'No experience is ever wasted': Human potential expert Nikki Bush shares her career journey

Inspirational speaker Nikki Bush has a 'Dancing with Disruption' feature on her website, which takes you behind the scenes of what it takes to build a strong brand over time.

Bush herself has built a strong brand during her career to become known as a dynamic and sought after human potential expert, who has also authored a number of best-selling books.

In conversation with Stephen Grootes, she shares how her career has evolved as her life has evolved, from parenting to a focus on the world of work.

"Now I do a lot around leadership, women's empowerment, team dynamics. It's all the same thing actually: It's all about people, connection, relationships, and raising human potential - so the broad umbrella that I operate under now is human potential expert, because that covers all of those things, and we can still squeeze in the parenting piece."

Bush describes herself as 'a really good student of life', who knows how to package her learnings.

"I think one of my superpowers is being able to gather those things and make sense of them - so, overall, I'm a SENSE-MAKER."

One of her teachings is that there is actually no such thing as work-life balance - the term Bush uses is work-life integration.

It's about how we create our own recipe for this integration, she says, as it will be different for each individual.

"Each person, each family, is like a unique fingerprint... There are some basic principles, but there's no one-size-fits-all... and so much about work-life integration is what you're prepared to say 'yes' to and what you're prepared to say 'no' to, so what we're really talking about is boundaries at the end of the day because what you focus on will flourish, and if you have too many irons in the fire nothing flourishes."

'Money flows where focus goes', she emphasizes.

Bush is also a great proponent of the belief that no experience is ever wasted, lost or forgotten.

Wherever you are in your life, you've gotten there based on those experiences and choices, so you need to own them, she says.

"And it's amazing how, if you own your experiences, you can pull threads through all the time. I see that in my own career - the parenting has pulled into leadership."

Here Bush also references the tragedy that struck her family when her husband was killed during an armed robbery at their home in 2017.

"Becoming a widow at the age of 50, needing to become financially far more savvy than I ever had been, has informed my women's empowerment work."

Nothing Bush covers in her talks has ever come from a textbook.

'Even though I speak at business schools, I don't speak like a business school lecturer', she says.

"Play has always been a foundational part of the work I did, and still do, in the parenting field... and I pulled that right through into leadership workshops. My work is serious but it has a fun element which makes learning easy for people, and I then provide frameworks and they can put it to good use immediately without going to do an MBA."

Scroll up to the audio player to listen to this in-depth interview with Nikki Bush