When a high-profile media partnership breaks apart, the questions come quickly. Who was responsible for the success? Who will thrive on their own? Who has the most to lose?
The conversations around Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O, and the dispute surrounding Karl Stefanovic’s podcast business, have brought those questions into the spotlight again.
I won’t pretend to know what happens inside someone else’s business relationship. What interests me is how we judge the people involved once that relationship changes. Particularly women, who can spend years contributing to a successful business, then find themselves having to prove their value all over again.
There’s also a question that gets less attention: what if the next chapter is something you actually want to choose for yourself?
A business relationship can change because people want different things. Priorities shift. Burnout catches up with you. An arrangement that once suited everyone may leave too little room for the person you’ve become.
Recognising that can be uncomfortable, especially when your identity and income are tied to the work.
Taking a break and backing myself
I haven’t left television. I’ve taken a gap year from the work people have known me for, because burnout is real.
For more than three decades, television has been a huge part of my life. People know me as the Home Shopping Queen and I’m proud of that name and the work behind it.
But when you’ve spent years showing up, delivering and being identified with what you do, giving yourself permission to pause can be confronting. You finally have space to think, and then come the questions.
Who am I beyond this role? What do I want to do with everything I’ve learnt? Why am I questioning whether I can create something new when I’ve already built so much?
That last question has been important for me.
I established DRTV Talent in 2006. For 20 years, alongside my own television career, I’ve run a business representing talent in an industry I understand from both sides of the camera.
I know how to connect with an audience, explain a product’s value and earn enough trust for someone to make a buying decision. I understand the responsibility of representing a brand and delivering results.
Yet I still experience imposter syndrome.
I can catch myself wondering whether I’m qualified to build the next thing, even with decades of relevant experience. Sometimes, when you’ve done something for so long, you forget how much knowledge it takes. You assume everyone knows what you know. I think that’s one of the reasons so many women find themselves proving their worth long after they’ve already earned it.
I’m learning to own the fact that I am an expert in my field. Having something new to learn doesn’t cancel out everything I already know.
That’s the thinking behind what I call The Jaguar Effect: recognising your own worth and trusting your experience enough to make choices for yourself. For women who have spent years delivering for a business or partnership, that can mean asking whether the arrangement still works for us and being comfortable acting on the answer.
Knowing your value before circumstances change
There is a practical side to all of this.
When you’re busy keeping a business or partnership running, it’s easy to put off thinking about your own position within it. Your contribution becomes part of the everyday operation.
Everyone gets used to you doing it.
Then, if the arrangement changes, you may find yourself trying to explain work that should have been recognised all along. Yet your contribution hasn’t changed – the visibility of it has.
There are three things I’ve learnt about ensuring your value is visible long before you’re ever asked to defend it:
Keep track of what you’ve built. Know the customers you brought in, the relationships you developed, the ideas you contributed and the results you helped deliver. Don’t wait until a partnership ends to work out what your contribution was. I’ve had to remind myself during this gap year that skills I take for granted can be valuable to someone else.
Build a reputation that can travel with you. A strong partnership or a familiar platform can open doors. Your own professional relationships matter too. Through DRTV Talent and my television work, I’ve built knowledge and connections over many years. Taking a break from one part of my career has helped me appreciate that wider foundation.
Understand the business as well as your role. Know how the money is made, how decisions are made, what you’re contributing and what you own. Financial independence needs that practical understanding. Knowing your worth should influence what you charge, the terms you accept and the opportunities you choose to pursue.
These things matter when a relationship ends. They also help you make informed choices about whether an arrangement still suits you.
For women, deciding to change that arrangement can come with guilt. You can feel responsible for keeping everything going, even while knowing you need something different. Wanting more control over your working life is a reasonable ambition, especially after years of proving what you can do.
Experience deserves a future
I’m conscious, though, that choosing your next chapter is harder when you’re trying to find someone willing to employ you.
I worry about the experience businesses lose when they overlook women at this stage of life. Technology changes how we work, but there is still enormous value in years of dealing with customers, reading a room, negotiating relationships and making decisions when things don’t go to plan.
Businesses need that knowledge alongside fresh perspectives. An experienced woman’s career should give an employer reasons to be interested in her future.
That’s why I love seeing women turn their expertise into online courses, masterclasses and businesses of their own. It gives them a way to earn from what they know and pass it on to people still finding their feet. I’d like to see employers recognise that value too.
I’m fortunate that I’ve always created my own work through my business. Yet even I feel that moment of anxiety when someone asks what I do and I don’t have a neat answer ready.
I’d love us to be just as curious about what someone has learnt, what they could teach us or what they’re enjoying in their life now.
For women in business, that shift matters. Our experience deserves recognition even when we’re between roles, taking a break or building something that doesn’t yet have a familiar name.
A business relationship ending can have real financial and emotional consequences. It can also make you question whether you still have something valuable to offer on your own.
That’s where The Jaguar Effect© becomes personal for me. I’m learning to own my expertise without needing a job title or a familiar platform to make it credible.
I’m proud of the career that got me here. Now I’m choosing what I do with everything it taught me.
Rozz Switzer is a media personality, entrepreneur and creator of The Jaguar Effect.
