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From Parent to Tech Pro: How Tech Can Unlock Your Career Potential with Supermums, Heather Black · Work It Like A Mum

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hey, I'm Elizabeth Willits and I'm obsessed with helping as many women as possible achieve their boldest dreams after kids and helping you to navigate this messy and magical season of life.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: I'm a working mom with over 17 years of recruitment experience and I'm the founder of the Investing in Women job board and community.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: In this show, I'm honored to be chatting with remarkable women redefining our working world across all areas of business.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: They'll share their secrets on how they've achieved extraordinary success after children, set boundaries and balance, the challenges they faced and how they've overcome them to define their own versions of success.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Shy away from the real talk?
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: No way.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Money struggles, growth, loss, boundaries and balance.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: We cover it all.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Think of this as coffee with your mates, mixed with an inspiring TED Talk sprinkled with the career advice you wish you'd really had at school.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: So grab a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, make sure you're cosy and get ready to get inspired and chase your boldest dreams, or just survive Mondays.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: This is the Work it Like A Mum podcast.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: This episode is brought to you by Investing in Women.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Investing in Women is a job board and recruitment agency helping you find your dream part-time or flexible job with the UK's most family-friendly and forward-thinking employers.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Their site can help you find a professional and rewarding job that works for you.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: They're proud to partner with the UK's most family-friendly employers across a range of professional industries, ready to find your perfect job.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Search their website at investinginwomencouk to find your next part-time or flexible job opportunity.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Now back to the show.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Work it Like a Mum podcast.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: In this episode, I'm delighted to be welcoming back Heather Black, who is CEO of Supermums, and she is now a best-selling author as well.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: She's recently written a book on becoming a Salesforce consultant.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Heather is an absolute inspiration of mine.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: She's one of my role models, so I'm hoping that you are going to enjoy the conversation as much as I am.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: She's a brilliant, visionary leader.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: She's a mother of two.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: She blends family life with her passion for empowering parents and their careers.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Past few months, we recorded an episode with Heather all about becoming a Salesforce consultant, so if you're interested in that, I'll put the link in the show notes, but please refer back to episode 32, where I've previously chatted with Heather.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Today we're going to be focusing more on how Heather is scaling her business and the origins of her book as well.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: So thank you so much, heather, for joining us today.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: It's such a pleasure to chat with you, as always.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Thank you for having me.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: No it's great to be back.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: No, yeah, really good.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: So I know I've just referred people back to episode 32, but if someone is listening to this for the very first time and they've never heard of Salesforce or Supermums, give a bit of an overview as to who you are and what you do.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, absolutely so.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: I'm the CEO of Supermums and we help women upskill in Salesforce technology to help them relaunch their career and get a more flexible, well-paid job.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: How did I come about setting that up?
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: Well, if I just backtrack, I think it's like 16 odd years.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: I had to pivot.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: I was running a business at the time and, due to political changes, a lot of the funding and income streams changed.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: I was just about to start a family move out of London and was really kind of at that point of like, what do I do instead?
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: What am I going to relaunch my career in that will give me that flexibility and have a career still whilst having a baby?
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: So I can imagine this resonates with a lot of people, because it's almost like being back at school where we're thinking, oh my gosh, what do we do?
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: and you're thinking.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: You're the only one, don't you?
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: As?
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: well, where do I start and how do I really know if it's me?
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: So I started talking to people.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: I had used salesforce, which is a client relationship management system for my business, and I was pretty blown away about buy it as a system, because it helped me grow my nonprofit quite substantially, from four staff to 40 staff and 100K turnover to 1.1 million in a year.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: Well, I think it was 1.3 million actually sorry in a year.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: And the reason for that is that it allowed me to have that really big brother overview 360 degree view of all our customers, our marketing, our sales, our delivery, and I was able to be compliant for contracts.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: I was able to fundraise and report on our deliverables much more readily.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: So I've become very passionate about how the system a Salesforce system could power a business and help it to be more financially, you know sustainable and improve its performance.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: So I looked into more about what a Salesforce consultant offered and actually I kind of also call it a management consultant role.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: And I think at that point of having a child, I didn't really want to grow another business with a team at this point.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: I'd really enjoyed management and running a business and everything that came with it, but I wanted something with less responsibility.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: And so as a Salesforce consultant you were pretty much a management consultant, going into organizations and helping advise on their new processes, systems, reporting requirements and setting up a system for them.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: So I was able to really have that level of credibility and authority and share my management expertise.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: But I was working as a freelance Salesforce consultant, earning 60k, just working three days a week, because I was on 400 pound day rates and after doing that four years, I was really surprised that other people didn't know about it because there was a huge shortage of talent.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: So I decided to launch Super Bums to tell other women and we've now got dads and everything else.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: You know, anybody else who wants to join globally globally have joined the program to relaunch their career, and that might be because they too, you know, have had management roles where they don't want to manage people every day but actually want to carry that management experience over and help other organizations as an independent consultant.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: So we have people, you know, that have repositioned themselves and use all those transferable skills and experience and you know, incredible experience that they've gathered but have a role that is still very much meaningful, well paid, and they're able to learn new skills, new technology still.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: So that's why I launched Supermoms, because you know I was really enjoying it.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: You know I grew a Salesforce consultancy around me.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: You know, because I had too much work myself and I know we'll be talking about scaling a business, you know, when it becomes too much for you, I had to grow a team.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: That's what I've done with Supermums as well.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: It's not just me, there's 23 of us all helping people at Skill, across the world, that's fantastic, and I'm going to talk to you about the business and that shift, then, from being a consultant to a business owner.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: But just as someone's listening to this and they think, oh, it sounds really good being a consultant, salesforce consultant Do you need to have prior experience?
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: Do you need to have a tech background?
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: Who can become a Salesforce consultant?
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: It's pretty much open to anybody that's got an appetite to learn the product, that wants to skill up, and you can transfer from so many different industries, because Salesforce as a product is used in a wide range of industries, from hospitality to automotive, to retail, to professional services, to healthcare, to non-profits, and so actually employers who look to hire Salesforce professionals want to hire somebody who's got a Salesforce certification which you can upskill in, so it's easy to acquire that.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: I say easy, you can say easy, you can acquire it for sure.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: But they want to hire people who've got a background and experience in certain industries, because you can talk the lingo, you understand the performance requirements, you understand the typical processes in those industries and that makes it a lot easier.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: Plus, there's a lot of transferable skills like communication, leadership, facilitation, teamwork, communication skills.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: I've said that already.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: You know there's those various softer professional skills they look for as well, particularly for mature workers.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: So it is, we've had people who are diamond retailers to people working hospitality, to people in customer service all pivot over, as well as individuals who've had more relevant backgrounds and experience in project management, ba, or maybe have worked with other technical products.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: So it's absolutely possible and even people who've been out of work 13 years have landed a job in their first interview.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: You know and everything.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: So you have to go through a program on skilling and developing.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: I've talked about that on that other podcast.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: Of what we do at supermums is we provide a whole package of support to get you from a to z.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: So you know it is definitely possible to do.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: You don't need to have a certain background or education qualification.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: No, and I really, you know, for someone's listening.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: It's a home-based course, isn't it?
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: And I think it's about 16 hours a week, so around life, and you know what else they're doing.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: I think it's full hours and you get the replays, don't you?
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: if you can't make a session, for whatever reason, yeah, it's a full package of technical training, work experience, mentoring, coaching, employability support.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: To get you familiar, with it.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: Do you know, and I think it's so valuable that because I actually have found, personally, when I've learned something new, whatever it is, and even if it's been something as small as going on YouTube Like, for example, I recently started running my own Facebook ads and I just did a YouTube-like thing for an hour about Facebook ads and afterwards I just felt so much more confident about myself, so much better, and then I think you bring that into every other aspect of your life and work and I think there's such a lot to be said for investing that time in yourself and learning something new, absolutely.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: So talk us through this.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: You were a consultant, you were making £400 a day and then what happens?
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: You were getting so much work coming in that you knew you couldn't do it all yourself.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: Is that how you?
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I had that real sort of I suppose moment of like well, what do I do, you know?
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: Do I turn the work away?
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: Or do I approach some other consultancies and spoke to them about, you know, working for them as a contractor, not necessarily employed, but you know, that was another option I could take at that point.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: Or I thought, well, I can grow a consultancy.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: And I think, because I have an entrepreneurial bug inside me and I'd obviously grown a business before after this would have been two years, at this point, where I hadn't run a business I was kind of like, and it was like that year and kind of grow another business, and so I thought I'd grow a business and so actually I grew.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: What came first was a Salesforce consultancy, because I was I specialized in working with nonprofits, because that was my background and helping nonprofits implement Salesforce.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: And so with that business I grew a team up to 20 people delivering Salesforce projects for nonprofits.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: We worked with 350 nonprofits on 700 projects during the time I was running the consultancy and we had a 65% repeat and referral rate and we won the Amita Partner of the Year Award, which is fantastic.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: But I wore you weren't training at this point.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Were you just hiring experienced consultants?
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah Well.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: So I started growing the consultancy but realized it was really, really hard to hire talent, really hard to hire Salesforce consultants.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: So that was one of the other reasons for launching Supermums, right?
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: So I was like, well, we need to get more people into this space.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: My background was helping people into employment.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: My last business that had closed down due to funding changes and the political changes was helping people into employment and starting businesses.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: So my background's always been about helping people into jobs.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: So obviously, with that hat on and my Salesforce hat, I was like, well, I can do something about this because I like helping people into jobs and I know about salesforce and obviously I'm a mum and more mums could do this job.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: Like we need to tell about it.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: So after a couple of years of running the consultancy, I'd had the idea for super mums and we looked to try and get funding for it.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: But because we wanted to work with anybody, you know, not specifically just vulnerable groups it was very tricky to get funding for it, to fund it.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: So we just charged for the training and we had three mums on the first training course in November 2016.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: Did you have to develop the training course then was it you or did one of you?
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I put it all together.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we put all the sales force I've been training together and then what we would do is we would have a trainer.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: So I put the training content together.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: But one of my team did the training and then we put them on work experience with our nonprofit project.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: So we were able to say to the nonprofit look, we can give you some pro bono hours of one of our trainees, and quite often then they would access job opportunities from those nonprofits afterwards as well.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: So we placed a lot of people into the nonprofits who we're working with.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: Often then they would access job opportunities from those non-profits afterwards as well.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: So we placed a lot of people into the non-profits who were working with.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: So we grew the consultancy and supermums grew alongside it and as we grew the supermums, you know we now have 60 per course right, and we run the course four times a year.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: So we've gone from three to like 60 per course that we run.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: So we had 240 go through our admin course last year.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: We had 350 students across all our different courses but what we were doing at that point is placing them on our non-profits.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: Now, during the pandemic, I did close a consultancy down.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: I was going to say what happened to the consultancy then.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so during the pandemic, all the projects and all the money and everything went up into the air and then I had people off on furlough.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: So financially it just really hit a bit of a fan, to be honest, because it was just You're running on projects of like, when projects start and finish, you get paid, and then you haven't got the staff and then those projects started and finished and it was just a bit of a nightmare, to be honest.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: So we took a bounce back, loan out, but due to that happening and then I was also had various things.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: So my dad's got cancer, I was going through a nasty divorce I had, I was really suffering with endometriosis and really struggling with that.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: So I had various personal battles.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: So, as a leader, running a business with, at that point, would have been about 30 staff across it, I was just like this really yeah, because it would be super mums and the consultancy.
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: So I was really struggling to kind of work out how to fix it basically, and so we just liquidated the consultancy at that point because, you know, it just wasn't stacking up.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: So Supermums continued, though because Supermums was a separate entity and a lot of people obviously during the pandemic needed to relaunch their career.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: We had a lot of people come to us who had been in the hospitality industry or travel industry and were looking for opportunities because they were just sat at home on furlough.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: So Supermoms grew during that time from a job opportunity point of view as well, because everybody had to work remotely.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: The businesses were all having to implement Salesforce because they needed a digital HQ, so in terms of job opportunities that didn't really slow down either.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: So that has continued to grow.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: And this ambition to scale wasn't necessarily you know, I haven't, because when you're a mum, right, you kind of want to work.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: I don't think you've got that same sort of thirst as what I had in the 20s for growth.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: But with Supermums it's just happened organically.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: We just happen to have people join from all over the world do our courses.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: So we have people from all over EMEA that have done our courses Dubai, south Africa, spain, netherlands, germany, turkey.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: We've had people from Japan to Australia and a third of our trainees are in the USA.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: So we've just naturally grown globally because all our courses are accessible virtually and it's just been a natural sort of growth.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: But in order to balance that I've obviously had to hire a team because I can't do it all myself.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: You know you need to look at where you, where's your zone of genius, what do you really enjoy doing, sort of make sure as a business owner that you're kind of in that zone of strength.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: So I don't do Salesforce consultancy anymore.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: As I grew the Salesforce consultancy, I wore various hats.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: I think I've probably worn all the different fixed job role hats that I could wear at some point or other, stepping in, helping teaching, training.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: But now at Supermums I love training people.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: So that's why I wrote the book Become a Super Salesforce Consultant, because I train, I deliver the consultancy skills course where I train up super moms in business analysis, change management and agile project management.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: And you know, I just realized I produce all this content on a weekly basis through a weekly blog, through my training courses, etc.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: I just wanted to actually consolidate all that information and educate people with a book.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: I was going to say.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: So why did you do the book then?
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Because you've got the course.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, who's the book for?
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, who's the book aimed at?
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: And why did you do it?
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so the book, because I write these blogs every week and we send it out.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: We have a Boost your Sales Force Career Bulletin.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: You know blogs can go on a website and they absolutely can be picked up still through search engines if people are searching for those terms.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: But I had so much content that necessarily wasn't being relooked at because it's kind of been sat there.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: And so when I had the idea for the book, it's focused around the A to Z guide of how to lead a salesforce project, so it literally walks you step by step through all the things.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: I'm a big fan of checklists.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: I came home from having the idea and I sat down and sort of thought about the chronological order of the topics and in three hours I pulled together 30,000 words from the blogs that I had.
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, I'm gonna say, yeah, that's a lot I know I had like the three quarters of the book done right and then you're like well, I might as well finish it is that easy and I was like, wow, okay, and all this content sat there and the thing is, people don't see it, and they don't see it in a chronological.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: I know what you mean, because on a website it's messy, isn't it?
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: You've got things over here, things over there, like nothing, like it doesn't go, and you, you, because you never wrote things in a chronological order, because I blog and sometimes you're an inspiration to write something and then something else, and then you know it is a bit messy, isn't it?
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: exactly so the book, really, you know, and I I set up supermoms because I want to educate people and equip them with the skills to be a super salesforce consultant, right.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: So writing a book means I'm just equipping everybody with the knowledge that they need in various formats, be it through a book, you know, through the blogs, through the training.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: And it's been brilliant, as you know, the way that my mentor talks about it, char Wasmund, who runs a published expert book course.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: She sort of portrays the book as a business card, if you like.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: So I had my stats through today that we've sold 500 books in the last three months, which is awesome.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: But it means that that book sat on 500 shelves.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: I mean, some of them are really books, to be fair, but they're out there in the world and we've had more people read the book and then come and do my course because they want to learn from me and the more nuts and bolts of everything with it.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: So has it been a great way of equipping people in our community, giving them all that information in a concise way that complements everything, doesn't duplicate our training, because it certainly doesn't go into the depth of the training.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: I was going to say, if you read the book, you wouldn't be a certified Salesforce consultant, you'd still need to go on your course, would you?
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: It doesn't teach you any of the admin skills, which is the first course, and it doesn't teach you the consultancy skills course in any level of depth.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: You know to.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: Kind of it teaches you what they all are and how you know certainly some key principles from it, but it you know, it kind of gives you that what you need to do, not necessarily how to do it in loads of detail.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: So so people would come on the course because the course, the consultancy skills course, is a more in-depth training in business analysis, change management and agile project management.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: So we give an overview of those principles in the book, so, and we give a certification as well.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: So then you can say you're certified at the end of the course.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's cool.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: So the book tell me it's been a bestseller, hasn't it?
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so because we've built this massive community at Supermums.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: We've had people go through the course and then we've run a lot of free educational events and activities, so we've built out a bigger community, if you like, of over 10,000 people.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: We did a series of build up campaigns, if you like.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: So when it actually went live on Amazon, you want people to obviously go on and buy it on the first day.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: So we hit number one in eight categories in four countries on the first day, which is fantastic, and the 500 book split is 50-50.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: Well, there's a few.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: There's certainly people in different parts of the world, because we were number one in Canada, australia, uk and USA and it was number six in India.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: So we've had people sort of purchase it from those different countries.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, it's been really exciting and it's great, obviously, being on the day going oh where are we going to come, where are we going to go?
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: But I speak actively on podcasts and Salesforce use groups.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: Literally every week I'm probably presenting about the book and the topic, yeah, to different people.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: So you, you know, we're constantly keeping it out there, constantly educating people and raising awareness of what supermums is.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: We, most of our custom for supermums comes through word of mouth and that's because of the, you know, the packages that we provide.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: We don't just teach somebody technical skills, we give them that whole package of support to be successful.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: So, you know, we've grown through that success really organically, which is really nice I really do.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: I've always said this I wish I'd known about you and I was maybe redundant, because I do think you provide such a real, a good opportunity for somebody that wants to upskill, retrain and never too late, elizabeth and get a flexible career, because I think it's great and, you know, and I guess he's ending up getting bigger because of AI.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: I think everyone's becoming so much more digitally aware and I've, like, definitely become a lot more conscious about systems since actually chatting to you, actually about getting proper systems in place and I'm trying to get everything digital and AI, and I'm sure that Salesforce is, you know, the forefront of a lot of that as well and going to become more and more important yeah well, the World Economic Forum cites that 50% of job roles are going to change.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: You know the skills we need is going to change, going forward to AI, cloud computing, ba you know all of those different skill sets because just the way that we work is changing.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: All these job roles expect it.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: So you know people have been ahead of the curve.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: I shared the case today of Deborah, who actually came to us seven years ago because she was like, had a background in recruitment, was like I need to upskill because I feel like I'm going to be left behind.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: And she was thinking that seven years ago.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: Now it's even more prominent than ever before of like actually we need to upskill in the skills that employees are wanting going forward, or else you get outdated and I think if you've been out of the workplace for a while, you will need to upskill, you know, to land the new jobs today because certainly if you're working in marketing or technology or management roles, you know everything's evolving so quickly yeah, everything is to talk to.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: what was the challenge then?
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: Going from a consultant to then managing people and delegating and letting things go?
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: I mean it's going back to your.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: You know where you sit best in an organization.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: And when I was a consultant you know working as a sales consultant there is I did love that freedom of being able to go in and do a good job and, you know, work with the customers directly, deliver for them, you know.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: But after a couple of years of doing that you kind of think, well, actually I enjoy this bit and not that bit, and you know which bits could I do?
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: So then growing a company around me, I say I could have grown, gone into a team or grow a company is.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: Then you know I'd start to sell Salesforce into people but then not have to do all the legwork.
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: That was quite nice actually in some way, because you're like you can do all, the Salesforce could do this for you and you give a demo and you get them excited Like, and Joe's going to go do that for you over there Great, I'll move on to the next.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: So I actually really enjoyed the sales role in that you have all those great fun conversations with customers.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: You know you don't have to do the full implementation.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: So I did the sales hat bit.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: You know when I've had new team members on board in the consultancy, you know I would go in as a project manager or business analyst and work with them, so I could still keep my foot in the door and do some of the fun stuff too of getting involved with the client.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: And so you know I personally delivered over 100 projects myself or been involved in them, and so you know there was definitely pros and cons of that.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: I think the stresses of running a business is you're constantly investing in growth.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: You know you're constantly investing in new team members, but at the same time you've constantly got to bring in work and, you know, make sure you've got enough money coming in and that's, you know, always the stress point, that combination and obviously then managing team members.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: So if people go, you know I'd literally just had my second child and I was like thinking, oh great, the team's all in place.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: Literally a week after I'd had Annabelle, like one of the guys gave his notice in because he'd been offered another job.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: I was like this was not part of the plan, like I'm meant to be on maternity leave, so I didn't really get maternity leave with Annabelle, which was a bit disappointing really, because I then had to step back in, you know, and obviously try and hire somebody else in the role.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: So sometimes you don't get, you know you can talk about freedom of running your own business.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: Sometimes you don't quite get that freedom because you have to step in and sort things out.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: And I had another situation with the consultancy where you know one of the members of staff, their parents, had got quite sick and then all of a sudden she had to just get off work and I had six projects to pick up and nobody else could do it and I had to sort of fit these other six projects in and I just again it was just after I'd had Annabelle I did period of burnout, to be honest, with running the the business.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: With that in mind, I had corporate coaching and I'm a big fan of coaching because my first business was coaching and with the coach I re-pivoted a lot of things I was doing.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: So one is, I got to a point where I was actually exercising myself much more because I wasn't taking that creative time out of the business and sort of boosting my energy and morale.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: And so I now, after that it really did transform my brain and I now do exercise four times a week without any ifs, buts or maybes.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: I enjoy it.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: I love doing it.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: I was really struggling to make time for it before, but also I pivoted and brought in more senior people and hired more senior people because it was all on my shoulders.
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: I had more junior, if you like, and no other sort of senior staff, and I think if you grow a business and if anybody's listening to this that wants to grow a business is invest in your senior hires first.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, not senior hires.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: You need a senior management team that is going to bring staff on and bring them underneath you, and you need to hire the seniors in the positions that you're not your zone of genius in, which is why you need investment to grow.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: When I grew the consultancy, I had investment from an organization.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't have been able to do it without that so we were able to have a team of five, but I didn't hire seniors to start with with the consultancy, and I should have done.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: That's what you've learned, though, haven't you?
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: And that's basically life, isn't it?
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: yeah, because then that still allows you to have that flexibility, right, yeah, so what's next for supermom?
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: Because I think you know someone that's looking in, outside, looking it looks like you're just on such a great upward trajectory.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: I know you're hiring, because you hire often a lot of roles on our job board and the you're, you know, recruiting people to come and do the training with you.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: So what's next for super moms?
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: yeah, so well, super moms will continue to go year on year and because we've had super moms from all over the world, we have a real opportunity to penetrate those countries a bit more, if you like, because you know people hear about us randomly through friends or whatever, but actually you know we have quite a lot of supermums in Spain.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: So if we really put some investment and impetus into Spain or, you know, dubai and South Africa, there's a lot more that we could do there as well as our existing sort of countries.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: So we are pitching for investment this year.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: We're looking to really scale up, grow supermums more in countries where we've already got a bit of a critical mass, make people aware of it and, you know, just continue to sort of grow our mission really because there's there's a huge demand for it.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: It just feels like we're touching the surface at the moment, to be honest yeah, I think it's great what you do.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: So I think you know if anyone's listening to this and they are at a point in their career, well you know, if they've been on a career break and they don't know what to do, then definitely explore supermoms and what they're doing with sales force.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Like I said, I wish I'd known about you when I was made redundant and sending off all these applications, not hearing back, and I think what you do is amazing.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: So where can people find you?
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: Connect with you, learn more about supermom thank you, elizabeth.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: They can look at our website, which is supermomsorg, so check that out.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: It has a place.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: It talks about the training.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: We havea page about what is a salesforce career, and we also have our jobs pages where you can find out about job opportunities as well yeah, did you challenge it.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: Five day challenges we've got a.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: We've pivoted to a free career career plan download.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: So if you go to the what is a salesforce career page, it tells you about salesforce career.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: You can download the plan.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: That's what talks about the salaries, the transferable skills and the industry.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: So it's all there as a pack and also buy your book yes, remind everyone what's the book called again become a super salesforce consultant brilliant.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: Well, that'll be.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: I'm sure it's a great intro to anybody that wants to learn more, thank you.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to another episode of the Work it Like A Mum podcast.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review and subscribe, and don't forget to share the link with a friend.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: If you're on LinkedIn, please send me a connection request at Elizabeth Willett and let me know your thoughts on this week's episode.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: You can also follow my recruitment site, investing In Women on LinkedIn, facebook and Instagram.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Until next time, keep on chasing your biggest dreams.