I was sitting in the audience at an Albright event in March when a room full of women started cheering. Not politely. Properly.

Eliana Sydes had just told them that at 60 she was invited to join a board as the only non-founder executive director. And every woman in that room understood exactly what that meant - because most of us have quietly absorbed the idea that if it hasn't happened by 30, it isn't going to.

Eliana is 61. She is a financial planner who qualified later in life after changing career entirely. But she started out wanting to be an actress, in a family where her mother was a singer, dancer and ballet examiner and her sister trained at the Royal Ballet School. She wasn't the dancer. She couldn't sing. And when her grandmother (her mother figure) died in an accident Eliana was just 19, it took over a decade before she could put any of it into words.

At 25 she genuinely believed her life was over because she hadn't achieved anything remarkable yet.

She has thoughts about that now.

Fifteen years ago she wrote her own obituary - a strange exercise that made her realise what she actually wanted to be remembered for, and it had nothing to do with the version of success she'd been chasing. Four years ago, after doing the conga in the street at the Platinum Jubilee, she walked into a ballroom dancing class after a 38-year gap. Completely terrified. Unfit. Unable to remember a single step.

She still goes every week.

We talk about why ordinary life has been wrongly framed as failure, what the Forbes 30 under 30 does to everyone who isn't on it, and the difference between visible success and actually being happy. Eliana shares what she has learned about who you let close to you, and what she is still figuring out at 61 - which turns out to be the same thing most of us are.

If you have ever quietly wondered whether you've missed your window, this one is for you.

Every Thursday at 3pm. 🌼

In this episode we discuss:

• Changing career later in life
• Why you don't have to achieve everything by 30
• Losing a parent young and grieving without support
• The pressure of the Forbes 30 under 30 list
• Redefining what success means to you
• Writing your own obituary as an exercise
• Starting a new hobby in your fifties
• Financial planning and why women need to plan
• Who to trust with advice in difficult times
• Balancing work, family and your own life

What found us - Links & Mentions

Eliana:

• The Luck Factor — Professor Richard Wiseman (she refers to it as The Luck Project in the episode)

Follow The Daisy Chain:

• Instagram: @thedaisychainpod
• TikTok: @thedaisychainpod
• YouTube: @TheDaisyChainPodcast
• Know an amazing guest? thedaisychainpod@gmail.com

Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.

Leave a 5🌟 review — to help more people discover our chain.

Guest: Eliana Sydes

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Corinna Tolan grew up listening to business being discussed at the dinner table. Her parents were entrepreneurs. So were both sets of grandparents. Her mother opened one of the first skin clinics in Dublin at a time when nobody's mum in 1980s Ireland worked or drove - and built it specifically as a place where women could feel safe.

Corinna has been in that industry for thirty years now. She runs her own clinic. Her team has been with her for decades. In Ireland she is the person people go to when they want to know what actually works.

But the thing that stayed with me from this conversation wasn't about skin at all.

It was the moment Corinna realised the worries she had been carrying for years weren't hers. They were her mother's - absorbed at that kitchen table, aged ten, listening to the adults talk. Forty years later she was still carrying them and had never once asked whether they belonged to her.

Then her sister said something that stopped her mid-sentence. Where would you be without that thought? Corinna had no answer. And it changed how she has handled every difficult thing since.

We talk about the wisdom we inherit without choosing it, why taking things personally is the thing she'd most want to spare her younger self, and what it means to still feel like a beginner eighteen years into motherhood. She shares the book her sister handed her that gave her a set of tools she now passes on to her own clients - and the Taylor Swift song she uses to get her daughters to help clean the kitchen.

This one is for anyone still carrying something they never agreed to pick up.

Every Thursday at 3pm. 🌼

In this episode we discuss:

• How to stop taking things personally at work
• Inherited anxiety and beliefs from parents
• Byron Katie's Loving What Is and how to question your thoughts
• Building a career in a family business
• Women in business in 1980s Ireland
• Letting go as a parent
• Motherhood and still figuring it out
• Setting boundaries between work and family
• Building a team that stays for decades
• Skin, skincare and working with clients long term

What found us - Links & Mentions

Daisy:

• Lost Weekend by Phoebe Bridgers
• Furious

Corinna:

• Loving What Is - Byron Katie
• All Too Well (10 Minute Version) - Taylor Swift
• Silver Springs - Fleetwood Mac

Follow The Daisy Chain:

• Instagram: @thedaisychainpod
• TikTok: @thedaisychainpod
• YouTube: @TheDaisyChainPodcast
• Know an amazing guest? thedaisychainpod@gmail.com

Follow Corinna:

• Instagram: corinna_monicatolanbeauty
• Monica Tolan Skincare Clinics

Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a 5🌟 review — it helps more women find their way here. And that's the whole point. 🌼

Guest: Corinna Tolan

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Most of the women we assume have it together are carrying things we can't see. They show up, they lead, they put their makeup on and walk into the room looking like someone who has never doubted herself. This week's guest is one of those women. She came on this show to tell you what's behind the front.

Jaclyn Lauder has worked alongside Daisy for nearly five years. She is a leader, a mother, someone who shows up every single day with warmth and a refusal to sugarcoat. What Daisy didn't know - until she pressed record - was everything Jaclyn had been carrying while she did it.

Jaclyn's mum was at her wedding. Ten days later, she was gone. Jaclyn was six months pregnant at the time - a pregnancy that had taken seven years to reach. She has since navigated cancer, chronic illness, and grief, often simultaneously. Not because it was easy. Because getting up and showing up, she says, is its own kind of strength.

In this conversation they talk about what it really costs to keep going when everything is happening at once, what her mum handed down simply by how she lived, and why the most confident woman in the room is often carrying the most.

This one is for anyone who looks like they have it together and wonders if anyone can see what it's really costing them.

Every Thursday at 3pm. 🌼

In this episode we discuss:

• Losing a parent to cancer and navigating grief
• Being diagnosed with cancer and going back to work
• Chronic illness and mental health
• Grief during pregnancy
• How to keep going when life gets hard
• Imposter syndrome and self-doubt
• How mothers pass down wisdom without knowing it
• Grieving a parent your child will never meet
• Women's health and invisible illness
• Building resilience through adversity

What found us- Links & Mentions

Jaclyn

• 90s Dance Music
• Pikes, Ibiza

Follow The Daisy Chain:

• Instagram: @thedaisychainpod
• TikTok: @thedaisychainpod
• YouTube: @TheDaisyChainPodcast
• Know an amazing guest? thedaisychainpod@gmail.com

Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.

Leave a 5🌟 review - to help more people discover our chain.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.