Career Growth Advice from Penny Locaso, Behavioral Scientist Leader | Career Tips for Women in Behavioral Scientist

2B Bolder Podcast – Episode 118
Featuring Penny Locaso, Founder of HackingHappy.co

Episode Title: #118 Penny Locaso, Behavioral Scientist, Speaker, and Founder of HackingHappy.co

Host: Mary Killelea
Guest: Penny Locaso

Mary Killelea (Host): Hi there. My name is Mary Killa-Olea. Welcome to the To Be Bolder podcast, providing career insights for the next generation of women in business and tech. To Be Bolder was created out of my love for technology and marketing, my desire to bring together like-minded women, and my hope to be a great role model and source of inspiration for my two girls and other young women like you. Encouraging you guys to show up and to be bolder and to know that anything you guys dream of, it's totally possible. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation.

Hi. Today, I'm excited to welcome Penny Locasso. She is a well-respected behavioral scientist and impact expert on a mission to empower 1 million women to make a difference in the world without being held back by self-doubt. Penny is the powerhouse behind HackingHappy.co, where she helps professional women own their voice, define their impact, and carve out opportunities that position them as sought-after experts.

Her journey is extraordinary. Ten years ago, Penny made the bold decision to turn her life upside down in pursuit of happiness. Within seven months, she walked away from a 16-year corporate career at the peak of her success, left an 18-year relationship, relocated her family, and launched her purpose-driven company. Since then, she's built a global business balancing the demands of raising a son and a thriving career as a single mother, all while creating meaningful change in the world.

Penny is not just a mentor to thousands. She's an international speaker and facilitator who has worked with some of the world's biggest corporations. Her credentials speak volumes. She studies psychology, trauma, therapy, and yoga, delivered a TED Talk, landed a book deal, and had her work featured in the Harvard Business Review and the American Journal of Psychology Consulting. She's also experienced setbacks and will be the first one to tell you that mistakes and rejections happen and is proof that real impact isn't about quick wins, but it's about the perseverance and purpose that you have. Penny's approach stands out because it's authentic, tested, and driven by her genuine desire to create a ripple effect of change. I am so happy that you are here, Penny. Thank you for being here.

Penny Locaso (Guest): Oh, it's exciting to be with you, Mary, here in Melbourne, Australia, but also over in Oregon. Love the way Zoom works.

Mary Killelea: Okay, so let's dive in. You know, before we go into your HackingHappy company and how you started that, talk me through your career journey that led you to Hacking Happy.

Penny Locaso: So I always wanted to be a lawyer. Oh. And I finished high school, I got into law, I studied law for a year and went, this is not what I thought it was and dropped out. And then became, like, it's so funny, right? So then became a nanny because I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I needed cash because I was young, and I didn't want to live at home. And then was like, you know what, if I can find an organization that will back me and believe in me, maybe I can work out what I want to do.

I ended up at the age of 22, completely by fluke, landing a job at Shell in oil and gas, at the absolute bottom of the rung, and literally just worked my way through for 16 years, and just kept getting tapped on the shoulder and tapped on the shoulder. And they paid for me to go back and do an MBA and spent 16 years there and had an amazing career, worked with some unbelievably brilliant minds.

And I got to the age of 39 and had ticked all of the boxes I was told would make me happy slash successful. And I was like, there's got to be more to life than this. I felt unfulfilled. I realize now when I look back that I was completely burnt out, and I had a three year old son, and all he wanted was my time. And all I was doing was giving my time to creating the future and being busy. And so I decided to do something about it, change things a little bit.

Mary Killelea: That's a beautiful story. And I think it's so relatable to a lot of people, maybe not, you know, this, the upward mobility is fast and what you were able to achieve. But getting to points where you wake up and you look up and say, is this what I wanted? And is this everything I had hoped it would be?

Penny Locaso: Yeah, I think, you know, we sold a definition of success. And it's a bit different now. I mean, this was 10 years ago. So back then, it wasn't as common for people to leave, you know, very successful careers at the top of their game. But, and I always say people like, was there a light bulb? And it was like, no, it was more like a dimmer that gradually got turned up over time where the light got so strong, I couldn't ignore it anymore. And so there was a, there was a moment though, and I'll never forget it, where I stepped into the backyard one afternoon because I was working part time because my son was only three. And I was working four days a week. And that meant, what that meant was I was really working six and spending Fridays with my son. I just basically worked all the time.

I went into the backyard one Friday and I said to him, “come on, buddy, let's go hang out. Today's your day”. And I'll never forget, he looked up from like his Tonka trucks and he said to me, “I can't mum, I'm too busy”. And it was like a dagger through the heart. Cause I was like, three year olds don't know what busy is unless they hear it from somewhere else.

Mary Killelea: Oh, wow.

Penny Locaso: This kid has heard it a lot. And I was like, what am I doing? So from that moment within seven months, I left a 16 year career as a female with high potential, which I hate the term, cause I'm yet to meet one with no potential. I relocated my family from Perth back to Melbourne, which is like moving from New York to LA. I left an 18 year relationship. So I left my husband and I started my own purpose driven company.

As I always say, we've no fricking idea what I was doing, but I knew I couldn't be the only woman in the world who wanted to make a meaningful difference through her work and wanted to actually feel like she was living life, not just surviving through it.

Mary Killelea: Wow. That's so powerful. Okay. Let's talk about Hacking Happy. That is your company. So how did you speak of the name? What did you want to accomplish by that? I want to just dive into everything after that statement you just made. Like I just went into this and I don't want to say blindly, but with the hope more than a plan. And I'm not trying to say that you didn't have a plan, but it really sounds like fate led you down this path.

Penny Locaso: Yeah, that's how it felt. So when I said I had no idea what I was doing, what I did know, like it was kind of, and I know now because I studied a lot of sort of embodied and somatic work with Dr. Gabor Maté. For some reason decided to trust my intuition again, rather than trusting what society told me I should be doing.

And in doing that with HackingHappy.co, whilst I had no idea what I was doing, what I did know was that I was like, what are the things that make me feel like I'm happy, fulfilled and like I'm flourishing in life? And it was, you know, human connection, positively impacting the lives of others, sharing experiences and being present and in a moment. So, it wasn't complex stuff. It was all stuff that was within my access. And I was like, well, even though I don't know what this looks like, and it feels really massive and scary, what I do know is that if I take intentional action that aligns to those things, yeah, and the clarity will appear. It will, you know, it can't not. Because I'm moving in the direction like that.

It was kind of like guardrails. I can't, I've just got to trust the process. I've got to trust that the action that I take will breathe the clarity. What I need will unfold. And that's exactly what happened.

Mary Killelea: That's amazing and so inspiring. But how do you find the confidence to make that drastic change? I know you say trust your intuition or trust your heart, but there's also got to be a little, you know, person on the side of your shoulder speaking in your voice in a quiet voice “You can't do this. You can't do this. No one's done it before”. So like, how do you overcome the confidence to embrace that risk?

Penny Locaso: Yeah, so the first thing I want to say, I'm very honest and very direct, right? So I was in a financial position to take that massive leap. And I work with a lot of women, high performing women across entrepreneurship and corporate to make massive shifts.

I was in a financial position to turn everything upside down. I'd save my money and could do that. Most women, a lot of women cannot. And so I don't advocate that people do what I do. That was just what worked for me. I could afford to do that and I could afford to work things out over sort of a two year time.

But the confidence thing is really interesting, right? So we're all born with a set level of resilience and it's all different. It's different for each and every one of us. But resilience and self-confidence, they are not set points. They are like their muscles, their skills that we can build, right? And knowing that means that just because you are where you are now and you perhaps don't back yourself as much, it doesn't mean that there aren't really simple things that you can't do to strengthen that muscle and start to learn to back yourself.

So I did, like I used to wake up at two o'clock in the middle of the night going, “who are you to think you can do this? Like you must be freaking crazy.” And so many people, when I left Shell, told me I was crazy. They were like, no one leaves, you know, the golden handcuffs. No one walks away from a successful career. Like this is mad. And I suppose to them it did seem like it was, but there was something within me and I know what it is now, but at the time I couldn't explain it. And the more people told me I was crazy, the more I was like, this is the right thing to do. And when I look back now, there's a term that I use called concern trolling. And so what I realized is that a lot of the fear or a lot of what people were saying was their own stuff. So what I was doing was basically bringing up stuff within them that made them feel very uncomfortable because what I now know is a lot of them would have loved to have done the same thing but didn't have the courage to do it.

So concern trolling is where people actually project their stuff onto you. It comes from a place of love and concern, but really what it is, is it's their stuff, it's their fears. And what you're doing is making them feel very uncomfortable.

Mary Killelea: And you speak to data and what you're saying makes so much sense. And I think I don't want to skip over the fact that you're a behavioral scientist and I think that's really key to kind of dig into that deeper and say what does that mean to be a behavioral scientist?

Penny Locaso: In its simplest form, it's studying human behavior, right? And through that study, discovering things and then translating those discoveries into the way I look at science, and I think this is probably one of the biggest gaps we have in academia. It's taking those discoveries and translating them into meaningful information and practical application that enables people to use that information to live better lives, to be happier.

Mary Killelea: That's a beautiful thing.

Penny Locaso: And can I say, the self-doubt never goes away, like that voice that was in my head in the middle of the night, right? It hasn't gone away, it's still there. That is our innate warning system. We are wired, we are biased to fear because it is a self-protection mechanism. But what I have learnt is to know that that's my body's way of trying to keep me safe and just because it's what my body thinks is good for me, often it is not. It's the animal instinct within us that has repurposed itself, you know, because there's no life threatening issues that we have every day. It now repurposes itself to make me feel threatened even when I can't find my mobile phone.

So I know that, I know that information because I've studied it and so I now use that information when fear presents and say, “oh, this is my body trying to keep me safe. Am I really unsafe”? Or is this an opportunity, is this a pathway to me having a greater impact, doing more meaningful work, feeling better about myself, making myself better than what I was yesterday?

Mary Killelea: You've accomplished two things that I always have on my bucket list and that's to write a book and do a TED Talk. Let me dive into or have you dive into those two things and what propelled you to do those.

Penny Locaso: I always wanted to do a TED Talk. Who doesn't? And ironically when I first started my journey I somehow through different networks that I placed myself in trying to meet new people outside of the corporate world, met the license holder and curator for TEDx Melbourne which is one of the longest running TEDs in the world which I didn't know at the time and we formed a relationship and I said to him, “you know, one day I want to do a TED Talk”.

We kind of stayed in contact but like we were friends for probably four years and I started sort of two years into my journey I started to get speaking opportunities and I was like, well if I'm going to do this I want to be good at it so I engaged him to help me learn more about crafting really good talks and also to help me with sort of vocalization and how to leverage that for the impact and to keep an audience engaged.

And so it was like this just this relationship that we had and I'll never forget it I've been over in San Francisco speaking at Google which was like a dream opportunity and I landed back in Melbourne and I was literally at the carousel at the airport and my phone rang.

He said to me, TEDx is in a week's time, they'd sold the venue out, it was like 2 000 people and he said we've just had someone pull out and there is no one else I know that could deliver a TED Talk in a week will you do it?

Mary Killelea: Oh wow.

Penny Locaso: And I was scared shitless so I said yes and I did. I mean, that's I mean you never know what the universe is… That's why I always say to women, tell people what you want, keep telling people what you want because no one can read your mind and whilst it might not be a yes right now, when something like that happens I was the first person in his mind because the thing is his reputation was you know on the line as well they needed that person and he knew through our coaching he knew damn well that I was able to step up and do that within a week which a lot of people couldn't so that was an amazing opportunity and that is a gift that keeps on giving like that must have been six seven years ago now and I still get business through that TED Talk right so having a TED Talk is a massive credibility stamp.

The book deal was an interesting one I always wanted to write a book and I met a woman who was an amazing book editor and quite renowned in Australia and I was like you know what if I don't do it now I'll never do it. So I said to her if you help me create a pitch to get a publishing deal and we get a publishing deal I'll like I'll pay you to do a pitch because she was well connected I said if we get a publishing deal then I'll pay you to edit the book because I didn't want to spend two years writing a book and then having to rewrite it. I wanted someone that was going to edit it as I wrote it who was very experienced because I knew time was money and that was what her gift was. We did the pitch literally within a week we sent it out I got two book offers within a month and I was like oh I'm going to have to write the book.

The one that we went with they wanted me to write the book within three months because they were like this is really timely because the book was all around hacking happiness. It was all around how do you define what flourishing looks like for you in your life because it's different for each and every one of us and then how do you learn evidence-backed ways to actually bring that to life. So I wrote the book within three months and the day I finished the manuscript two days later we went into the first lockdowns.

Mary Killelea: Oh what a whirlwind. I'm going to link to both your TED talk and to your book in the show notes, for those that are listening and want to learn you know the title and access. So when I'm listening to you talk and I think of you know obviously your prior career at Shell. Obviously are a woman a in leadership role getting things done. I see a lot of those traits in you as a businesswoman with your own business. What do you think working in the corporate world how has that benefited you now in being your own business owner?

Penny Locaso: It's really interesting because the first thing I would say is there is a lot of things that I had to unlearn from my corporate background in order to be successful now and so that's the first thing I want to say. There's good like anything there's like yin and yang right there's good and bad and everything so the first thing I would say to people wanting to do this is be open to unlearning and letting go because there is a lot in corporate that will not serve you when you step into the entrepreneurial world and the first thing I think of is corporates their whole anatomy is designed to manage and mitigate risk.

Whereas when you step into running your own business and being entrepreneurial, your whole premise is around taking risks. So, it's the complete I get goosebumps when I say it right it's the complete opposite and so I think that accepting that and embracing it is really powerful. The other thing that I for me that was particularly fascinating I was very well connected in oil and gas, but the networks I had were not the networks that I needed to succeed in where I was going so I had to invest very heavily in creating new relationships, new connections, and doing a lot of conversations where I just sat there and asked questions and listened so there are two things that I would say would be very helpful if you're in transition.

But what did serve me was that Shell was very good at investing in your development, and also they were very good at employing very smart people. So what was brilliant about that was I had always worked with models and frameworks, and so there were a lot of those models and frameworks that I could use to apply to my business and how I ran my business.

Equally that understanding of models and frameworks and the power of how they help people formulate ideas or work through problems was a really good basis for me to say well if I develop my own models and frameworks that's what's going to help people get to where they need to go and that's what's going to help me you know succeed in my business because there's structure and planning and so that's definitely served me extremely well. Yeah, so definitely the frameworks. And there was something else I'm just trying to think of…

I would say the other thing is organizational skills. My boss my last boss at shell said to me your skill set should be getting shit done you just make things happen and I mean that's kind of innate it's part of who I am, but um I think you know that is rewarded in corporate and it's certainly you need to be very motivated when you run your own business and that has certainly served me in what I do now.

Mary Killelea: I love hearing that perspective because I'm somewhat in a similar boat where I'll be leaving the corporate and starting my own business full steam and I can relate to a lot of those pros and cons, but I hadn't really thought about letting go and becoming more of a risk taker which makes perfect sense.

Penny Locaso: Yeah, because and it's interesting right because and it's completely up to you but it's really interesting when we started speaking before you hit record and you said I'm going to kind of look at doing consulting and things like that what I find really interesting is a lot of people leave corporate and they go and do exactly what they were doing in corporate for other people. And I think that that's fine if you need to bridge the gap and regulate your system to get comfortable. But I think there's also this beautiful opportunity to say right whilst I've got that coming in why did I really leave and what do I really want to do with the rest of my life like to create that space and ask those hard questions and sit with what answers come up because what I find is when people just keep doing the same thing and when they step out in 12 month’s time they'll be sitting there going this is really not cutting it for me. You know why did you leave, what were you not getting that you really want for the rest of your life?

Mary Killelea: Okay. I hear what you're saying completely, but then I think about if I have 25 years of marketing experience how do I walk away from that and then focus on a clear different direction with my career that that's a real scary or not even scary, it's like well then what was that investment for. And that's what my head's having a hard time getting around.

Penny Locaso: Yeah, but your marketing skills will serve you no matter what you do, right?

Mary Killelea: Right.

Penny Locaso: They are brilliant skills to have. I was a marketer when I was at Shell for years they are excellent skills to have regardless of what you do next. So, it's not wasted. But equally you know it's like is staying with the known even if the known is not what you want and what makes you happy just because you've done it for the last 25 years a reason to keep doing it?

Mary Killelea: I feel like I'm having a therapy session and I absolutely love it right now. I'll go back to moving on with this interview and circle back with you later. Okay, so you supported thousands of women globally describe your ideal client and what kind of characteristics make them good to fit your program?

Penny Locaso: Oh, that's a great question! So my ideal client is someone who wants to leave their mark on the world, someone who wants to make a meaningful difference through their work, but they may or may not have clarity on what that really looks like. So it's all about impact, making a difference, and equally, they want to do it from a place of not burning themselves out; they want to do it from a place where they actually feel nourished, where they actually enjoy the work, and don't kill themselves in the process.

So it's generally, I mean I do work with men, but my focus is on women because I'm you know very invested in empowering over a million women to actually change the world without self-doubt. We have massive issues in terms of equality around women who well equality in terms of experts on stages in the media we are 50% of the population yet we represent less than 30% of the voices in positions of power.

So it's not that you need to want to run for congress for example, but it could be you know you just want to have an impact in your community. Maybe you want to have an impact you know in your family, but pretty much it's anyone who wants to live their legacy, but they don't know where to start or how to start. A lot of the women though that I do work with so that's kind of early stage are established so they are successful have had success in their career and they've kind of climbed mountains, but they're ready to climb the next mountain and it feels huge and they don't know what they don't know and they don't know what they need.

And so I'm kind of exactly what you were talking about this yesterday, clients were saying to me, you're exactly what I needed, but I didn't know what I needed, and I'm like, how do you market that?

Mary Killelea: So, how do you help clients identify and communicate their unique value propositions confidently, or 1) identify it and then, 2) since it's somewhat new to them, like how do they, you know, market that in an authentic, sincere, confident way?

Penny Locaso: Yeah, so the first thing that I do…well, there are two things that I do as a grounding exercise with new clients. The first one is a beautiful little process, and you can download this as a lead magnet on my website. It's called it's a reflection process because I think it's really important to look back in order to look forward. And so it's called Love, Long, Loathe, Lean in and let go. And we look at all of those elements, what are the things you've loved, what are the things you've longed to do, like you've just mentioned a TED talk and a book, what have you loathed, what do you want to let go of, what do you want to lean into. And then we use that as a basis to then do a beautiful exercise to create what I call a shitty first draft of the purpose, because so many women want purpose, and they want meaning but purpose for many people feels huge and overwhelming.

A lot of the women I work with are high performing people pleasers, perfectionists and so giving them permission to create a shitty first draft makes them feel comfortable in doing the thing the big thing. And often it's funny we can we can get to where we need to be to get that shitty first draft in a session and it blows their mind and often they're in tears because the process that I take them through like I say it's reflective but equally it's really around what it's leveraging again a framework that's been proven by the Japanese called Ikigai for years.

But that shitty first draft purpose gives them clarity on why they made this shift why they want to do what they want to do and who they want to do it for. And then what we then do is we map out a very simple plan for the next 90 days to say right what are the things that we can do to start to bring this to life now, and experiment like I did experiment our way to clarity. Because I'm not sitting here saying here's all the answers go and do this because everyone's journey is unique and you know it's not my job to tell you what to do my job is to give you the systems the processes and the support to work out what you need to do for yourself because my job is to do myself out of a job. I want to give you the skills and the support to believe in yourself and be able to take impactful action that's going to help you get to where you are long after I've left the building.

Mary Killelea: Yeah. I don't know about you, but in the women that I interact with, there is this what feels like a rising tide of women late in their careers, like having this awakening of their story. Being burnt out and wanting more purpose and time to be with the family they love or the ones that they love and feel more fulfilled in in different ways than just a paycheck.

Penny Locaso: Yeah, absolutely.

Mary Killelea: What do you see younger women facing? Or, kind of, how do you see the pendulum right now? Do you see a lot of young women looking to start their own businesses first or going up that corporate path and trying to chase the corporate ladder? I don't know if I see that anymore like I it once was kind of ingrained in what my generation was.

Penny Locaso: Yeah, look. I think there's definitely been a shift; there are a lot more women who are starting businesses at a much younger age, you know, at much higher rates. I know I definitely have a bias in my client base as to women that are sort of, I would say, 35 and over. Like I said a lot of them have had success a lot of them have had established careers and they're like this is not going to cut it anymore. Or they're already in their business like they've created their business and they're kind of two or three years in and they're like right how do I now how do I now dream bigger? How do I create greater visibility? How do I secure things like the Ted Talk? Like the speaking gigs, like the book deal, create a podcast, how do I do all of those things? And which one is the right one, because you don't need to do them all once, right?

So there's definitely a shift, but the other thing I think it's important to say, because I think we can make entrepreneurship sound very sexy, but you know,w it's not for everyone. It's not for everyone, right? It doesn't work for everyone. Some people it's way too uncomfortable you know for their central nervous system because the risk can feel so high, and that's okay. I think it's great that it's more about understanding what is important to you what do you want from your career and what is the best way to make that happen for you.

Mary Killelea: I love talking about personal branding um on this podcast with my guests how do you intentionally develop your own um personal brand and what advice do you have for women developing?

Penny Locaso: Yeah, so personal branding is a practice in resilience and it's a practice in consistently putting yourself out there. So I'm very clear on how I want to show up and I'm very clear on who I want to show up for so they're the first two things that kind of guide my personal branding. And then I am very deliberate in being consistent because branding is all about consistency so how do I consistently show up in that way for that audience. And so for me, and again everyone's different, but for me what that looks like is I um from a branding perspective. I look very much at owned, earned, and paid.

So “owned” is how does that showing up look when I am on my website, when I am on my podcast and how do I be consistent in that and how are the messages that I'm sending out consistent because I think branding is saying the same thing over and over and over again.

And then “earned” is then how do I like this podcast would be earned how do I build trust and credibility with those that I want to collaborate with so that I can get opportunities like this. And a lot of that is about constant I'm constantly reaching out. I have a list of things that I want to be on podcasts I want to be on media I want to be in and I'm constantly looking at creative ways to pitch myself to get those opportunities and it's a numbers game, right? I have a spreadsheet like I've just launched a brilliant white paper called Hidden Figures where are all the female experts which is all around how a woman's relationship with the word expert impacts her ability to become one, and that has been a beautiful basis for me to connect into corporates. I've pitched over 22 corporates in the last two weeks. Five of them have said yes to meetings so it's a numbers game, and 15 of them have either ghosted me or said no which is fine right that that is how branding works um I've pitched to podcasts and again I think the conversion rate is around 30%. I've pitched to media, and I've had some brilliant articles come out but not all of them have come out, but this practice of um in terms of earned it's a practice in what I call micro bravery. It's the practice of doing small things every day that make you feel uncomfortable that expose you to rejection where the outcome is not guaranteed, but the more you do this yet the more you build the courage and confidence over time to take bigger risks and to put yourself out there more. This is how we build our resilience base from that set point to a stronger muscle.

And then “paid” is…so depending if I've got a different campaign running from a branding perspective you know I might run some Instagram ads which I've done around the white paper which has been very effective. Sometimes I pay as well.

Mary Killelea: I love how transparent you are with breaking it down to a numbers game. I know there's so much more, but so many people don't even admit that you know after so many calls I get rejections so I just appreciate the transparency because I think there's listeners who look at women on social media or through their owned properties that seem like they've got it all together, they've got it all figured out. And they have these unrealistic expectations that it'll if I don't do that, I'm less than.

Penny Locaso: Yeah, and it's just bullshit. Here's the thing: if you take nothing else away from this podcast, it's a numbers game. You cannot get “yes’s” unless you get “no's”. You cannot. And I know some unbelievably successful female entrepreneurs and all of their stories are the same. They are all getting rejected they're not getting a hundred out of a hundred in terms of yeses what the successful ones are really good at is again consistently showing up in a way that is in alignment with who they want to be and who they want to be that for, and continuously putting themselves out there and not letting a no stop them from trying again. And I'm sorry to say it probably sounds like a lot of hard work it sounds like a lot of effort for some people they're going I don't think I could take that rejection, and this is why I say entrepreneurship's not for everyone that is what you have to do if you want to have the impact that you seek to have

Mary Killelea: Absolutely. I don't normally ask this question but I wanted to touch on it just because I'm starting to use it more in in my business in my life. Do you touch on AI tools and play with them within your business?

Penny Locaso: I do, yeah.

Mary Killelea: What do you think or what advice do you have for female listeners out there who are intimidated by tech and trying new things? What's your advice there?

Penny Locaso: Be intentional. So I do not and I've not seen it ever work for anyone I do not use AI to write social posts. I do not use it to write any of my stuff, okay? What I use it for is to help me with frameworks and structure. I'm doing honors in psych at the moment, so I find it very helpful when I've got a paper to write and I'm like I've got to write a paper around this give me a framework for how I would do this. And so I think that if you're someone who's kind of sitting there going I've got this big massive thing that I need to do, I've never done it before. Actually creating a really simple prompt that says for example when I was writing the white paper and doing the qualitative research, yes I studied qual research in my psych studies and I wanted to do it by the book, but I went to AI and said “I want to write a white paper. I need to do the qualitative research. Give me a framework or a project plan to help me think through all the moving parts and how I would go about that” and so for that's what I find AI really helpful for.

I don't use it for writing or anything like that because I find that it never sounds like me and you will find that AI is very good at using the same words over and over again, so you all sound the same. I tested using it on LinkedIn to help me, I'll never forget this and it was like oh this is horrible, to help me respond to or comment on things and again it was so inauthentic I deleted it within 24 hours. I hated it. So it's funny, you know.

You've got to find I think for frameworks and helping you map out how to tackle a big problem it can be excellent, but in terms of getting it to help you be you, that's not what it's gift is.

Mary Killelea: Okay. Is there one piece of advice you could give to women looking to make a meaningful difference in the world that they could start today in a simple step?

Penny Locaso: There is a brilliant little tool that I created called the No Excuses Cheat Sheet and I think we are very good at standing in our own way and making up all of these excuses as to why we can't now. And one of the things I see a hell of a lot of in high performing women is we are very good at qualifying ourselves. We become self-development junkies, so what we do when we want to do the thing is we go and get another qualification we go and study another thing. And what I see is that women hide. So they think that by studying they're making progress which you know in some ways you are but the study delays the practical application of putting the skills into practice and equally putting yourself out there. So it's often what I see a delay mechanism.

So the No Excuses Cheat Sheet was born out of that insight and it was about helping women work through a series of questions like what is the impact I seek to have in the world? And if that feels too big and huge asking yourself “what do I see in the world that really pisses me off?” is a really good place to start, because what pisses you off obviously connects in with your heart. It's like this has some meaning to you, and so unpacking that and saying well based on that what would I like to change what change would I like to see in the world? What change would I like to see in my community, in my children? And then so getting clear on that so what is the impact I seek to have, who would I like to have it on, and what is one very simple action I could take in the next week, just one small thing, that will help me move closer to that thing?

Because it is a long game. There is no silver bullet and it is about consistency, it's about discipline, it's about showing up every day. And it's those small micro steps that enable you to get to the position if you know that I'm now in which has taken 10 years. So don't look at people like me and go “oh how's she done it all overnight”? I haven't done it overnight, no one does. It's been a consistent disciplined journey of failure of learning of reiterating and trying again
MK: That's so beautifully said all right so we'll end it with this last question. What does to be bolder mean to you?

Penny Locaso: Oh, that is such a good question. To be bolder to me means speaking your truth. It means speaking your truth and stepping over which is where we started the fear of the judgment of others the fear of criticism or someone pulling apart what you've said the fear of feeling like an imposter. To me to be bolder is only using your voice as a mechanism for change even though what you may have to say might not prove popular with everybody. That is how you make a difference because people who change the world do not conform to the status quo, they pave a new path and make it safe for others to do the same.

Mary Killelea: That's amazing, you're amazing. How can people get in touch with you?

Penny Locaso: You can find me at hackinghappy.co. You can connect with me on LinkedIn just under my name, Penny Locaso, and all of the little tools and resources that I’ve referenced, or even the white paper, are all available on my website.

Mary Killelea: Penny, thank you so much for being here. It has really been great to meet you.

Penny Locaso: Pleasure, Mary. Thank you so much for the invitation.