About Jane

I am not teaching reinvention.

I am living it.

I am 70 years old and building my fourth business. I have had a stroke, survived an autoimmune disease, raised children alone, built and sold multiple businesses after fifty, and started over more times than I can count. Everything I teach, I have lived.

70

Years old.

Still building.

4

Businesses built

after fifty.

22

Hours a week.

By design.

"I didn't feel middle aged. And I didn't like being called that. Still don't. I am me. I am not a number on my birth certificate."

— Jane, on the day she was diagnosed

Early forties

The diagnosis that changed everything

I had a strong corporate career in marketing and business development, teaching business at university and TAFE, doing work I genuinely loved. Then, in my early forties, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune liver disease and told I would need a transplant within ten years.

My daughter was in Grade 1. Every morning before she left for school, she would come into my bedroom and say: "Mummy, please don't die while I'm at school today." And the same again every night before she went to sleep.

That is the kind of moment that clarifies everything.

When I finally got home from the doctor's office, my sister-in-law

asked what had happened. The first thing I said was: "He called me

middle aged." We laugh about that now. I had to go back days later

to ask all the questions I couldn't think of — because I had been too

focused on being called middle aged to hear anything else.

I didn't feel middle aged. I didn't like being called that. Still don't. I am me. I am not a number on my birth certificate.

By pure chance, a local bookstore — I was living in regional Victoria at the time — had a book signing by a doctor named Sandra Cabot. She had written a book called The Liver Cleansing Diet. It completely turned my life around. I still follow those principles today. I have halted the progression of my disease and will, in all likelihood, die of old age long before I ever need a new liver. Which, as anyone who has waited for one knows, isn't easy to find.

Managing my health taught me something that now sits at the heart of everything I do: how you fuel your body, manage your energy, and protect your mindset is not a lifestyle choice. It is the foundation everything else is built on.

Mid forties to early fifties

Single parent. Property investor.

Figuring it out.

When I was well enough, I realised my marriage was ending. I became a single parent and knew I needed to build a different kind of financial foundation — not just for me, but for my children's future.

I went into real estate. It was a steep learning curve and an extraordinary one — I learned about property, negotiation, and people in ways that no classroom could have taught me. And I realised that property investment was the path to the financial security I needed.

We were a single income family with teenage children and money was genuinely tight. So I did something I have always believed in: I was honest with my kids. I shared the family budget with them. I explained that if we were willing to go without some things now, we could build something that would give us all more freedom later.

They decided to give up takeaway food, afternoon tea treats, and buying books — the library only. They are adults with families of their own now, and they still talk about that period. They say it was one of the most important financial lessons of their lives.

It was during this time that I started flipping properties — buying, renovating, and selling. A love that had been there quietly for years, waiting for the right moment to become something more.

Age 53

The stroke. The silence. The keyboard.

I was back in a corporate role — part of the senior management team in manufacturing — when I had a minor stroke. I needed speech therapy for almost six months. It was obvious to my employer that I could not continue in my role. As a single parent, it was one of the most frightening and disorienting periods of my life.

But here is what I have come to understand about that time: lying in hospital, I had one overwhelming thought. I wish I had made the change when I was 50.

I had felt the pull for years. I had known something needed to change. I had waited for the perfect moment — and my body made the decision for me.

It was 2009. Social media was just beginning — Facebook had fewer than 200,000 users. I couldn't speak easily, but I could type. So I taught myself, took online workshops, and started selling social media and marketing services from my keyboard.

That business grew for four years. Then I sold it. Built from a hospital bed, essentially, by a woman who couldn't properly speak, in an industry that didn't yet exist. I tell you this not to impress you — but because I want you to understand what is actually possible when you stop waiting for the perfect conditions.

It was during this time that I started flipping properties — buying, renovating, and selling. A love that had been there quietly for years, waiting for the right moment to become something more.

Now — age 70

Not Plain Jane.

The work I was always meant to do.

For a long time I tinkered with this concept. I knew I had something. I knew there were women who needed what I could offer. I had the experience, the passion, the proof — four businesses built after fifty, every one of them from a standing start.

But I kept adjusting instead of committing. Refining instead of building. Telling myself I needed more clarity, more certainty, a better moment.

Sound familiar?

What broke the logjam — as it always does — was one conversation. Someone who could see what I was building from the outside and reflect back to me what was actually there. That is what I now offer the women I work with.

I am 70. I work 22 hours a week — by design, not accident. I built that boundary because I know what it costs when you don't. I am proof that your most powerful chapter does not end at 50. It begins there. And the life you build in this chapter can be more honest, more purposeful, and more genuinely yours than anything you have built before.

Not Plain Jane exists because I looked around and saw women with extraordinary depth, wisdom, and capacity being told — by the world, by their workplaces, by the quiet hum of ageism — that their best years were behind them.

They are not. And I am here to prove it — one woman at a time.

What I believe

The most dangerous assumption

about women over 50 is that they are

winding down. They are not. They are

just getting started.

Your experience is not a liability. Your age is not a disqualifier. The roles you have played are not

the whole of you. And the life that is waiting on the other side of your reinvention is more yours

than anything you have built so far.

What this means for you

I have been in every stage of reinvention.

Including yours.

When I work with women, I am not offering theory or frameworks I read in a book. I am offering what I have actually lived — the Stirring, the Crossroads, the stuck-in-the-middle, the finally-ready-to-build.

That means when you tell me what you are carrying, I am not nodding politely. I am recognising it. Because I have been there too.

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I know what it is to dismiss a quiet feeling for years, then wish you had listened sooner

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I know what it is to stand at the Crossroads, see what you want, and be too scared to leap

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I know what it is to have the ground shift without warning — and to have to build something new from that rubble

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I know what it is to tinker instead of commit — to know you have something and not quite trust it enough to go all in

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And I know what it is to finally build the life you were always meant to live — and to discover it was worth every uncomfortable, uncertain, imperfect step