Podcast Episode 18

My dear elegant podcast listeners, welcome to Wednesday! A brand new Wednesday, a brand new week, and the brand new podcast episode. Ladies, as many of you probably know, I am in the middle of launching my brand new private members club app, The A-list. If you haven’t heard about it yet, then go to my YouTube channel. You can watch my live workshop about how to improve your socializing game. And there I also introduce the app that I have just launched. I have also video on Behind The Scenes Inside The A-list Private Members Club, because I know many of you are curious about how it looks inside. You might be thinking about joining it. However, you might not be sure whether this app is for you or not. If you go to my YouTube channel, you can go and check out that video that show you behind the scenes of The A-list and whether it will be suitable for you or not.

Ladies today, I want to talk to you about female friendships. I had a video about it on YouTube before I think a week ago about what type of female friends you need in your life. But today I want to talk more about actually my own experiences with female friends, because you need to be aware that there were so many things that happened that were positive thanks to other women. Yes, ladies, I benefited tremendously from other women and I always gave back to the women in my life. And today I have built my whole career about helping other women progress in life. And I just really have the mindset that I think that us women – we need to empower each other, we need to help each other, and we need to stop seeing each other so much as competition.

This whole thing, that we are competitive, it’s like a disease among women. We need to stop with this immediately. I know why we are like this. And that is because competitiveness stems from insecurity. And many, many women are insecure. Surely you have men as well, who are insecure, but they are oftentimes not as connected to those emotions as women are. I think both sexes are equally insecure, but women tend to feel that feeling more than men. And that’s why we turn into our kind of competitiveness or we look down another other, or we try, I don’t know, bully another woman psychologically in order to feel protected or feel better about ourselves. I don’t think that I am delusional, who actually do believe in the fact that women can be co-operative, that we don’t have to be competitive. There is enough to go around for absolutely everybody. We shouldn’t act from the feeling that we don’t have enough.

Again, that’s an insecurity. When you embrace other women and when you cooperate with each other, you’re going to see you are actually going to benefit so much more than when you are staying protective in your own little bubble, thinking that women are competition or women are this or women are that. Oftentimes we have I think quite a lot of negative stereotypes about fellow women. And I’m sure that, you know, not everybody is kind out there and not everybody’s a good person or wants the best for you. I mean, that’s a fact, unfortunately. But I have really seen from my experience how many great women are out there. I’m also seeing it in the community that I have built over so many years. There is so much light, and so much positivity, and so much love out there. And so many women who don’t want to tear each other down, women who actually want to empower each other and find like minded women.

I know that many of us can feel a little bit lonely as we walk through this journey of personal upgrade and transformation. Because if you take a look around in our society, yeah. I mean, certainly what it is that I teach. It’s a niche. The general population is not interested in leveling up. The general person don’t have this aspiration or don’t even think that it’s possible. So what we are doing, of course, that’s separates us from the rest. And sometimes doing what we doing can feel a little bit lonely because it’s not that easy to find somebody to do this together with, but it is important to find somebody who walks your path, somebody who can support you in this, who can understand you, what you’re going through, somebody that you can brainstorm ideas with. Throughout my personal upgrade journey, I have had loads of women who are walking a similar path to me.

Now that’s something that I didn’t have a lack of in particular because I very early on, I started surrounding myself in affluent circles and I sought out affluent women and women who were also leveling up. Because, you know, I did loads of research for my own benefits on how, you know, these elite women were able to achieve success, et cetera. So, I was always around these type of women, but I also do know that, especially when I have traveled a lot, that sometimes, you know, especially if you change countries, which is something that I did quite a lot, it can get a little bit lonely from time to time and we do need each other. And we thrive so much more when we are together. I mean, just the fact that I met my husband through a girl that I met when I was exercising to those of you who don’t know this story. I was living in London and I was going to this place called Barry’s bootcamp on a very regular basis, about five, sometimes even six days a week, because I simply loved the training method.

It was high intensity training. It’s not like a gym, but it’s like a group workout class. And it’s very popular. And you have a really nice crowd who goes there. I remember David Beckham used to be in my class. Harry Styles used to be in my class. So you definitely got all kinds of people there. You know, you also had celebrities coming. So I became a regular there. And after a while you start recognizing some other regular people too. And there was this girl that I saw she was tall, beautiful, also quite fit. So after a while, seeing her over and over again, me and her started talking because we had a friend in common who was going to this Barry’s Bootcamp as well. So we started talking and we said, okay, let’s grab coffee after class, which we did. And then we started seeing each other in the classes that we went to at the same time, exchanged numbers, started chatting and then started meeting up outside of this gym. Okay. It’s not a gym, but you know what I mean? I don’t know what to call it, that training facility. And then the rest is history. We became really good friends and eventually she had the opportunity to invite me to a dinner where my husband was present. And that’s how I met him. All thanks to her.

I got in the live workshop that I did last Monday. I did tell you the story about my baby steps in London. When I moved there in 2012, and I didn’t know anyone now, that was another great example of how important female friends are. Because when I was in London, my first thought was to seek out fellow women, especially those who also were leveling up. And those who were part of high society somehow. And I found them because I joined an online app and platform. This app doesn’t exist anymore, but this was actually the first thing that planted the seed in me that turned into become the alias private members club. Because as the years unfolded, I realized that females need places where to meet online. We have so many dating apps today, but we don’t have enough friend-finder apps. And I wanted to create a friend-finder app for my specific community.

I run a community for women who have specific interests, elegance, affluence, and personal upgrade. And now I want to have a safe space for us, where we can network with each other and where we can find like-minded women. The same way I use this app called City Socializing in 2012. Now the difference with that app is that it didn’t have, you know, certain niche of women only. So I was only interested in women who were, you know, somehow, either leveling up or leveled up already. So it was a little bit tricky for me to, to find those women because, you know, I had to literally go on photography and description and try to guess whether that woman was perhaps sharing my interest or not. Now that’s a headache. I have removed for you inside the A-list, because A-list does not work like that.

In the list we have already all the women who are interested in the same subject. So what I did was that I started talking to women on this app and we scheduled for coffees, and then I met them up. And I don’t remember exactly how many I met, but I can tell you that most of those women that I met, I actually ended up starting a really good friendship with them. Maybe there was only one or two maximum of women that I met from this app that weren’t my cup of tea, but I really made some good friends on this app. Some of these friends became friends for life. I also remember one of the friends from this app. We were really good friends and we spent loads of time together. And when I jetted off to Asia several years later, because this girl was half-Asian herself, she gave me loads of connections in Asia.

So thanks to her because I went traveling by myself. When I visited certain countries, I was able to meet her friends who then introduced me to their friends. And as a result, I ended up having all kinds of access to high society, to all kinds of interesting people that were brand new to me, even though I was traveling by myself, I was able to meet these people because of my friend in London, who helped me with connections in Asia. So that was a wonderful benefit that she offered to me. And that gives you an example of how friends can help each other. And it’s really important to try and help each other whenever you can, because these type of friendships they’re about give and take. That’s why I keep teaching my ladies in my online finishing school how you always need to take your connections into your mind whenever you are socializing, because the more you give the more you’re going to get back. And I don’t want you to hold back in that department because you’re going to see how many people are actually going to reciprocate, even though it happens of course, sometimes that some don’t reciprocate, but I don’t think that’s end of the world.

And speaking of travel. Now, you probably know that I have lived in many different countries. Just to give you an example. I have lived in the UK and now I live in Switzerland. I’m from Sweden originally. I have lived in Spain, in Italy, in Malta, et cetera, et cetera. And ladies, I have also traveled loads. I have done loads of Latin America. I have also done loads of Asia. And many times I have traveled by myself because I never wanted to hold my life back. Meaning that many times I would have all kinds of ideas of things that I wanted to do, but none of my friends wanted to do what I wanted to do because you know, sometimes people don’t afford. Sometimes people a lot are afraid or have other things going on, et cetera. So it’s hard to actually find somebody who wants to do exactly the same thing that you want to do at exactly the same time as you want to.

So what I’ve done always in my life is to just do my own thing. People might call me very independent and perhaps to some degree I am, but I do believe that anybody can become independent because all it is about is to take action and just do it. And that was my mindset when I was traveling the world by myself. I didn’t want to wait for anybody. I didn’t want to hold back with my life. I wanted to live my life to the fullest. And so I did. And let me tell you one thing is that when I traveled by myself, I really met so many more people than whenever I traveled with a friend. It is so bizarre how it works. And you’re going to get this answer from absolutely everybody who has ever tried solo travel. Everybody says the same thing. When you are traveling alone, you just end up having the most craziest experiences possible, but in a positive way, and you get to meet so many people and people you would have never have met.

So that’s something I want to tell you, if you ever get the opportunity, don’t even hesitate, go and travel by yourself. As long as you are safe, and you have done your research on the place you’re going to. So going back to my solo traveling years, I certainly made loads of girlfriends on these trips, girlfriends that actually invited me to visit them in their home countries or to meet them in other places. And this way, because I have done that and kept always my connections going, I have been having such a domino effect in terms of meeting even more people. Because, you know, as an example, I met this girl in Italy that was from Latin America. I went to see her in Latin America. And what did I do? Well, she introduced me to all her friends in Latin America. And then I was able to meet somebody else from that group, et cetera, et cetera. And, or like I just told you, my friend from UK gave me her connections in Asia. So when you’re wondering for yourself, I don’t know how to meet people. How do we meet people these days? Well, this is how you meet people. You simply have to be out there. You have to mingle. You have to make friends, you have to offer your friends whenever you can help them with something. Your friends will always reciprocate to you if they’re genuine friends, et cetera.

So another example that popped to my mind, I remember in the beginning of my London days, so I went down to Cannes film festival andI was at Leonardo DiCaprio’s famous Villa party. So I was there. And you know, it’s one of those really crazy parties that maybe one day I will tell you much more in detail about it. I’ve actually been thinking about maybe one day writing a tell-all book about all my adventures around the world, because I feel like, you know, it would be nice to just put them all in one place, like a little walking down the memory lane type of thing. So who knows I’ll maybe work on this project in the next years. It would be really fun to do so, but anyway, not going to go off topic now. So I remember going downstairs where the indoor pool was, and I was just sitting there because I just felt like it was a little bit overwhelming upstairs. Truly, it was one of those really crazy parties. So you just needed to retreat somewhere more quiet than just like take a breath. You know? So as I went downstairs, and I was just sitting there relaxing, there was another girl there who was, I don’t remember what she was doing, I think she was on the phone or something. And when, when she was done, she started talking to me and, and you know, we started chatting and she was actually really nice. So we ended up spending I think maybe the rest of the night talking together, but no, it wasn’t actually night. It was actually already morning. So yeah, you get the picture. So we started talking and then we exchanged numbers and she also was living in London. So when I came back to London after Cannes we met up and we started hanging out and I remember one day I was sitting at my office job if this was back in the days and she gives me a call and just says: “Anna pack your bag, we’re going to Ibiza. Flights, accommodation, all sorted by my friend. Don’t worry about anything, so just hurry home, pack your bag so that we make it to the last flight out to Ibiza. And we’re going to have such a fun weekend.” I do have a part of me that is very spontaneous and that doesn’t need massive planning prior. And that sometimes, I don’t know, I get a bit of a kick of doing some very spontaneous things because it really makes you feel alive. And that experience certainly made me feel alive, but one could also probably say that you’re too crazy to do these things. And you should always, you know, make sure that you’re going to have your expectations met when you arrive. Because what happens when I arrived there is that, first of all, I didn’t even know where we were going, who we’re seeing, et cetera, but it was fine because we ended up with a fun bunch of people. And everybody was really nice. They were really nice girls there. Three of them, I actually became really good friends with. We really hit it off.

But what happened was that my friend, the one who brought me there, the girl, she ended up disappearing for the entire weekend. I literally only saw her the first evening. Then I didn’t see her for the rest of the, I think it was three days that we were there in total or four days, something like that. I don’t remember exactly what happened with her to tell you the truth. I think she met up with her ex and probably still had feelings for him and decided that that was way more important than sticking to the plan of being with me. But, you know, one probably could get really upset. I think that what she did was very wrong and maybe, yeah, in some ways what she did wasn’t necessarily very polite, but you know what, for me, it was actually fine because I am quite an easygoing person.

And because she didn’t make me end up in trouble, by any way, I was with all these other fun people. I had just met these three new girls that by the way, they were also living in London and we continued our friendship in London afterwards. They became really good friends. So this girl, the crazy one who brought me to Ibiza, she ended up introducing me to new girls. Actually, she didn’t know those girls, but you know, she brought me into a circumstance that made me tap into another big network. And so also I want to also tell you that sometimes in situations like that, I noticed that many women or many people can sometimes want to like, okay, make a drama out of a situation. Because again, look at my friend, she didn’t act in a polite way, but it didn’t hurt me. It really didn’t hurt me.

It was of course, a shame that I didn’t see more of her, but it didn’t really affect me tremendously. And I noticed that sometimes people want to have drama. They want to tell people off, they want to punish another person. When in reality, actually they weren’t affected negatively too bad. They were actually lucky in the end of the day. So it all worked out well. And that’s a little reminder, like I understand that it’s true. People do make mistakes and we need to hold them accountable, but you really need to also think about how big of a deal you’re going to make out of something. When in reality, if this wasn’t such a big deal for you, does it really need to become a fight or a thing to talk about and, you know, create a thing about, you know what I mean? Just a little reminder that I think it’s important to just think about.

That gives you another example, how friendships work. And I guess what I’m trying to tell you today, ladies is that don’t underestimate the power of female friendships. They are so important. And I know that it might feel challenging these days because we are in a pandemic and you know, we are much more limited than before in terms of our social life. But that’s why I believe that online networking is such a powerful tool that you shouldn’t neglect. Like I did in London with city socializing. That was all thanks to online networking, but how do we know what female friends are good for us? And what are just bad apples? Because of course you are going to have the bad apples, the insecure girls, the jealous types, the backstabbers, et cetera, et cetera. And they think that if you just tune into your intuition and if you know how to read people, you’re going to stay away from those people.

My basic principle is to always see how people behave, obviously. But, but I mean, I’m talking about you really observed their behavior. How are they talking about other people? Are they bringing in gossip? Are they talking poorly about people? Are they sharing people’s secrets? Are they being very critical of others? Basically, you know, those who just likes to talk a bunch of negative things all the time, like that’s warning sign number one. And I mean, the one thing is if you are very close friends and you know each other inside out, then of course usually, you know, people tend to relax a little bit more with those very close friends. But if you are, let’s say acquaintances or just like friends with somebody regularly, then it’s kind of strange if they bring drama, they bring gossip, they share other people’s secrets in front of you, and they talk poorly about a person that they are friends with, who would do that.

Of course, it’s fine to raise an opinion or, you know, or say something that you can easily say to that person’s face. Now that’s different, right? But when you are saying things that you know, that that person would never say it to their face, that is a warning sign. I also think it’s a warning sign when somebody really does come across as jealous or competitive with you somehow, and competitiveness can really be, I mean, I feel like it’s more like an energy, right. When somebody is like looking at you and trying to justify what they have or that they also have something and trying to measure up somehow all the time. Or if you are happy about something, they just don’t look happy for you or they don’t celebrate you, or they don’t support you. You know, negativity like that is very important to pay attention to because if people can not be generally happy with you, they’re never going to be your real friends.

And I don’t think it’s even worth trying to invest in them truly. It’s also o key to understand that people are not who they seem they are after a while. You’re not a psychic after all. It’s not that easy to know that this person is actually a bad apple. I mean, I have had the experience myself. I have also been burned many times, you know, but that’s life and you move on and you learn from your mistakes and you make sure that you don’t go into the same trap as last time, you know. You know, one of the things that I’m really trying to do with all my content, and I don’t know if you can see through it, but I’m really trying to gather us women together and work as a team. I just want us to be as friendly with each other as we possibly can.

So when I was building The A-list, that was always in the back of my mind, I want to have a community of women who are helping each other further. I don’t want any cattiness. I don’t want any drama. I don’t want any bad vibes. Who has time for that, anyway. I personally really don’t like drama in general, and I really try to stay as drama free in my life as possible because why waste that time when you can use your time and actually being productive, make a name for yourself, creates a successful life, meets your future husband. All those things, right. But unfortunately there are so many women who thrive on drama, and problems, and negativity, and gossip, and this and that. And I personally find these category of women to be so different from me and so far away from my reality as, I mean, I don’t even have words for it.

And you know that some of you might know, but I have a free Facebook group. That was a great success in the beginning. I started it in 2016 back in the days when I was blogging for my blog Jetsetbabe. So I created this Facebook group. It was absolutely free and it still is free by the way. There, all of the readers from my blog were gathering to talk about kind of jet set topics, about luxury lifestyle, and to meet each other who were also kind of part of this community. So the first few years were wonderful in that group. And we had a really good ambiance, were really nice ladies in there to tell you the truth. And then I became more popular, which I’m very grateful for by the way. And I was very blessed to get loads of women into my free Facebook group.

But after a while you started getting a bunch of women that you started wondering, what are they doing in here, especially since this is a group about elegance. These women seem not to be interested in elegance whatsoever because all they seem to be interested in is fighting, attacking, criticizing, stirring up fights, being drama queens, bringing drama to the table. Like it almost seems like they were thriving on having this kind of negative action. Like they just wanted to pull out their popcorn and see people fight or something like that. You know, provoke fights and things like that. And we had all kinds of issues in the Facebook group as a result. And we also did notice that a big issue was also because there were so many anonymous people in there. I would say women, but we don’t even know whether they even were women or not. You know, because who knows who were, who was hiding behind that account.

And that’s the problem with Facebook groups, unfortunately. That led me to understand that there is no way I will ever be able to have the type of community that I always dreamt of having inside Facebook. Facebook just doesn’t have the tools for it. So that’s when actually I decided to create A-list because I wanted to have you know, first of all, a verification process, I don’t want to have anonymous people inside my private members club. It’s just not fair for the people inside, because what happens when you don’t know who’s who is that you get all kinds of people in and you also get some bad apples in. That if they do something, you know, people do break the law many times on the internet this way, at least you hold their identity, you know who they are, and you can proceed further and take further action if needed.

So for this reason, I believe that one of the best features of the A-list is the fact that we have a verification process. And I mean, I am myself inside the A-list and I have a look around and I see what people are saying. And so many ladies are so happy about this enhanced privacy that we have offered. They feel more safe. Plus they notice that the quality of women are really high. Like we have some really interesting ladies inside right now, all kinds of ladies from all kinds of ages, you have everything from 18 year olds up to 60 year olds people from all kinds of countries, all kinds of backgrounds. It is such an interesting environment, especially because one of the things that I’m a big firm believer in, and that is that we cannot just socialize with the people that live, where we live.

I do not believe in that because I do think that we grow more as human beings. When we expand our horizons. When we tap into other cultures, when we learn from other cultures and other backgrounds, that’s what travel is so incredibly important for when you are building your life experience. Plus you heard me say this so many times before that, if you’re going to have interesting things to talk about with other people, you need to have life experiences. So you need to meet people. You need to talk to people, you need to experience different kinds of people, different cultures, you need to travel and see the world. Now, when you network with women from all kinds of backgrounds and cultures, that gives you the opportunity to travel to them, to see where they live, how they live, et cetera. You also get to hear, you know, behind the scenes from their stories of how life in their country works.

But of course, even though that is important, I do understand that. I think most of us somehow just want to have some form of accountability partners where we live or a wing woman, or maybe even a mentor, or just like a party friend to go out and do fun things with. And, you know, inside the A-list, you can definitely have both. And I think that it gives you such a great tool to really expand your social circle, really tap into my network that I have because, you know, I hold the biggest community of women online who are interested in affluence, elegance and personal upgrade. And here I am almost 10 years later having the biggest community of women online. And I’m of course, incredibly grateful for that. So ladies, I don’t want you to miss out on this opportunity. I want you also to know about The A-list closes the door on Friday at midnight Pacific time.

If you want to join, you need to join before that. Please do know that there is a verification process. Well, you have to take a picture of yourself and your government ID. Don’t worry, I am not storing this sensitive information on my server or anything like that. We are using a very secure third party service that has won many awards in cybersecurity, et cetera. They usually deal with banks and, you know, bank ID verifications and that type of thing. So we are using their service. Everything is stored on their server. So you are in very safe hands. And trust me, once you get inside, you’re going to love the experience because besides the networking aspect, we also have a private discussion forum. So go in there and talk about elegance, affluence, and anything related to us that we might want to talk about us females among each other and learn from each other’s experiences.

And by the way, we also have an events feature. And I just noticed that a few ladies are already organizing some fun events. We have one lady who is organizing a meetup in London to come and join her at a private members’ club in London for some drinks. So that sounds really lovely. Too bad I’m not in London myself right now. You also have another member who is organizing a virtual zoom cocktail party. And that sounds like loads of fun. I will see if I can make it to that one, but you see, we have loads of activities going on. And those just a little sample of the many things that we have organized inside The A-list. So ladies now is the time if you want to join, make sure you go to the A-list app.com before Friday at midnight Pacific time, because then we are closing the door.

So visit the A-list app.com before we’re closing the door on the Friday at midnight. Because ladies, I don’t know when we will open the doors again, I’m doing this now on purpose before summer, so that you have a tool to socialize with throughout the summer so that you don’t have to travel by yourself this season or go to places by yourself. I really want you to find a wing woman. Now ladies, that’s all I had for today because we are in the middle of our launch week and the next week, everything will go back to normal. So, so thank you so much for tuning in today. I will be back next Wednesday. Talk to you then.

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