelligent?

00;05;44;10 – 00;06;05;05
Hacia Atherton
When we were brought up to ignore our mission is to not speak about our emotions, to not be vulnerable. And then how do we teach the younger generations and leave the younger generations to be emotionally intelligent and emotionally vulnerable? When we were never taught that. But I kind of struggled and find a way to teach the younger generation.

00;06;05;05 – 00;06;28;09
Hacia Atherton
And then the younger generations are trying to work out how to be emotional without being labeled the the left, the older generation that have all these emotions and being noisy and being loud. So I think it’s a very complex issue of respect, how to pay people, respect people’s space, to share their emotions. How do people feel safe to share their emotions?

00;06;28;09 – 00;06;39;18
Hacia Atherton
How can people share their emotions in a respectful way? It’s a it’s an environment that’s so new. I think it’s very, very new to actually be an emotional person.

00;06;40;06 – 00;07;06;01
AJ
Say that that’s one of the reasons why I love your story and all your accomplishments, you know, because watching you speak and I haven’t seen you speak live yet, you know, I just you took me on an emotional rollercoaster journey when I was watching you with your story and as a speak. And, you know, I’ve worked without speakers, I’ve been colleagues, I’ve been trained by other speakers, and I’ve also completed training for those speakers.

00;07;07;04 – 00;07;30;05
AJ
Watching you speak is truly magical. It’s almost as if you’ve got this beautiful combination of, you know, power from emotional resilience, but you’re also able to bring that out in the audience. And also, before we started this interview, you mentioned something really interesting, which was how did you you know, I asked you, how did you you know, how did you get your parents to listen to you?

00;07;30;10 – 00;07;56;02
AJ
Because it’s something that my family would never listen to me. You know, like it doesn’t matter how many stages I’ve spoken on, it doesn’t matter what I’ve achieved, what magazines I’ve been, you know, radio, TV and all that. My parents will never listen to me at all, you know, it’s just ridiculous. So I just want to touch on that a bit like you are the first female assistant to work full time in the national family business in five generations.

00;07;57;02 – 00;08;01;12
AJ
Why?

00;08;01;12 – 00;08;26;00
Hacia Atherton
A bit of both, I guess our family company doesn’t just hand out jobs for the sake of handing out jobs. So I think first time in our family history was probably first qualified woman to do that. Well then the accounting path. But a lot of like my brother was a plumber, my dad was an engineer. So a lot of those male dominated roles is what our leaders have worked.

00;08;26;07 – 00;08;50;14
Hacia Atherton
Wow. Wow. So I went down the accounting path and as the business has grown over time, that’s become more more valuable to the company as well. And I guess, again, working in that male dominated industry of manufacturing, similar problem that a lot of organizations have across manufacturing, construction, mining is how do we get more women into these industries as well.

00;08;50;15 – 00;08;59;13
Hacia Atherton
There’s just acetone or not acid, and there’s not many female engineers out there or females in management of any construction, manufacturing or mining company.

00;08;59;19 – 00;09;19;27
AJ
I find that I find that fascinating because, you know, when I grew up, you know, I love love my parents and my grandmother was also around raising me. And my grandmother was was like a Tara, like she was a force of nature to reckon with, you know? And she would always tell me, you know, when I was younger, I used to ride a motorbike and climb trees.

00;09;20;03 – 00;09;35;02
AJ
And, you know, I’m like, wow. So I grew up it’s in pro female, powerful female environment, you know. So when I when I sort of grew up and I came down here to Melbourne and, you know, and people are talking about gender equality. What do you mean gender equality? Like females don’t get the same opportunities as guys. Why?

00;09;35;08 – 00;09;52;13
AJ
You know, so it’s I’m incredibly naive in that aspect that I’m not fully aware of the problems. And, you know, a lot of my clients when I was a small business coach, they were female, you know, they were amazing, powerful females that that sort of had that I didn’t even know if it was the glass ceiling or whatever, you know, had all these challenges.

00;09;52;13 – 00;10;13;27
AJ
Let’s say that I just had no idea on, you know, and like it’s fascinating, you know, it’s really fascinating to someone like me. And I’m glad that we’ve got iconic role models like yourself and so many others out there, but truly changing the game and moving society forward. Um, how does it your, your company, your family company is incredibly innovative.

00;10;14;00 – 00;10;25;12
AJ
It started in 1889 as a plumbing firm. How does how does a plumbing firm go to being one of the world’s leading equipment manufacturers in sterilization? Is that correct?

00;10;26;07 – 00;10;54;26
Hacia Atherton
Yes. Well, as plumbers back in back in the day and sterilizations started coming out, a lot of that was plumbing, potting work, dealing with steam, dealing with waste. So installing all these equipment and everything was a plumbers job. There is a lot of plumbing, basic like, yeah, building and developing these things. You’ve got steam, you’ve got to discharge stain, we’ve got the, the hot water waste that has to go away.

00;10;55;06 – 00;11;18;08
Hacia Atherton
So that’s how our family kind of got into it. And we’re quite there’s a lot of innovation minds in our family. So they saw the opportunity. They saw what, back then 130 years ago, a relatively new technology and new, new way to expand the business and get into it. So we got into that a little while ago, not even maybe ten years ago.

00;11;18;08 – 00;11;30;02
Hacia Atherton
We were in commercial kitchen, air conditioning, sterilization and everything. And then as the industry is growing, we dropped off all of the kind of commercial stuff and just focused on the medical equipment.

00;11;30;02 – 00;11;33;28
AJ
Yeah, right. Well, and I’m guessing that happened before COVID.

00;11;35;00 – 00;11;57;15
Hacia Atherton
Yeah, yeah. We covered quite a few years ago now when the kind of construction industry started changing, it was a lot harder to work in the construction industry as a small supplier. You know, you got more and more people coming in there and the commercial kitchen space and it was just getting hard to be competitive. We were getting stronger and stronger in the medical infection control space.

00;11;57;15 – 00;12;05;05
Hacia Atherton
So we made the decision to focus, focus on what we’re good at, be the master of one trade, not the jack of all that is.

00;12;05;14 – 00;12;33;13
AJ
That is incredible. So the more I talk to you, the more I’m hearing that you in this beautiful, amazing environment of innovation, creativity, leadership, you’re challenging mines. You’re doing all this amazing stuff. How do I know that every single one of our roles that we have currently is we take the lessons of previous jobs. And I notice one of your previous jobs was in financial planning and that quite didn’t agree with you.

00;12;33;24 – 00;12;35;07
AJ
Can you talk to us a bit about that?

00;12;36;20 – 00;13;08;14
Hacia Atherton
So does the job as a financial planner agree with me? Quite well. I love connecting with people. I love hearing their stories, their journeys, helping them, giving a strength to them that may be a weakness. Financial management, which was one of my strengths but didn’t resonate with me, was the financial planning industry. Right now, when we can say what’s come out of the commission, the royal commission, and that uncovered a lot of practices in the industry that just didn’t resonate with my personal values and morals.

00;13;08;14 – 00;13;29;12
Hacia Atherton
Yeah, the fact that plan has had a lot of pressure to put clients in the products that the companies that they were working with, if you will, the bank I am pay. They wanted you to put your points in that company’s products, not a competitor’s products or another bank’s products, even though it’s going to be the best thing for your client.

00;13;29;12 – 00;13;58;00
Hacia Atherton
So I found it very difficult to work in that industry and they trapped between what was the best thing for your client and what’s the best thing for your organization. And I think it’s great that the industry now moved away from financial product developments, but companies that develop financial products are also the ones that sell them, like the banks have only moved away from having the financial planning arms and also developing their own financial planning products because there’s a clear conflict of interest.

00;13;58;02 – 00;14;02;15
AJ
Yeah, funny that funny. That’s funny.

00;14;02;17 – 00;14;13;00
Hacia Atherton
I guess I moved away from that because I was just yeah, I was really struggling with the mentality and mindset of the industry, not the actual job itself.

00;14;13;05 – 00;14;40;20
AJ
And you said something really interesting. You said you were able to establish trust with the customers and yeah, and that’s not my question, though. My question is you also said something very similar when you speak about your love for horses. And you said horses as horses are from the horse’s point of view, as humans are a predator. And then you went on to say that you have to build trust and connection to ride them.

00;14;41;21 – 00;14;50;00
AJ
So can you talk to me a bit about how does one build trust in a horse and how does that apply to building trust with customers? If there is a connection?

00;14;50;00 – 00;15;20;13
Hacia Atherton
I’m curious how that definitely is a connection in my point of view from May Day was and that’s just about being authentic to yourself. So horses can very much pick up your moods, your emotions, if you’re forcing something that isn’t quite right or you’re trying to ride in a style that doesn’t quite fit you, that can pick up, that there’s there’s a disjoint within you that you’re not being authentic to your writing style, authentic to yourself.

00;15;20;24 – 00;15;45;05
Hacia Atherton
And that’s when you can start having issues with the horse, either playing off or not being able to execute dressage moves well or things like that. So again, with financial planning clients, people can tell if you’re not being true to yourself, if you’re not being an authentic person, if you’re just giving a sales script and whether you believe that or not, and I’m sure they’ve all been on that.

00;15;45;05 – 00;16;03;11
Hacia Atherton
You know, the the telemarketers who are rating off the script. And you can tell that this is the 20th call for the day. And there’s so over reading the script and you disconnect, you don’t trust that person. But if someone calls you and you can feel the energy and the passion in their voice, they start, they listen to you.

00;16;03;11 – 00;16;24;17
Hacia Atherton
They just started to talk at you and then go, Oh, this is the point where I get them to talk back. You know, active listening, active communication is the same thing with the person and with the horse. That’s how you build trust as well. It’s not the horse just listening to you, it’s you listening to the horse. So riding the horse is body language reading.

00;16;24;17 – 00;16;49;26
Hacia Atherton
When the horse is tense about something and you need to be the yin and the yang. So if your horse is really, really tense, you need to be really, really relaxed and calm and get the horse to connecting with your confidence. Then with a client, if your client’s really nervous about investing, you can’t sit there and going, Yeah, I’d be really nervous too, because, you know, the stock market and super and it’s really crap out there right now.

00;16;49;26 – 00;17;19;19
Hacia Atherton
You probably should just put your money into your mattress. You rise in height. You have to also counteract their their insecurities with your confidence, with saying things around that. Okay. So you don’t want to invest in the stock market. You can’t just put your money under your belt. So what other things can we look at investing or what other things can we do and feel confident that investing money in something is the right decision and finding something that they feel comfortable with.

00;17;19;19 – 00;17;32;21
Hacia Atherton
But it’s mixed. It’s finding the opposite emotion to what the person’s going through. And if they’re in a negative emotion, finding the positive emotion to kind of make that, that kind of makes sense. Yeah, totally.

00;17;32;29 – 00;17;57;15
AJ
Totally makes sense. As you’re talking. I’m hearing traits of what I would describe as a great leader because I think, you know, you have a whole bunch of faceted, multifaceted attitudes that you have to have, but also, I’m noticing now more than ever that we need our leaders to be more and more accountable and trustworthy. And I’m fascinated with with how great leaders do that.

00;17;58;12 – 00;18;21;17
AJ
How do you how do you navigate trust in your current role, both as as a director of your company and chief commercial officer, but also trust in the foundation that you’ve just started to to foster empowering women in trade. How do you build trust? How do you start a trust conversation like can you walk us through a bit of that gap?

00;18;21;18 – 00;18;48;24
Hacia Atherton
So the first step in my my process, when I talk to people, I don’t have trust in my relationships and my work or whatever is first of all, understanding what is trust to you? What are those feelings? What are those emotions? What when you say you trust someone, why do you trust that person? What? Cause has created the effect of trust?

00;18;49;29 – 00;19;10;13
AJ
Yeah, well, yeah, it totally makes sense. I’ve never even thought of it like that. So. Wow. So, yeah. Well, how do you how do you. How do you get people to open up to you? Like, let’s say that there’s shutdown and you know, they’re not willing to tell you even what what trust what makes them trust people like how do you how do you navigate that.

00;19;11;13 – 00;19;38;03
Hacia Atherton
You have to lead. So I’m very much about embracing vulnerability. And vulnerability is infectious. So if you create if you have the courage to be vulnerable and you have the courage to lead and say what trust means to you or how you see trust in this relationship working, whether that’s the person turning up on time or the person communicating to you over the phone instead of hiding behind emails.

00;19;38;04 – 00;20;04;06
Hacia Atherton
What does that trust in the relationship look like for you and what trust means to you personally? And then once you open up in that way, and once you’re really vulnerable with someone, you’ll be amazed how that courage transfers and that person then goes “oh” and they’ll return the serve. Now, maybe not to the extent that you did, but they’ll start returning the serve and meeting it because you’ve created a safe place.

00;20;04;17 – 00;20;12;14
Hacia Atherton
You created a place because you showed your underbelly. They go, okay, now it’s safe for me to show my underbelly.

00;20;12;14 – 00;20;31;22
AJ
Yeah, wow, wow. I, I like, like most things in my career, in my life, I learned that the hard way. I earlier on last year, I think it was I was doing some research for a client and and they are a global law society. And part of my research process is that I try to immerse myself in the world of my clients.

00;20;31;22 – 00;20;58;20
AJ
So that involves me going to this law firm and they’re a top tier law firm. And, you know, I went into the boardroom and I sat around a table full of like 20 lawyers and their professional staff and, you know, people that are way smarter than me, way more powerful than me, you know, and and I said everything that you should not say in front of a group of powerful people, you know, just, just and, you know, they would just they would dumbfounded because each one of them, I guarantee you, just the look on their face, they were thinking, why are we here?

00;20;58;20 – 00;21;16;00
AJ
Who is this idiot and why is he wasting our time? But at the end of of about ten, 15 awkward minutes for me with that little voice in my head, he’s got just keep going, you know, like it’s just insight. Right at the end of it, they told stories around that table that their colleagues had never heard before.

00;21;16;08 – 00;21;35;05
AJ
And so I completely understand the power of vulnerability and and how it’s used. But just on that vulnerability piece, I think a lot of people confuse vulnerability with capability. Have you have you encountered that or have you seen that happen?

00;21;35;05 – 00;21;39;02
Hacia Atherton
I think what they’re actually confusing is oversharing and capability.

00;21;39;11 – 00;21;40;01
AJ
Right. Okay, cool.

00;21;40;02 – 00;22;06;17
Hacia Atherton
So there’s a difference between oversharing and being vulnerable. So there is. For example, you’ve had a fight with your partner. Being vulnerable is coming into the office saying, I didn’t sleep much last night. I have some issues at home. I’m struggling mentally, emotionally and physically right now. Can I have an extra day off that assignment or can we reschedule that meeting or something. That’s being vulnerable.

00;22;06;29 – 00;22;24;22
Hacia Atherton
Oversharing is coming in and going. My husband said this and this and this. And then he broke the place and then he did this and he did that. And I said this and he’s this and he’s that and da da da. And it was terrible. And I didn’t sleep. And now I’m tired and now it’s exhausting. I think I’m going to get divorced.

00;22;24;22 – 00;22;30;12
Hacia Atherton
And what am I going to do with the kids? That’s oversharing.

00;22;30;12 – 00;22;34;20
AJ
You. I cannot wait till people see you speak like yours is just phenomenal.

00;22;35;11 – 00;22;58;02
Hacia Atherton
So there’s a clear difference between being vulnerable and being true to your emotions and oversharing. And I’m from the opinion that being vulnerable will never take away from credibility. If anything, it will give to it. Yeah, but oversharing can take away from credibility. That’s. That’s that’s the danger. That’s what will chip away at credibility.

00;22;58;03 – 00;23;17;19
AJ
I find that I’ll find that beautiful. Like that is just the best explanation I’ve ever heard. And such a valuable, valuable perspective. And the audience who’s listening and watching, I hope you realize how good that was from even as a speaker. Like I was just watching you go, Wow, that was brilliant.

00;23;17;19 – 00;23;17;24
Hacia Atherton
Yeah.

00;23;19;10 – 00;23;37;20
AJ
Definitely a new bit. So we’re talking about trust. We’re talking about vulnerability. I want to I want to ask you something about something you said about your accident. So so I guess this is the place where we explore your story a bit, but I want to I want to focus on this one point. And you said you’re lying in bed.

00;23;37;20 – 00;23;59;02
AJ
The accidents happen. You’re lying in bed. And you said the you had physical torture, but you said the emotional pain of having to give up your horses, your beloved horses, was more painful than the physical torture you were feeling. Can you walk us through your relationship with horses, the accident, and take us along on a bit of a journey?

00;23;59;29 – 00;24;21;24
Hacia Atherton
Yeah, of course. So my relationship with horses started a very, very young age. I think us best, really, when I got put on my first little Shetland pony ride thing and I loved it. I remember just going again, again, again and again and again. I think my parents dragged me away and I threw the next next level three year old tantrum that a child can strike.

00;24;21;24 – 00;24;46;28
Hacia Atherton
Right. And they also could have done in that, I think after after my parents experience that they thought, okay, let’s, let’s get Hacia into horses and give her an opportunity to be around horses. And at a young age, I got given my first horse, Honey Babe which was magical. My parents are also concerned with going through a separation of that time, which was very hard for me.

00;24;47;09 – 00;25;12;25
Hacia Atherton
So I think Honey Babe was my safe place. She was my consistent. She was someone that I could spend time with when I needed to get away from the house or when my world as a 6, 7, year old didn’t make sense. My world with Honey Babe made sense. It was simple. It was peaceful. It was fun. So her and I, even though she was a naughty little pony, she would she taught me how to stay in a saddle.

00;25;12;25 – 00;25;40;22
Hacia Atherton
She would pick fruit and bark and carry on. She could do barrel racing like no other pony out there. And I think watching my father being such a good athlete really instilled a competitive spirit in myself. But then when I started winning ribbons on Honey Babe, that was everything that was just amazing and set up the dream of wanting to represent my country like my dad did in sailing but in equestrian at the time.

00;25;40;22 – 00;26;05;04
Hacia Atherton
So I think horses have, as I said, been that safe place for me that have been where when the world doesn’t make sense, there was a little pocket in my life that would make sense to me. And when I couldn’t understand or make sense of everything around me, I could go to somewhere where I felt confident, where I felt safe, where I knew what to expect and what was happening.

00;26;05;04 – 00;26;26;26
Hacia Atherton
Which the irony is then I’ve had the accident which turned my world upside down. That is irony there. But that’s where that real kindness, love and passion for the horses came from. With the overlay of that competitive drive of wanting to represent my country in dressage one day. So that’s where all of that kind of connection came from.

00;26;26;26 – 00;26;48;07
Hacia Atherton
And then once I got to higher levels of dressage, like when you’re a kid and you’re banging around in your horse and you’re jumping stuff, you shouldn’t be jumping and doing stuff that you shouldn’t be doing. You’re jumping over barbed wire fences and just think crazy. Why don’t you get to more of a higher level of riding, especially dressage?

00;26;48;08 – 00;27;08;14
Hacia Atherton
It’s where this beautiful thing happens. So for people who don’t understand dressage, the easiest way I can explain it, it’s like ballet on a horse. Then you and your horse that’s in a in a little sandpit, a little rectangle, stampeding, and there’s letters around the sandpit. And it said in letters you’ve got to do certain dance movements.

00;27;08;29 – 00;27;09;17
AJ
Wow.

00;27;10;02 – 00;27;32;08
Hacia Atherton
So yeah. So it’s just like ballerinas, like to ballerinas, they can’t talk on stage. They’ve got to read each other’s body language and be so connected with each other to keep those high level ballet movements. Dressage is very exciting. You have to be so interesting with your horse and your horse selling chain with you to be able to execute those movements.

00;27;32;08 – 00;27;45;10
Hacia Atherton
Now, to have that relationship between a prey and predator animal is just magic. I just I haven’t come across a word in the English language to actually explain what that relationship was like. It’s just breath taking.

00;27;45;24 – 00;28;02;10
AJ
Well, I. I completely understand that, like, wow, magical. So it’s, it’s you had honey, Honey Babe when you were seven. Yeah. And then you had Riley. Is it Riley?

00;28;02;10 – 00;28;13;04
Hacia Atherton
I’ve had tons of horses. Like when I had my accident, I had Riley, who is my international level dressage horse. And then I had CC who was my young horse.

00;28;13;07 – 00;28;29;01
AJ
Yeah. And can you tell us about CC and what happened with CC? A little bit. Not too much. I know. I know that you’ve got an amazing story. So maybe just give us a give us a bit of a bit of a high level, maybe the high levels. But but I’ll tell you what they challenge you let me challenge you as a speaker.

00;28;29;01 – 00;28;44;02
AJ
I want to I want to hear the story. I want the high levels. But at one point, if I can ask you to go a bit deeper using that emotional connection of yours, you can choose whatever point you like. But but yeah, I just I just. Yeah, it is magical watching you speak, so please.

00;28;45;01 – 00;29;23;10
Hacia Atherton
Thank you. So the story behind why I got CC and I got her as a young weanling coming off her mother. So to have a high level dressage horse Grand Prix dressage horse, they cost an arm and a leg. So I thought, let’s get one as a baby. And by the time she’s up to that level, we would have had so much time together and such incredible connection that will be a superstar team and I will have a horse that I could afford and not buy at a Grand Prix level because it’s just unaffordable unless you’re very, very rich, it’s really hard to buy a horse at that level.

00;29;23;10 – 00;29;44;13
Hacia Atherton
So I was looking for a young horse for that reason, and when I saw CC it was just it was just love at first sight. I don’t know. To put it in human terms. You walk into a bar and you connect and lock eyes across the room with some some person. And you just know that that’s the person you end up drinking and talking all night and you get married and have five kids or whatever.

00;29;44;21 – 00;30;05;25
Hacia Atherton
That was my CC. I just saw her. She was a handful. She was feisty. She was beautiful, she had attitude, but she was soft and gentle and loving, but on her terms, she was just everything I wanted in a horse So I got her and I’ve spent so much time bringing her up. She was five when we had the accident, so she just started competing before

00;30;05;25 – 00;30;31;15
Hacia Atherton
the accident. It was so exciting and we were doing really well and it was all coming together and my whole little ducks coming into line and I was gearing up to qualify her for the World Equestrian Games and then it all came crashing down. So we were training on a cold winter’s night and she rared up. She hit me in the face and I fell off and her back legs gave way and came crashing down into my lap.

00;30;32;01 – 00;30;54;29
Hacia Atherton
And then I pushed her off onto the right hand side and she rolled off on me. And the noise, like the noise of my pelvis, literally shattering and cracking and popping just still makes me feel like sick. Just thinking of the noise. Anyway, fast forward from that. I managed to roll myself over onto my tummy, army crawl out of the way because I knew when she stood up, she’d trample me as well.

00;30;54;29 – 00;31;15;17
Hacia Atherton
So I had to get out of the way. And I just lay in that cold sand and I couldn’t feel my legs, I couldn’t move them. And there was a moment where there was no pain. There was this moment of just complete stillness when I just thought, This is it. I’ve broken my spine. Life as I know it is over, I’m done.

00;31;15;17 – 00;31;43;21
Hacia Atherton
And then the pain came like, Oh, the pain. The pain was just took your breath away. So then fast forward, got to the hospital, all the news that yeah, pelvis is shattered. Both hips broken, nerve damage to the right leg woke up from a nine hour surgery with the surgeons unsure if I was ever going to walk again in a meaningful way and felt like crutches, wheelchairs, walking frames.

00;31;43;21 – 00;32;14;12
Hacia Atherton
That’s what my life is going to be from a once active athlete to looking at that life, was shattering. But as you said before, the physical trauma was one thing. But the emotional trauma of having to sell my beautiful horses that I would get up the crack of dawn to give them baths and platt up their hair and get them on the float to drive like three or 4 hours to do a four minute dressage test and drive three, 4 hours back home.

00;32;14;12 – 00;32;30;24
Hacia Atherton
Like the amount of effort you putting into dressage, the love, the horses and the joy that they give you is incredible. And so having to make that decision and sell them from a hospital bed and never be able to say goodbye to them again, that’s that’s what broke my heart.

00;32;30;24 – 00;32;33;23
AJ
And that was also your safe place. So I would imagine.

00;32;34;09 – 00;33;02;27
Hacia Atherton
That was my safe place. That was my guiding north star, that what’s that’s what made sense in my world as well. So it wasn’t just selling to horses, it was actually sailing away from my guiding north star. It was giving up that beacon when I have in a dark place, they were my beacons, they were my grounding thing, it was almost like being in a storm and cutting off the safety line.

00;33;03;11 – 00;33;08;04
Hacia Atherton
Like it wasn’t just getting rid of horses, it was getting rid of my my rocks.

00;33;08;12 – 00;33;41;27
AJ
Yeah. Wow. Wow. For everyone listening in and watching. I hope you saw the magic and how Hacia is just able to take us through a range of emotions. The real the real value I believe in your story is, you know, it’s not just what happens at the moment of impact and and how you recover from that. And I really hope that people listening to this and watching this will will get in touch with you and book you to speak at their events and just spark the mindsets in their leaders and their teams and and everything in between.

00;33;42;02 – 00;34;06;01
AJ
I just want to touch on real quickly, you’ve got a strategy that you spoke about that has helped you and recover from that and move on from that. Two things that you mentioned, you set two types of goals. You set courage goals and super superstar goals. Yeah. Can you just quickly touch on those?

00;34;06;01 – 00;34;14;23
Hacia Atherton
Yeah. So when I was lying in my hospital bed and this this got developed after the first day I tried to stand on land.

00;34;14;23 – 00;34;17;22
AJ
And that was day 117, a hundred and seventeen?

00;34;17;22 – 00;34;36;00
Hacia Atherton
Hundred and seventeen days. I hadn’t stood on land and I stood up on land for the first time and it was terrible. Like I could only stand for a few seconds. My right leg gave way. I came crashing down in my keynotes, I’ve actually got the video of that that I play for people to see what I went through pain, the emotion.

00;34;36;10 – 00;35;02;15
Hacia Atherton
I was dizzy, I was nauseous. And I remember wheeling myself back to the hospital bed and I was devastated that that broke my back. It broke my heart. I was just in tears and I’ve given up. And part of that as as, you know, in a corporate sense, when you have an ambitious goal or efficient strategy, if you’re looking at that ambitious goal, for me at that time it was walking, it can be so overwhelming.

00;35;02;24 – 00;35;31;11
Hacia Atherton
And you don’t recognize the little steps that you’re making towards that goal because it’s such a wide, wide precipice that you have to cross. And if you’re looking at that ambitious goal, you can get really, really lost and really demotivated. So I actually kind of thought, what would I do in a corporate context? Like if we had this big goal, and we weren’t. achieving it and the and the team was disengaged, they were upset, they weren’t weren’t connected to the greater goal.

00;35;31;11 – 00;35;49;14
Hacia Atherton
What would we do? You’d break it down. You would break it down into smaller and smaller goals to develop what was my courage goals, which is something that I could do every day if I really dug deep. It was uncomfortable. I still had to push hard to do them, but I could do them. And I knew that I could do it.

00;35;49;14 – 00;36;11;27
Hacia Atherton
And the more I did it, it built up my confidence. Then I had my superstar goals, which is that step up. So something I could only do a couple of times a week. And I really had to dig deep and take a day or two to recover from it. But it’s something that you celebrate and you celebrate it like you just got a gold medal or you just got that promotion or you just landed that $150,000 worth of funding.

00;36;11;27 – 00;36;35;10
Hacia Atherton
Like, Wow, really achieved something big. Then when that goal could be done three or four times, it got pushed down into the courage goals. And then I developed the new superstar goals and I only ever focused on those two levels. Nothing else mattered. It was just those two levels. And I developed all those levels by working backwards – to walk unassisted,

00;36;35;10 – 00;36;52;23
Hacia Atherton
I had to walk, you know, assisted. To walk assisted, I had to walk on the walking rails. Then I had to walk on crutches. I had to walk from there. Stepping it back and developing all these little milestones. And I wrote them all down. And once I had them all down, I got rid of everything except for the two in front of me.

00;36;52;23 – 00;36;55;11
Hacia Atherton
And I only ever focused on the two in front of me.

00;36;55;12 – 00;37;23;23
AJ
Yeah. Wow. Wow, that is, that is incredible. What I heard there is like breaking goals down into small, achievable milestones. Well, your courage goals. And then stretch goals, which you call your superstar goals. Just just. Wow, absolutely amazing. Wow, this is incredible. I could talk to you forever, but but alas, the show must go on. So Hacia, this is the One Small Thing Podcast where we’re all trying to achieve big, amazing goals out there.

00;37;23;24 – 00;37;32;20
AJ
What is the one small thing you would like all these amazing leaders around the world to keep in mind as they pursue their big goals? Do you have one small thing that you would like to share?

00;37;33;23 – 00;37;36;08
Hacia Atherton
Have the courage to connect with your vulnerability.

00;37;36;21 – 00;37;37;10
AJ
Yeah, wow.

00;37;38;06 – 00;37;59;28
Hacia Atherton
That’s the foundation of it all. Once you have courage to connect with your vulnerability, that vulnerability feeds your courage because you’re respecting everything that’s happening in your body, your mind, your emotions, your physical, your mental health. When you allow yourself to be vulnerable, you allow yourself to be in a space to recognize all of that. And then that will give you the courage to keep going.

00;37;59;29 – 00;38;29;07
Hacia Atherton
It will also give you the warning signs of things that might be not going right and for you to address, but have the courage to be vulnerable. And as we said before, that will be infectious. And your team and everyone around you will be vulnerable. And then molehills don’t turn into mountains, because if there’s something not right in your environment, because you’re all being so authentic and open, you come across problems when they’re easily fixed instead of when they’re like mountains that you’ve got to climb.

00;38;29;25 – 00;38;51;20
AJ
Wow, that is that is incredible. The courage to be vulnerable. Wow. Hacia thank you so much for for being on the show today. For those of you out there listening and watching in, you can see Hacia through Book Speakers Direct dot com, the revolutionary way of booking speakers for the best speaker for your event. My name is AJ Kulatunga thanks for watching the show.

00;38;51;21 – 00;39;23;08
AJ
Hacia thanks again for joining us and yeah, take care everyone. All the best. Wishing you nothing but success in business and in life. If you enjoyed this episode, please give it an appropriate thumbs up and whatever platform you’re consuming it on and subscribe for future episodes. Thanks again to our sponsors, Book Speakers Direct – the revolutionary way of finding the perfect speaker for your event.