Shooting for the stars; helping women build confidence aim of new venture

From self-pleasure to shotguns, it’s a finishing school with a difference. Forget cutlery etiquette and social graces, Kingston dynamo Laura Koot is helping women gain confidence through a programme targeted at rural women like herself. The Southern Girl Finishing School originally started in a farm paddock with a simple mantra — ‘’just because you haven’t, doesn’t mean you can’t.’’ What began with Mrs Koot teaching teenage girls practical skills like changing a tyre, has morphed into an online programme for women focusing on personal confidence, practical capability, financial independence, physical strength and sexual confidence. “It’s helping people get out of the blinkered way they see themselves and they see what’s possible because actually anything is bloody possible,’’ she said. Its roots came from Mrs Koot’s own experiences; she candidly admitted she was not in a good place a decade ago. Back then, she lacked confidence and savings, had an eating disorder and did not value herself. That was when she drew a picture of what she dreamed her life would be in five years’ time — it featured a horse, dog, mountains, a jet-boat and a four-wheel-drive ute and her holding a glass of whisky. She left the bustle of corporate life and headed South to set up agri-tourism business Real Country, despite not being able to run a dog and knowing nothing about running business. But she had talked about what she was doing as if she was already doing it and that was how she made her community, she said. She started gaining confidence in herself — ‘’and became the person I should have been my whole life’’ — and met the love of her life, her now husband Dan. The arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic had a massive impact on the business but along came the opportunity to help set up the Fairlight Foundation to run a female-only farm training institute based on Fairlight Station, near Garston. She was childless and business-less, so the timing was ‘’perfect’’, and she continued with the Southern Girl Finishing School and holding workshops. For the past decade, Mrs Koot has been involved in helping others earn confidence in their abilities. Upfront about her own experiences, she was comfortable about being vulnerable and honest, and she was very good at delivering in person. She frequently received messages asking if she could travel to speak and she had a desire to help more than just those that were able to come to the farm. Not knowing much about the online space, she spent a year developing the online finishing school course for women, including mothers and daughters. Each module was led by experts and it was through Mrs Koot’s own journey that she learnt taking small consistent steps was the only way to become the version of herself that she wanted. Mrs Koot recognised she needed professional help to build her confidence. She started strength training when she was 12 weeks’ pregnant with daughter Isla, now 4. At that time, she still had her eating disorder and she had never stuck to an exercise programme. The move was not about looking good in a bikini, rather she recognised her body was about to go through the hardest thing it had ever done and she wanted to properly prepare it. Since starting strength training, she had not missed a minimum of lifting weights twice a week and she was no longer binge eating and making herself sick. Struggling with energy levels, she saw a naturopath and realised she did not understand the menstrual cycle, including how hormones change throughout the cycle. When it came to financial literacy, she started listening to money podcasts and she invested in New Zealand-owned digital investment platform Hatch. After the arrival of her second child, son Joe, 2, Mrs Koot learnt sex was not the same after children. She worked with sexologist Melissa Vranjes - who has a podcast with media personality Jay-Jay Feeney — to share tools to help women become more confident in the bedroom. That included how to discuss consent and boundaries in real life, modelling for children and teenagers, and age-appropriate language about consent and respect. Plus it would not be a southern finishing school without learning how to change a flat tyre, jump start a flat battery, use strops, crack a stock whip and shoot a shotgun safely. Mrs Koot has become a DISC facilitator; DISC is a behavioural assessment which introduced the four DISC styles — Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Conscientiousness — and provided practical tools to get better outcomes by communicating more effectively. With other rural mothers at the forefront of her mind, Mrs Koot said the motivation to better herself really only happened when she got pregnant with Isla. She did not want her daughter to repeat what she had experienced, whether that was hating her body or struggling with money. She did not want her to struggle to speak up or have people walk all over her. And she realised there must be many other mothers out there who shared the same thoughts. Her programme was “designed to be done while you’re cooking dinner”. The series of modules was broken down into short video lessons designed to be watched one per day. At the end, there was a real-life assignment, which although was not compulsory, enabled Mrs Koot to give participants more feedback and advice. She acknowledged she was in a very different season of her life than when she started Real Country. Her children were her priority and the driver behind her work, and also the reason why she was stepping back from her executive director role at the Fairlight Foundation. She remained an ambassador for the Foundation and would maintain a keen interest in what was happening. She stressed the Fairlight programme was not just about her, but the wider team including the property owners, farm team and board. "We have built something that will be long withstanding because we have seen the real need. We have relied on the farming community to ask for what we needed.’’ The biggest success of the programme for her would always be experiencing graduates advance their careers and lives. While Mrs Koot’s original definition of success was the likes of a job title and money in the bank, it then moved to enjoying what she was doing and now her view of success was helping people succeed. "You don’t do all of this alone. I believe, to make a start, you go alone. If you wait for other people, you never get there. The community I have around me is absolutely incredible. "When you set yourself up to be who you really should be, you attract other like-minded people — you bring people along for the ride.”

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