From standing in the streets of Athens haggling passer-bys to dine in a restaurant for which she could not speak the language, to living a double life as a party-goer who was $187,000 in debt, to now running multiple companies – if there is one life story worth hearing about, it’s Simone Milasas’.

Firing answers to questions faster than a pen can draw ink, Simone is the energetic public speaker and mentor with a knack for getting businesses out of debt. She is the worldwide coordinator of Access Consciousness and is helping others find the ‘joy of business’ as mentor and public speaker.

Her debut book, The Joy of Business, is an international sensation, and has been translated into seven languages, with a loyal Turkish following that could rival the likes of Richard Branson. Yet, from her Peregian Beach home, where I had the pleasure of meeting this lively powerplayer, Simone toasts a simple watermelon juice to her success, and admits it hasn’t been without mistakes.

“I was always doing different things; one job for six months and then leave, or go from industry to industry. For me it wasn’t that I couldn’t make a choice or settle down, I was just having so much fun learning about different business,” Simone says, reflectively.

Money is something that shows up as a result of what you have created. 
Business is more about creation and people tend to forget that…”

“From working in a warehouse as a sales manager to working in restaurants and bars, to managing businesses, to owning them, to having investors to investing in other things – I have done all of it.
“I have chosen really bad business partners and I have chosen really good ones. But that’s the thing, it’s not about getting it right, it’s about choosing and then you have the awareness, it’s that choice that creates awareness.”

Simone reflects on her years of travelling the globe and an unwillingness to settle down for her innate sense of self, which inevitably led to her favourite word “create” – a motto she holds like a fortress around her businesses and herself.

“When I left school I worked as hard as I could so I could save enough money to go overseas, and I ended up leaving for three years. I worked in so many different places and when I came back so many people were patting me on the back and saying well, now you have that out of your system you can settle down, get a job and you know, find ‘the one’,” she laughs. “I was like, oh my goodness, this is just the beginning!

“I was never one of those people to say, when is more money going to show up. I was just like, well, what do I need to create? I don’t know why that is, I must have different blood running through my veins. I knew I could create money, even when I was in debt.”

Described as a catalyst for change, Simone’s unique ability to get to the core of an issue and make a positive change is testimony to her devotion to her job. She fondly dedicates a lot of her success to Gary Douglas, the founder of Access Consciousness – a program to equip people with the tools to change things in their life they haven’t been able to change.

“I was delusional for quite a long time. I thought that everybody loved what they did and that’s why they chose to do it, because my point of view was, why would you do something if you didn’t love it?” she says.

“I had a conversation with Gary one day about a choice someone was making that didn’t make sense to me because there was no joy with the choice they were making and he said, ‘people don’t do business in this reality for the joy of it’, and that’s when I was like, what! Why!”

It was this realisation that started Simone on her own path, to bring about the The Joy Of Business.

“My point of view is, what if every business person in the entire world actually functioned from a place of the joy of business; the joy of business is not about laughing at jokes, it is about asking questions and the willingness to change everything and choose everything, and the willingness to follow what you know, what have you always dreamt of doing but didn’t think was possible because of how old you are or another reason – but anything is possible.”

She admits her tools for creating The Joy of Business was nothing new or inventive, but an acceptance of things that business people tend to turn a blind eye to, or think of as taboo.

“Everyone has a definition of what business is supposed to be like rather than, what if it was just creation? What would you like to create today?,” says Simone.

“I often use the analogy of when I was a kid I used to make mud pies and I would sell them. I had no point of view that the mud pies were too small or too big, too soft or too tough, you just created.

“I don’t know what age it is but we tend to go to judgment of what we are creating and it just diminishes what we do, rather than think, no, it’s your creation, your ideas. You look at Richard Branson, he never takes no for an answer and he will create anything he desires, he doesn’t care what people think. But people start to diminish their business and their money flow by worrying what other people think, rather than asking the question, if you were creating a business today, what would you choose?”

Simone says one of the biggest mistakes people make is putting money before business.

“Money is something that shows up as a result of what you have created. Business is more about creation and people tend to forget that and instead think, well I have to maintain my lifestyle or, I have to keep the family and pay the bills. They have all these justifications as to why they are in business and why they have a job, which doesn’t sound like much fun, rather than, well what can I create?”

Simone says when she is home (which these days is only three months of the year) it’s like a holiday and she finds joy in the simple pleasures of cooking a meal in her own kitchen and spending an afternoon on the verandah with her husband and their son, Nash.

“I have an absolutely stunning house in Peregian Beach that my husband created. I came home the other day and thought, oh my goodness, it’s so nice to have so much luxury around us. Our house is probably our most luxurious place to get away, with the ocean and the trees,” she says.

“My husband travels with me 80 per cent of the time. It’s a different lifestyle, but I love it because I always wanted to travel. Right from the beginning I wanted to have my own business and I wanted to travel, and then I realised I wanted to make money and change the way people looked at the world, the way they looked at each other and how they dealt with it all.

“I figure at the moment I am incorporating all of that, and I am so incredibly grateful for my life.”

TOP TIPS
1. Don’t judge yourself.
2. Choose – choice creates awareness, you have to keep choosing.
3. Be aware of your financial reality, how much money you have and don’t have.
4. Money follows JOY, Joy does not follow money, so are you doing something you love?
5. Ask questions – questions will always empower, an answer disempowers … some questions to 
 ask, what possibilities are available that you have not yet instituted? And, how does it get any better than this?