I’m writing this from the airport in Townsville, just waiting to board a flight up to Cairns for the weekend. Such is the consulting life…Over the past 9 months I’ve been all around the east coast and have probably spent an equal amount of nights sleeping in my own bed as I have in hotel beds.

Today is the end of my 4^th week at a goldmine 140kms out of Townsville. We have been engaged to do some ‘rapid sourcing’, which essentially means saving money really fast. More specifically, $3.2 million in 10 weeks…Happy to report we are ahead of schedule and actually hoping to hit $4m.

What does all this have to do with CoWorks?

Well I’m very proud to say that I’ve been wearing my new staff CoWorks shirt every day (albeit, underneath my 100% necessary and 100% un-sexy high vis shirt). And as the shirt and COWORKS moto so aptly say ‘PUSH YOUR COMFORT ZONE’!

Now, I’d say that generally I’m always pushing my comfort zone in some way. However, this is a whole new challenge all together…

• I’m on a gold mine…
  1. I’m a WOMAN on a gold mine…
• I live on a mine camp
• I eat (very poor vegan food) at the ‘mess’ with all the other miners
• I have to wear steel capped boots. Although as you can see in the photo I managed to get some hot pink boots and have become quite famous on site for them 😉
• I travel 10 hours each way, each week to get to and from site…This means I have to leave on Sundays at 4pm and forego half a day of my weekend :’(
• For the first 2 weeks I worked 6am-6pm. EVERY.SINGLE.DAY.
• I get breathalysed and randomly drug tested every morning (I hate black marbles from now on!!)
• I hate haggling and here I am calling companies and demanding that they give us a 19% price discount all day long 😲
• Amongst all this I’m launching my own company (more on that later 😊 )

So…yeah…life is a bit tough right now. BUT, everytime it feels overwhelming I think back to that shirt and just think ‘you can do this Michaela’ and I know that everyday I’m learning things that will ultimately make my life and entrepreneurial career a lot easier! And despite all this I’d still say this is my favourite engagement so far (that tells you a lot about consulting doesn’t it?)!

So for all of you reading this and feeling challenged or overwhelmed, whether you are running a business, finishing uni or preparing to sit those last HSC exams, believe me when I say I know what it feels like and how hard it can be! But just keep pushing through. One day it will be worth it!