Ann-Marie Brereton - ​​​​​​​From Tinder to a Tree House

Welcome to Exit the Matrix Stories of Success with your host Jane Slack-Smith, where we celebrate the incredible journeys of individuals who've transcended their limitations and achieved extraordinary success.

Welcome to Exit the Matrix Stories of Success show. Now I'm your host Jane Slack-Smith, and today we are going to dive into another inspiring story of transformation, determination, transformation, triumph. And I am so excited to have this incredible guest with me today. This podcast show is all about inspiring you to seeing a different way and making the choice to exit the matrix, that matrix that has the boundaries of limitations, conditions, and beliefs, the stories you might be telling yourself. And today I have a very, very special guest, Annie, Annie Brereton. Now, I was going to say Anne-Marie Brereton, but I'm going to go with Annie. Annie, is that okay?

Annie's it. Yep.

Now look, I have known Annie and Shane for about 6 months now, and what really struck me when I first heard their story was how they made a choice. They made a choice to do something different, and I can't wait to share with you what Annie and Shane are bringing to the world, but also that story of transformation and where it all began. So Annie, welcome.

Thanks, Jane. Very excited to be here.

You know, well, look, let's just, you know, take ourselves out of this amazing world that you are now, and you're creating these incredible lives by design, authentic living spaces for your clients, and having a sanctuary, a home that actually not just creates a unique experience for them and is something that they love, but, you know, also connects to everything that they're trying to achieve in life as well. So we're going to take that aside, we're going to get that We'll come back to that a little later, but I want to just, you know, start at the beginning of your journey. So for those people who are listening, who are sitting there going, yeah, I'm not quite where I want to be at the moment, I'm not waking up every day thinking, oh my goodness, I can't wait to jump into the day, can you tell me a little bit about what it was like for you before you had this change and this awareness?

I think as often happens for people when they have pivotal moments in their life, I had had Quite a life-changing event in that my first husband very unexpectedly was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and subsequently had quite a short illness before he passed, leaving me widowed with 2 young children at 43. And if that's not a wake-up call, I don't know what is.

Mm-hmm.

But even though we were living a really happy suburban life, It really did force me to reevaluate everything in my world, and that's what I did.

It's difficult, isn't it? Because when you, you know, often there are these significant moments and life's okay, you're just, you're going along, everything's cruising. Yeah, and, and in that moment when you're not just dealing with your own personal grief, but you've got little kids. You know, and so what was the next step for you? You know, did you, did you stay where you were in the lifestyle that you're in, or did you make a choice at that stage to do something a bit different?

Uh, even when my husband, my first husband, was sick, I made a choice to really work on myself in order to be the strongest, uh, person that I could be for myself and for my children moving forward, knowing what the future was going to hold for us. So I did a lot of self-development work. I had mental health support. Excuse me. And yeah, after my husband passed away, I spent some time obviously in deep reflection and deep thought about what my next step was going to be. But knowing full well that my life was going to take a different direction now, and I really was going to live life on my terms. My first husband's life motto was glass half full. And to be honest, all those years ago, mine was the exact opposite. I lived my life glass half empty. And his passing didn't force me. It was a conscious decision to turn that around. And I really feel that that was my best way to truly honour him, was to live life glass half full and to take up every Take advantage of every opportunity that was either presented to me or that I made happen.

It takes courage to do that, but it also takes a real intention and will to make those choices. Because if you come from a way of doing things that are familiar and comfortable in the past, then actually going into any situation and going, I'm going to seize this, it's not something I'd normally do, I've got to put myself out there. Like, that can be really challenging, can't it?

Incredibly challenging. And even to this day, I feel challenged every day with every choice I make. Every time I pop my face on social media or, you know, people say to me, oh, you know, you're so great at that. It's a challenge. It's a personal hill for me to climb every day. But again, that's the conscious choice I make to climb that hill.

Fast forward, you, you know, you've done a bit of work, your husband's passed, you've made this choice to actually, you know, grab life and, and look glass half full. What were the choices that you then made?

Uh, the choice was very clear by then. As I, as I said, I, I'd had a successful marriage by all accounts, uh, you know, loving husband, beautiful family. And although I knew I was strong enough to do life on my own I didn't want to. I made a conscious decision that I wanted to share my life and this journey with someone. And so I set about finding that person. And, you know, 2 young kids at home, that wasn't going to involve me heading out to bars every night. So I did what, you know, well, certainly what my married girlfriends wanted me to do, which was to jump on Tinder. And as a result, I Found my now husband of 7 years.

And tell me, did you at that time jumping on Tinder, was it like swipe left, swipe right, swipe left, swipe right, or did you actually know what you were after?

Uh, initially I, uh, I popped up a profile and I had some pretty disastrous dates. And, um, I'll quickly share a story around— I was working with a business consultant at the time at the business I was working for, and he too was on Tinder. Uh, so we used to share our little experiences together. And one day we had a full day, um, together where we had to drive quite significant distances together. And he said, oh, let me have a look at your profile. And I was a bit embarrassed initially. And he said, oh, he said, that's good, but what do you really want, Annie? I'm like, you know, that. And he said, tell me what you really want. And I actually did. I was driving, he pulled out his laptop Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. And, uh, he changed my profile to the words that came out of my mouth and didn't think about it again. Got home that night, got the kids to bed, whatever, jumped on Tinder. Shane, my now husband, was the first person to come up.

And so you created that, that real intention of what you wanted. You named it and Honestly, like, did you put everything out there?

Right down to I wanted him to have a beard. Wow.

Okay, so you meet Shane, you know, how did things then progress?

Uh, 3 days later he moved in, and 6 months to the day later we got married. Now I know that sounds ridiculous, and if you knew previous Annie You would say that is not her. But as they say, when you know, you know.

It's interesting because we often talk about, you know, your focus creates reality, and your focus pre-being very certain about what you're after kind of got the reality of, you know, who didn't really fit the bill down to the beard. And then you were so focused, and to the degree that I imagine When you were thinking about a life with someone else, you were very specific about how that life would look, so hence the right person could click.

Absolutely. And, and the biggest part of that was my, my motivation and my desire was I wanted someone that would look forward with me, not back. So many of the— so many— I didn't meet that many men. The few men I had met Seemed very stuck in the past, and I was determined to take the future and live it on my terms, and I needed and wanted someone that was prepared to do the same.

So, you've met Shane, you've married Shane, you were based in, you know, a residential area in the capital city. Did that continue? Did life kind of continue as it was, or was there a real upheaval and change after that?

We set about— we actually, in the first year of being together, we both quit our jobs and we started our first business together, which was a little repurpose and upcycling business. You know, the environment and our footprint that we leave is very important to us. So we basically had a bit of fun. We made no money, but we had an incredible time. We did some really fantastic work together. As the years progressed, we decided that the city was no longer for us and we really wanted to live a quieter life and a very intentional life. And for us, that, that looked like moving to regional Victoria, which is what we did.

Now, a quick word from our sponsor, Your Success Club. Your Success Club is a group of vibrant abundance seekers. If you subscribe to exitthematrix.io, we are going to drop you into the club room, which has lots of goodies, resources, and a free gift just for subscribing. Now back to the podcast. So you've gone from having this, this business where you've got these beautiful, I guess, things that people can put into their homes. And Shane, I know Shane's pretty hands-on. He was making some extraordinary kind of unique pieces as well. And you've taken yourself and this young family regional Victoria uniqueness that you can work together as a couple is amazing in itself. And I imagine, you know, you obviously had decided to do that and you had similar interests. So when you then created this new life together, how did you then progress forward to, you know, living what you're living today?

So initially we bought— we went for a drive one Saturday to look at an auction of a little church out past Ballarat. And lo and behold, we bought that church on the day. And we converted that into a short-stay rental, an Airbnb. And that was really what led us to being in this region. So we opened that first property in March 2020. Yep, the one when COVID happened.

That's right.

And as things transpired, that actually turned out to be A positive for us because when Victorians were allowed to travel, they came in droves and we were at, you know, 90% occupancy in our first 6 months of operation. So we absolutely loved sharing this incredible space that we had transformed into this regenerative nurturing environment and it was exactly what people needed at that moment. So of course we'd done one, we decided to do another one. So we moved up here and we set about creating our second little property, which was this restored 1970s caravan sitting on a little dam, which was really— which really resonated with people as well, particularly those in the city that needed that space and that nature connection in those hard times. Completely. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, beautiful. And so now, you know, you've— you're living your best life. I remember when I spoke to you like 6 months ago and to you and Shane, and you were saying, we wake up every morning and we know that we are living our best life. This is amazing. You know, we're creating these beautiful things. You know, since that decision to work together, you know, create a life together with your family, you know, where are you now? What are you creating at the moment?

So right now we're actually creating our own home behind us. And yes, we do wake up every day. You know, the view in front of me right now is of beautiful natural bush, and it's the most inspiring setting. So right at this very moment, we are in the midst of transforming our own home. In conjunction with that, we've also shifted our business away from accommodation, and we're moving into creating authentic spaces for living for other people. You know, we got so much joy out of seeing how the spaces that we created resonated with people that we wanted to do that for people in their own homes, not just as a getaway, not just 2 nights away. People can live this like we do every day of their lives.

So what's it look like? It's not just a design service. How do people experience that? I want to wake up living what Annie's living.

Well, you know, you experience it with great courage and it It is a choice. It's a choice every day. So we create spaces for thriving and, yeah, it's— sorry, I hesitate now because I go, you know, this life sounds incredible and it is. And as I know, Jane, we've talked about before, there is always this push-pull. I mean, the reality of life is— life is hard sometimes. This has not been a perfect transition, you know, moving to a new town, all of that. There are challenges, but overall, this is our life by design. This is a creation by us that suits us. It is not right for everyone, but we want to tap into helping others draw out what that looks like for them.

Yeah.

And, and by creating a space that really resonates with your values and your purpose, then that transmits out into your environment and to your community and your family, and that's what it's about for us.

Yeah, and I guess what I, you know, having had many years teaching people about renovations, renovating a lot of properties myself, which is how we originally connected, renovations were about the numbers, it was about the design aspect. And I guess when I listen to how you serve your clients, you, you know, via Zoom or in people's homes, and you, you're hearing, how do you live? What's important to you? Like, you know, I think you were telling me the other day that you were designing a pantry and it was around the fact that they were organic eaters and the best boxes were a certain size, so you had to make it fit. Like, actually understanding the lived experience of being, you know, creating that home for yourself so that, you know, when you wake up, you know, and maybe, you know, you have a design for the entire home and you can afford one room at a time, which is often what we did when we were renovating. You know the overall concept of that space that you're creating. And what I really love about that is that you get that opportunity to say, You know, this is my life. This is the physical space that you want, but it also affects your mental space, right?

Absolutely. There is so much sameness in the world at the moment, but we're not the same. Each of us is so unique in all our gifts and offerings that we have to the world. So why are we living or trying to live in spaces that look like everyone else's? You know, we, we talked yesterday. I've just installed pink vanities in my new bathroom. Now I know 50% of people will walk into my house and go, she is bonkers. It is the best thing in my life right now. I'm about to do a pink kitchen. My whole kitchen's going to be pink. It is how I— and I've convinced my husband, who's very on board with it— it's how we live. It It is about us and waking up in an environment that serves us. That's not the Freedom Furniture catalog. And, you know, there's a place for all that, but it's about looking at those pieces and drawing the pieces that are authentically you, that support your well-being, your mental health, your thriving, your family. That's what it's about for us.

Well, I'm definitely going to be dropping some information in the show notes because I would absolutely love for you to connect with authenticspaces.com.au, Annie and Shane, and reach out to them because, you know, it's important that we can look at our lives in, you're waking up every day and just sometimes just seeing a small little thing that just makes you so happy, like a pink basin.

Pink!

I never knew that existed. So, and follow Annie and Shane's journey as they renovate renovate their home and give inspiration as well on their Instagram and on their social media. Because, you know, these are, these are stories of people who have, you know, had a choice. It's like, do I want more of the same? Have gone through some type of extraordinary change in their lives. And, you know, what you did in making that choice and calling out exactly what you wanted in a partner, moved in 3 days later. And then, you know, uplifted your life and creating not just a life for yourself, but life by design for other people. I, I just, uh, I love your story. And for those of you who are listening to this, you know, I, I hope this inspires you to realize there's a choice. It does take effort. It's not always easy.

Yeah.

But, uh, you know, a life by design is well worth it.

Indeed.

Thank you so much, Annie. I really appreciate you sharing your story and look forward to hearing more.

Thanks, Jane. Thanks for the opportunity.

Thank you for listening to Exit the Matrix Stories of Success. Make sure you subscribe to future episodes. At www.exitthematrix.io. Until next time, here's to your success.