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Motherhood, Mindsets, and Making It Work: Nicola Lowe’s Wisdom for Working Mums · Work It Like A Mum

• 0:00
  Elizabeth Willetts: 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
  Elizabeth Willetts: I'm a working mum with over 17 years of recruitment experience and I'm the founder of the Investing in Women Job Board and Community.
• 0:22
  Elizabeth Willetts: In this show, I'm honored to be chatting with remarkable women redefining our working world across all areas of business.
• 0:29
  Elizabeth Willetts: They'll share their secrets on how they've achieved extraordinary success after children, set boundaries and balance, the challenges they've faced and how they've overcome them to define their own versions of success.
• 0:43
  Elizabeth Willetts: Shy away from the real talk?
• 0:44
  Elizabeth Willetts: No way.
• 0:45
  Elizabeth Willetts: Money struggles, growth, loss, boundaries and balance we cover it all.
• 0:50
  Elizabeth Willetts: Think of this as coffee with your mates, the mixed with an inspiring TED talk sprinkled with the career advice you wish you'd really had at school.
• 0:57
  Elizabeth Willetts: So grab a cup of coffee or a glass of wine and make sure you cozy and get ready to get inspired and chase your boldest dreams, or just survive Mondays.
• 1:07
  Elizabeth Willetts: This is the Work it Like A Mum podcast.
• 1:10
  Elizabeth Willetts: This episode is brought to you by Investing in Women.
• 1:17
  Elizabeth Willetts: 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
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• 1:34
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  Elizabeth Willetts: Search their website at investinginwomencouk to find your next part-time or flexible job opportunity.
• 1:52
  Elizabeth Willetts: Now back to the show.
• 1:54
  Elizabeth Willetts: Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Work it Like A Mum podcast, which is a treasure trove of insights and experiences from a remarkable individual, nikki Lowe, who is the visionary behind illuminated development and wisdom for working moms.
• 2:10
  Elizabeth Willetts: She has been in business now for almost two decades, which is crazy, so we're going to have a real chat about how her business has transformed during that time, both personally and professionally, she has a great rate of experiences and learnings, and from confronting an overcoming burnout to her collaborative adventures like global leadership well-being solutions team.
• 2:33
  Elizabeth Willetts: Nikki is here to enlighten us on how professionals, especially working mothers, can redefine success and well-being in today's fast-paced world.
• 2:41
  Elizabeth Willetts: Thank you, thank you so much for coming and chatting with me today.
• 2:46
  Nicola Lowe: I'm really excited to have this conversation.
• 2:48
  Nicola Lowe: I love your podcast, so it's an honor to be on it.
• 2:51
  Elizabeth Willetts: Yeah, absolutely.
• 2:52
  Elizabeth Willetts: I'm just so excited to chat with you because you've done some phenomenal stuff and I've been on recorded also now on your podcast it's not released yet, as we're recording it and you've like just listened to you.
• 3:01
  Elizabeth Willetts: You've transformed my business.
• 3:03
  Elizabeth Willetts: I was like my gosh, she's so good.
• 3:04
  Elizabeth Willetts: You've done all this like the other and I was like picking all the amazing stuff you've done.
• 3:07
  Elizabeth Willetts: So I know you're so generous with your knowledge and your experience and she's made you know Nikki's, you've done such brilliant stuff with your business and to be in business for that long is just one achievement.
• 3:19
  Nicola Lowe: Yeah, and a ride, one hell of a ride, and I'll share some of those insights with you.
• 3:23
  Elizabeth Willetts: Yeah, have you ever been tempted to go back to the employed world during that time?
• 3:28
  Nicola Lowe: No, and I do actually, I do often kind of reflect on that.
• 3:31
  Nicola Lowe: And I was working last week.
• 3:33
  Nicola Lowe: I was delivering, I was facilitating a two-day workshop for a client and the leader came into the room and she said to me she said I love to have you on my team and I had this reflection of what would it take for me to go back and join a team.
• 3:46
  Nicola Lowe: I actually think I'm an employable now.
• 3:49
  Nicola Lowe: I think I'm so used to being my own boss.
• 3:51
  Nicola Lowe: I don't know if I could work for somebody else, but I do love being in a corporate environment.
• 3:56
  Nicola Lowe: But I like the fact that I'm not employed in a corporate environment, that I have the autonomy of running my own business.
• 4:05
  Elizabeth Willetts: Yeah, do you know?
• 4:06
  Elizabeth Willetts: A lot of people say they're unemployable.
• 4:07
  Elizabeth Willetts: Why do you think you are unemployable in that, then?
• 4:10
  Nicola Lowe: I think there's two things.
• 4:11
  Nicola Lowe: I think there's something about my personality and preferences around.
• 4:14
  Nicola Lowe: I like to have the freedom to make the decisions and have I have a high degree of personal power, which means which can be a really good and bad thing in like, actually, I feel really empowered to do stuff and I think if I'm constrained by somebody else making decisions, that can impact me.
• 4:31
  Nicola Lowe: But it also means that I take a really high degree of responsibility, and what I found in a corporate environment was I was constantly trying to please and perform and perfect, and that can be unhealthy for me, where when I'm the boss, I can kind of go do you know what?
• 4:50
  Nicola Lowe: Take the day off.
• 4:51
  Nicola Lowe: You've worked really hard this week.
• 4:53
  Nicola Lowe: We're in a corporate environment.
• 4:55
  Nicola Lowe: If I was employed, I even though logically I know that I may have worked more hours than I was contracted to I would still struggle to do that.
• 5:03
  Nicola Lowe: So I think the freedom of my own mindset, being kind of my own boss, is really important for me.
• 5:10
  Elizabeth Willetts: Yeah, absolutely, because you must have been very young when you started your business.
• 5:13
  Elizabeth Willetts: Were you ever employed?
• 5:15
  Nicola Lowe: Yes, I started off my life when I left university.
• 5:18
  Nicola Lowe: I joined a tech company.
• 5:20
  Nicola Lowe: So I worked for a big Silicon Valley tech company here in the UK and got promoted really quickly to become a global account director.
• 5:29
  Nicola Lowe: So I was effectively selling high-end IT systems to big global organisations and found myself being promoted and kept doing the whole.
• 5:39
  Nicola Lowe: They're going to find out.
• 5:40
  Nicola Lowe: I haven't got a clue what I'm doing and I at the time didn't recognise what my success was built on, because I wouldn't say I was the best salesperson.
• 5:47
  Nicola Lowe: I wasn't really interested in the technology.
• 5:50
  Nicola Lowe: What I was really good at, but didn't put enough value on it at the time, was really good at building the client relationships and really wanting to understand my clients businesses and work out how I can best support them.
• 5:59
  Nicola Lowe: So I got that.
• 6:01
  Nicola Lowe: I spoke good emotional intelligence around that, but I didn't.
• 6:04
  Nicola Lowe: I just thought everybody had that and didn't really value it.
• 6:06
  Nicola Lowe: So I kept working harder, longer and faster to really prove to myself that I was, because I ended up being on this massive salary with all these benefits and I you know the classic people talk about the imposter syndrome, but I really had it back then of I really didn't feel that I was in the right job.
• 6:24
  Nicola Lowe: I loved the organisation, loved the people, but I wasn't really in the right role.
• 6:28
  Nicola Lowe: That played to to my personality and preferences at the time, but didn't know what I wanted to do and so I was kind of on this crazy ride.
• 6:38
  Nicola Lowe: It was in a very male dominated environment.
• 6:40
  Nicola Lowe: I was one of the very few female salespeople and so I kind of just kept working hard to go in.
• 6:46
  Nicola Lowe: If I put more effort in, it'll get easier, and it never did.
• 6:50
  Nicola Lowe: And what I, looking back, I didn't realise it at the time, but I was definitely on the path to burnout and knew that I wanted to get out but, as I say, didn't know what I wanted to do, couldn't work out what would pay me that kind of salary, because I'd started to build a life around that big kind of corporate salary.
• 7:06
  Nicola Lowe: We'd brought a big house in the country that we were renovating and just built this lifestyle around it and I thought I know what I'm going to do.
• 7:13
  Nicola Lowe: I'm going to go and hire an occupational psychologist.
• 7:15
  Nicola Lowe: They can analyse me, tell me what I'm good at and I'll figure this out.
• 7:18
  Nicola Lowe: I did that and it didn't really help.
• 7:21
  Nicola Lowe: And then one day I was on a training course with work.
• 7:23
  Nicola Lowe: I was managing cross-cultural teams, so global teams, and we did a course on how to manage cross-cultural virtual teams and on this I think it was a two-day workshop they did one hour on coaching and I just sat there and went oh my god, like this, I don't know kind of epiphany moment.
• 7:40
  Nicola Lowe: I realised that had been my leadership style because I was managing people twice my age, twice my experience.
• 7:45
  Nicola Lowe: I couldn't tell them what to do and naturally I'd used quite a coaching style of leadership and what I now know is that's kind of who I am as well.
• 7:53
  Nicola Lowe: And it set me off on this kind of journey if I wanted to learn more.
• 7:58
  Nicola Lowe: So I went off and did an online course and then I signed up for a weekend course and started plotting this I suppose passion and I went and hired my own executive coach and she's still a really good friend, she's a phenomenal woman and that was a really pivotal moment for me because I worked out what my values were and how I wasn't living in alignment with them all the great stuff that kind of coaching does and I realised that I wanted to leave and retrain as an exact coach and I remember my coach kind of going.
• 8:24
  Nicola Lowe: Okay, you know it, do it.
• 8:25
  Nicola Lowe: And I was like, no, I need a two-year exit strategy.
• 8:27
  Nicola Lowe: I need to save the money, I need to kind of plot my exit out.
• 8:31
  Nicola Lowe: And she pushed hard on me and challenged me on that.
• 8:34
  Nicola Lowe: I was like, why, why are you putting these barriers?
• 8:35
  Nicola Lowe: And I was like, came up with all the logical reasons and me and my he's now my husband at the time he was my boyfriend we I realised that I was kind of I needed to have a really good holiday because I could feel the impact of being in an environment that wasn't suited to me.
• 8:51
  Nicola Lowe: And we booked a two-week holiday to the Maldives and we were a weekend to that two-week holiday and I got a call to someone and I died really suddenly, really unexpectedly, and it was 24 hours before we could get a flight home.
• 9:02
  Nicola Lowe: So I was sat in paradise, kind of just this moment of what am I doing?
• 9:08
  Nicola Lowe: What am I doing with my life, what is this all about?
• 9:11
  Nicola Lowe: And I made the decision there and then to just go back and hand my notice in.
• 9:15
  Nicola Lowe: So I handed my notice in without a plan.
• 9:18
  Nicola Lowe: I hadn't kind of put the plan in place and I effectively took a year out to retrain and launch.
• 9:23
  Nicola Lowe: So retrain as an exact coach and launched my business in.
• 9:26
  Nicola Lowe: That was in 2005 and I launched it in 2006.
• 9:29
  Nicola Lowe: And yeah, and that kind of was the catalyst for it all really.
• 9:34
  Elizabeth Willetts: Amazing Well story.
• 10:26
  Elizabeth Willetts: So when you first launched your business, were you exact coaching?
• 10:28
  Elizabeth Willetts: Was that coaching like leaders and senior managers?
• 10:31
  Nicola Lowe: Well, it's really interesting because when I first set up I was really disillusioned with the corporate world because I'd seen it that had taken me off course in my life.
• 10:39
  Nicola Lowe: I hadn't spent enough time with my loved ones and obviously I'd lost my bum and I was kind of in that grieving process and as part of that I'd kind of made the corporate world the enemy.
• 10:47
  Nicola Lowe: So it was like I don't want to do anything with the corporate world, I want to be a life coach, I just want to coach kind of individuals.
• 10:53
  Nicola Lowe: And started my business and I would take like really quickly within the first couple of months I was like, oh no, I'm not sure these are the people that I want to coach.
• 11:03
  Nicola Lowe: And by chance I won a contract to deliver some coaching exact coaching and training for a financial services company.
• 11:11
  Nicola Lowe: And when I was doing that I was like, oh no, this is where I'm meant to be.
• 11:15
  Nicola Lowe: And it was that realization that, oh, I can be in a corporate environment but not the employed in it, and that felt really good.
• 11:21
  Nicola Lowe: And so that was the direction the business then took.
• 11:24
  Nicola Lowe: And then to begin with I thought I was going to just do direct work with organizations and on that journey.
• 11:31
  Nicola Lowe: I got taken on to be an associate for some bigger consultancy companies.
• 11:35
  Nicola Lowe: So I built kind of direct clients.
• 11:37
  Nicola Lowe: I was doing exact coaching, leadership, development consultancy as well, and so it got to the point, just before I had my first child, that was literally going around the world doing it.
• 11:46
  Nicola Lowe: So I was working for some global consultancy companies and we did big global projects.
• 11:50
  Nicola Lowe: I would be the European element of it and I'd have colleagues from the US and colleagues from the Middle East and we would come together on these global programs and yeah was traveling around the world.
• 12:01
  Nicola Lowe: So kind of built the business up to that point and then got married and decided we wanted to start a family and then had to reassess them what I did with the business.
• 12:11
  Elizabeth Willetts: So when you're coaching all these individuals in corporate and you mentioned you had imposter syndrome in your old role did you have any imposter syndrome?
• 12:18
  Elizabeth Willetts: I mean, were you coaching them a little older than you, you know, and that maybe had more experience?
• 12:22
  Nicola Lowe: It's interesting because I've definitely felt I've stretched myself over that time but I've never had that pure sense of imposter syndrome.
• 12:32
  Nicola Lowe: So I've always had that am I there yet and am I ready for this yet?
• 12:38
  Nicola Lowe: But always knew, like I know, that exact coaching is what I'm meant to be doing.
• 12:43
  Nicola Lowe: I know that I am working in my zone of genius when I do it like just I'm in the zone, I'm in flow, I just show up and I'm so.
• 12:52
  Nicola Lowe: It's a different sense.
• 12:54
  Nicola Lowe: You know, I do get sometimes the fear of, oh my God, I'm taking off this big client and I'm coaching that person.
• 12:59
  Nicola Lowe: But it's not that.
• 13:01
  Nicola Lowe: Oh my God, I'm going to be found out that I'm going to clue what I'm doing.
• 13:03
  Nicola Lowe: Like I'm really grounded in my.
• 13:06
  Nicola Lowe: You know I've really crafted my expertise.
• 13:08
  Nicola Lowe: I'm constantly learning and developing and have kind of put like two decades into that.
• 13:12
  Nicola Lowe: So I think I've got about 10,000 hours.
• 13:14
  Nicola Lowe: You know I'm more in the front.
• 13:15
  Elizabeth Willetts: And now you have.
• 13:16
  Elizabeth Willetts: I'm just wondering then you know, when you were quite young?
• 13:19
  Nicola Lowe: I definitely stretch myself.
• 13:20
  Nicola Lowe: I remember, actually, an organisation a big one of the UK's top supermarkets probably about how many years ago would I say 15 years ago went out to market to.
• 13:30
  Nicola Lowe: They were basically bringing in a coaching culture and they were training all people internally around coaching.
• 13:36
  Nicola Lowe: But they wanted to go out and recruit 10 external exec coaches to be part of their kind of leadership coaching programme and they went through this massive recruitment process to.
• 13:48
  Nicola Lowe: You have to do a detailed online application that was really detailed about your coaching, signature presence, your philosophy of coaching, all human behaviour, like really detailed.
• 13:58
  Nicola Lowe: They then did an interview with you.
• 14:00
  Nicola Lowe: They then did a.
• 14:02
  Nicola Lowe: They observed you doing the coaching session.
• 14:04
  Nicola Lowe: So it's this really quite kind of intense recruitment process to be one a pool of exec coaches.
• 14:10
  Nicola Lowe: And I remember thinking there's no way I'm going to be kind of in the top 10 for this, but I'm going to put myself forward because it'd be a really great learning opportunity and I'll learn where I need.
• 14:21
  Nicola Lowe: That's where I want to be and it'll tell me where I might be kind of missing the mark.
• 14:24
  Nicola Lowe: So always that confidence that I will get there.
• 14:27
  Nicola Lowe: I got in, I got in as one of the 10.
• 14:29
  Nicola Lowe: And I remember going oh, I'm actually there, I was, I didn't know I was there yet, and so it's a different sense.
• 14:35
  Nicola Lowe: It's a sense that I might not always have ultimate belief, but I'd got this baseline belief that, yeah, this is what I'm meant to be doing, and I mean I'm doing the right work and I'll learn and grow as I go along.
• 14:46
  Elizabeth Willetts: And that's what that's a really good philosophy for any job, isn't it?
• 14:49
  Elizabeth Willetts: And pretty well, you know, even like motherhood I mean, first I have no idea but I think is that belief that you will figure it out.
• 14:57
  Nicola Lowe: Yeah, and and that's why I think you know, really having that self-awareness about what are my values, what are my core kind of strengths and my signature strengths and how do I find the place where I best apply those.
• 15:10
  Nicola Lowe: When we've got that, it gives you that grounding of like I can learn it.
• 15:13
  Nicola Lowe: I might not kind of be the best, and you know, and that growth mindset is, you're never going to be the best, You're always kind of learning and developing, but I'll be okay along that journey, Whereas I think in my corporate career, when I was in IT, I was so misaligned I couldn't ground myself in my in that kind of core belief.
• 15:32
  Elizabeth Willetts: So how did the business change then, when you became a mother?
• 15:35
  Nicola Lowe: In so many ways.
• 15:36
  Nicola Lowe: So I think when I went on maternity leave I kind of my business was at the peak.
• 15:40
  Nicola Lowe: I felt really comfortable that I can step away, knowing that I built my brand and my expertise and my client base.
• 15:48
  Nicola Lowe: But I had no idea how the experience of maternity leave was going to be.
• 15:53
  Nicola Lowe: And I think, because it was my own business, I had a lot of choice about how I took that maternity leave and I'd had friends that thought they wanted to take full year and then very quickly like oh no, after six months I'm ready to go back, and vice versa, people that kind of thought they only wanted a short amount of time.
• 16:11
  Nicola Lowe: And I'd seen that with clients.
• 16:13
  Nicola Lowe: I'd been doing a lot of maternity coaching at that point, even though I would yet to become a mum.
• 16:17
  Nicola Lowe: So I went into my maternity very open-minded.
• 16:21
  Nicola Lowe: So I was like I'm going to take up to a year, but I'll assess it along the way and see how I'm feeling.
• 16:26
  Nicola Lowe: And actually my first year of motherhood was brutal for me, really brutal, and I completely underestimated it and what ways was it brutal.
• 16:37
  Nicola Lowe: I was somebody that you was used to being highly independent and could just get stuff done.
• 16:42
  Nicola Lowe: And I got it done by just working harder and kind of just pushing myself, and that isn't necessarily a good recipe for enjoying motherhood the first year.
• 16:51
  Nicola Lowe: You need that village around you and I totally underestimated that.
• 16:56
  Nicola Lowe: I think not having my own mum, I'd underestimated the impact of that and there was a whole new level of grief that came up of not having my own mum around, and one of my most reviewed blogs actually is a blog I wrote about becoming a mum without a mum and for people that have had that experience it resonated deeply because it can catch so many people out like me.
• 17:16
  Nicola Lowe: And I'd even had a friend who'd lost her mum when she was 14.
• 17:19
  Nicola Lowe: And she'd said to me really watch out, watch out for it.
• 17:23
  Nicola Lowe: And I was quite naive.
• 17:24
  Nicola Lowe: I was like, no, I think I'll be OK, like I'd really grieved my mum and like I'd taken a year out to grieve effectively.
• 17:31
  Nicola Lowe: And so I was like, no, I've processed this, I'm in a good place, and it threw up a whole new level of grief, my hyper-independence, I think.
• 17:38
  Nicola Lowe: Really I didn't know I needed help and when I did, I didn't feel able to ask for it.
• 17:43
  Nicola Lowe: So I felt really under resourced in that my son was born with a health condition that meant he wasn't in and out of hospital for six months of his life and that was so brutal because he was born with a hole in his heart and what happened was about six weeks old he was clustered, failing to thrive, and it's a term they use.
• 18:07
  Nicola Lowe: Then they're not allowed to use anymore, thank God, because the worst thing you can tell a new mum with their precious newborn babies your baby is not thriving.
• 18:14
  Nicola Lowe: So there was the guilt and like I'm doing something wrong.
• 18:17
  Nicola Lowe: I should be doing more and being in and out of hospital if anybody had that experience with kind of babies, then monitoring them constantly.
• 18:26
  Nicola Lowe: So we were in for days at a time and you literally probably get half an hour sleep here and there.
• 18:31
  Nicola Lowe: So you're already sleep deprived.
• 18:33
  Nicola Lowe: And that sleep deprivation goes to a whole new level.
• 18:35
  Nicola Lowe: He was approved for open heart surgery when he was kind of a few months old, so we were preparing ourselves for that and like just the stress and anticipation of that.
• 18:45
  Nicola Lowe: Thankfully he never had to have it and he's still got a hole in his heart, but he's absolutely.
• 18:50
  Nicola Lowe: He's a 10 year old that's got more energy and more kind of determination than most kids.
• 18:56
  Nicola Lowe: But that whole process was really tough and again because I didn't feel resourced and I hadn't got many.
• 19:04
  Nicola Lowe: What I underestimated was the need to have females to lean into and I've got an amazing mother-in-law is brilliant but she's very practical.
• 19:13
  Nicola Lowe: But all of my mum's family live away so I haven't got like my maternal line to lean into and actually realizing that as a new mum you need to be mothered yourself.
• 19:24
  Nicola Lowe: And there's a really famous book called by Clarissa Pinkhart who talks about running with the walls and she talks about we become maiden mothers and we need those kind of matriarchal mothers to lean into.
• 19:38
  Nicola Lowe: And I really, when I read that I was like God, yeah, that was me, I.
• 19:42
  Nicola Lowe: So that first year I was just running on adrenaline and exhausted and missing my work identity because my work identity gave me so much a sense of myself to not have that.
• 19:54
  Nicola Lowe: And you know the classic you know you've got this newborn baby, you don't know what you're doing, and to not have that resourceful and not feel resourced internally as well to deal with it.
• 20:03
  Nicola Lowe: I ended up, when my son was a year old, burning out, so it probably kicked him from, probably about six months old and I and slowly I was just going downhill physically and that then impacted me emotionally.
• 20:17
  Nicola Lowe: So I remember at my son's one year, you know, they come in and do the check.
• 20:21
  Nicola Lowe: The health visitors came in and they give you that little checklist to check how you're doing kind of mentally and emotionally.
• 20:29
  Nicola Lowe: And I was really, really aware that I wasn't doing great mentally and emotionally but I was really conscious about how I communicated that to them, not because there probably was a degree of kind of shame in there, but it was more.
• 20:42
  Nicola Lowe: I'm not feeling great, but it's not.
• 20:44
  Nicola Lowe: It's the primary source.
• 20:47
  Nicola Lowe: Isn't the mental and emotional and physically not feeling great?
• 20:51
  Nicola Lowe: And that is impacting me psychologically?
• 20:54
  Nicola Lowe: And I was trying to have that conversation with them and they were great.
• 20:57
  Nicola Lowe: But I don't think they completely understood it and I'm, as I say, I'm somebody that's high in my personal power, so I will always take action.
• 21:04
  Nicola Lowe: So I remember going to my doctor a couple of times and kind of going, something's not right, I really don't feel right, and they did all blood tests.
• 21:11
  Nicola Lowe: I mean I said no, you're fine, and I was like I want to be referred back to my because I was a high risk birth with my son.
• 21:16
  Nicola Lowe: What we didn't know it was the hole in the heart, but they picked up signs that something wasn't right.
• 21:21
  Nicola Lowe: I was under a consultant and I was like I want, referring back to my consultant, like there's something not going on here.
• 21:27
  Nicola Lowe: There's something going on that's not quite right.
• 21:29
  Nicola Lowe: But to the point where I'd ended up with an emergency C section.
• 21:32
  Nicola Lowe: I was like have they left something in me that's impacting me physically?
• 21:34
  Nicola Lowe: Because something I knew, something wasn't right in my body and I kept just being told I'm a new mum, all new mums are tired, and I was like this isn't tiredness, this is tiredness is I get tiredness and I get like a fuzzy head.
• 21:48
  Nicola Lowe: This was like every cell in my body.
• 21:51
  Nicola Lowe: I'd got no energy and it got to the point.
• 21:54
  Nicola Lowe: I remember lying on the floor to play with my son and hadn't got the energy to stand back her and I had to dig in to a well that wasn't.
• 22:02
  Nicola Lowe: There was nothing in it and I started to my mind, started to go to well I've obviously got some kind of rare disease that nobody can detect.
• 22:10
  Nicola Lowe: Because I know something's not right and I ended up going to see a functional medicine practitioner somebody had recommended to her, to me she was phenomenal and she basically did spend an hour and a half taking my whole history, like my childhood illnesses, my mum and dad's kind of health, your whole family maternal, paternal side, all kinds of things like what I was eating, how many times I was going to the toilet like proper in-depth analysis, and what came out over a few weeks was ended up with adrenal fatigue.
• 22:41
  Nicola Lowe: I got tested for it and had literally burnt my adrenal system out.
• 22:45
  Nicola Lowe: It's now not called adrenal fatigue, it's called HPA, axis dysfunction, which basically your hypothermia is.
• 22:52
  Nicola Lowe: Basically your hormone system gets dysregulated.
• 22:54
  Nicola Lowe: But the cause of it was me operating on my stress system too much, so I'd burnt myself out and I cried when I got that diagnosis, not because I was upset, I was like I finally got the answers and I could do something about it.
• 23:07
  Nicola Lowe: So it took me about two years to get myself properly well again.
• 23:11
  Elizabeth Willetts: Is it treatable?
• 23:12
  Nicola Lowe: Yeah, totally, totally so.
• 23:13
  Nicola Lowe: There's lifestyle stuff, there's supplements yeah, so it's totally treatable.
• 23:18
  Nicola Lowe: But it's changed the way in which I work and now informs a lot of the work that I do with my clients.
• 23:24
  Elizabeth Willetts: Yeah, so how that must, because that was probably the point where you were thinking about maybe going back to work.
• 23:29
  Nicola Lowe: Yeah, so I did go back.
• 23:31
  Nicola Lowe: I did go back but what I'd done at that point so I hadn't set at wisdom for working mum's that point.
• 23:36
  Nicola Lowe: So at this point I'd still just got lumenate and that business was really based on doing face to face executive coaching and face to face in person leadership development sessions.
• 23:46
  Nicola Lowe: So what I'd communicated then to all my clients was I could only do face to face if it was in a certain geography where I didn't have to travel too far, because my husband also runs his own business.
• 23:58
  Nicola Lowe: He's got a big team and I needed to be the flex point and the family.
• 24:03
  Nicola Lowe: So I needed to have work that could flex around, kind of nursery drop offs and if I got the call from the nursery and so I often massive kind of lifeline to my business because I was doing a lot of the leadership development stuff.
• 24:16
  Nicola Lowe: It was very well paid.
• 24:18
  Nicola Lowe: But I was like I can't make it work and I'd had an experience where I was flying back, I'd been delivering out in Washington DC and I'd had an experience flying home when I don't know if you remember the Icelandic ash cloud and I was midair when that went off and I got diverted to a whole different country with no plan.
• 24:36
  Nicola Lowe: They literally because they shut down the airways.
• 24:38
  Nicola Lowe: God help the airport and airline staff because they were like we want to help but we can't help you.
• 24:45
  Nicola Lowe: And I remember thinking.
• 24:46
  Nicola Lowe: Then there is like this is just not conducive to having a family.
• 24:49
  Elizabeth Willetts: I can't, and we were at that point.
• 24:52
  Nicola Lowe: No, we were trying for a child and I just remember thinking at that point this has got to change, this won't work for us.
• 24:59
  Nicola Lowe: So I effectively stopped doing the leadership development stuff and was just in the face to face exec coaching and luckily I won some big clients locally to me so that kind of sustained my business.
• 25:10
  Nicola Lowe: I was only I started off back.
• 25:12
  Nicola Lowe: I started back when my son was nine months old and my health wasn't great at that point but I needed it mentally and I just did a day a week for about a month and I did two days, I up to three days a week and I kept at three days a week until he went to school, actually till he was four.
• 25:28
  Nicola Lowe: So and that was a massive juggle because and I remember when he first started I had to make a decision.
• 25:35
  Nicola Lowe: When he was three he was in a private nursery so I'd got the.
• 25:38
  Nicola Lowe: You know you could do eight to six.
• 25:40
  Nicola Lowe: So the three days I was working I was doing kind of big but out, yeah, solid out.
• 25:45
  Nicola Lowe: And I could focus and get on with it.
• 25:46
  Nicola Lowe: And then when he was three, we've got a lovely little local school.
• 25:50
  Nicola Lowe: We live in a small village in the countryside and there's this lovely little local school that had got a nursery attached to the school that they could start from three, but they only gave them half days.
• 26:00
  Elizabeth Willetts: Okay.
• 26:00
  Nicola Lowe: And I had to make the decision of do I start in there, knowing that I'll have five half days, or do I keep them at the private nursery?
• 26:07
  Nicola Lowe: We decided to go down the school route and I didn't look at any wrap around and so for a year I did half days and it was horrendous.
• 26:20
  Elizabeth Willetts: Because, you know, I'm literally really resonating with me.
• 26:22
  Elizabeth Willetts: My daughter's just started school, but I'm proud of that.
• 26:24
  Elizabeth Willetts: She was a preschool and it's a little short hours.
• 26:28
  Nicola Lowe: I mean, I don't know about you.
• 26:29
  Nicola Lowe: What I found was I'd be dropping him off running to do something like right, and I'd attack my work with, like the you know, I was fighting the clock and I'd be in the middle of an email and go, I've literally got to go.
• 26:40
  Nicola Lowe: So I'd be picking him up, he'd want kind of connection time but I'd be like, oh no, that email's still not done and and I just felt like I didn't, my work suffered and I suffered as a mother, like how present I wasn't connected I was.
• 26:52
  Nicola Lowe: And I look back and I think what was I doing?
• 26:56
  Nicola Lowe: What, what, why didn't I?
• 26:58
  Elizabeth Willetts: Why do you think you do that?
• 27:00
  Elizabeth Willetts: Because I did that as well.
• 27:02
  Nicola Lowe: Well, I think what I've definitely learned on my journey is I'd fallen into the martyrdom and a methodology of motherhood that, like it's meant to be difficult and I'm meant to kind of sacrifice myself and that's a sign that I'm you know, I'm a good mum and that was part of, for whatever reason, I was running on that mode.
• 27:20
  Nicola Lowe: So I didn't feel resource enough to go no, that's not working for me and what are my options?
• 27:27
  Nicola Lowe: Who can I ask for help?
• 27:29
  Nicola Lowe: How can I do this differently?
• 27:31
  Nicola Lowe: I just got stuck into almost survival mode If you just got to dig deep and get through this and it didn't open.
• 27:36
  Nicola Lowe: I didn't open myself out to kind of the possibility of it being different.
• 27:40
  Elizabeth Willetts: And yeah, what was your childhood like?
• 27:43
  Nicola Lowe: Well, it's really interesting because my mum was a stay at home mum and she and I think that plays a massive part into this but to the point that I was referred, my mum was almost like Mary Poppins.
• 27:54
  Nicola Lowe: So before she had us as children, my mum and dad actually met abroad and my dad was in the army and my mum was a nanny for a brigadier in the British Army.
• 28:05
  Nicola Lowe: Prior to that she worked in America as a nanny.
• 28:07
  Nicola Lowe: So she was, you know, super nanny.
• 28:10
  Nicola Lowe: She loved kids, loved being kind of 24, seven around them, and when she had her own children she gave up her work and just seemed to thrive in motherhood and so that was kind of model of motherhood that I'd had, role model to me.
• 28:28
  Nicola Lowe: So I thought a good mum was a stay at home mum and I kind of knew, because I'd been so career orientated, I was like I can't imagine not working, but that's why that maternity leave.
• 28:39
  Nicola Lowe: I was like let's just see, I don't know, I might not want to go back to work and I, you know, I don't know.
• 28:44
  Nicola Lowe: But what became apparent was that I love my work and it's really important to me.
• 28:49
  Nicola Lowe: So I think there was a huge amount of guilt about that, about oh, somehow that doesn't make me a good mum was like the message I my mum had never, you know, she'd never put that upon me, but there was that, yeah, underlying.
• 29:01
  Nicola Lowe: So I think the almost punishing myself with my work because it wasn't that was okay to do, because that meant I was a good mum somehow.
• 29:10
  Nicola Lowe: So I think that's why I that fed that unhelpful cycle.
• 29:13
  Elizabeth Willetts: Yeah Well, in how interesting I feel that we I didn't even go to nursery at all.
• 29:18
  Nicola Lowe: Yeah, no, I don't know, I didn't, and my mum would take me to a nursery play place, but she would be with me.
• 29:25
  Elizabeth Willetts: Yeah, and then I remember I've kind of some fun.
• 29:27
  Elizabeth Willetts: I love that.
• 29:28
  Elizabeth Willetts: I mean, my mum was a tad bit.
• 29:29
  Elizabeth Willetts: I think she would be homeschooled us and then it's quite surprising that I went to school, really because she's such an ear moment, loves being with kids and yeah, it's quite hard to look to that.
• 29:41
  Nicola Lowe: Yeah, and when you view that as the ideal, yeah, and not to have her around to go, yeah, was it as good as it?
• 29:48
  Nicola Lowe: I remember it to be, because I'm sure she had times when she'd be like, oh my God, but of course you, I idolized that.
• 29:55
  Nicola Lowe: So that made it even worse Because it was like and she didn't struggle at all and she loved it.
• 29:59
  Nicola Lowe: And therefore, if I'm struggling or not loving it, that makes me bad, and to not be able to kind of checkpoint that, I think, just kind of fueled it as well.
• 30:08
  Nicola Lowe: When did you get to the point, I suppose, where you've sort of reconciled with you, know who you are as a mum and I think it's an ongoing journey, but I think that the point where it happened was when I we struggled to have a second child.
• 30:22
  Nicola Lowe: So I always in my head I was going to have two children.
• 30:24
  Nicola Lowe: They were going to be two years apart, because both me and my husband have got one of the sibling, and then both two years apart.
• 30:30
  Nicola Lowe: So I somehow again that kind of the story that you create, I suppose, is that was what was going to happen and we struggled to have another child and I had multiple miscarriages and it got to the point where I had to accept, or thought I had to accept, that I wasn't going to have another child and I was really clustered with secondary infertility.
• 30:47
  Nicola Lowe: Yeah, and it was at that point that I'd had this idea brewing of the journey that I'd had into motherhood as a working mum and how really brutal that had been and what I'd learned on that journey, particularly around the well-being side, around my own journey with burnout, and because that burnout almost sideswiped me.
• 31:06
  Nicola Lowe: I just didn't see it coming, even though when you talk about my son being in hospital and all of that, you'd think God, I didn't see it coming and I got fiercely curious about it.
• 31:16
  Nicola Lowe: I was like, well, how did it happen?
• 31:17
  Nicola Lowe: If I can't join the dots, I can't be confident that it's not going to happen again.
• 31:22
  Nicola Lowe: So I really really dove into, firstly myself, like the what.
• 31:27
  Nicola Lowe: I kind of thought I'd done something wrong.
• 31:29
  Nicola Lowe: So I went down that the kind of psychobiological of what was going in my body, what was going on in my mind well, how would I set up my life?
• 31:34
  Nicola Lowe: And then I got aware of what I call the psychosocial, about societal, cultural, you know, the paradigms of motherhood and all of that.
• 31:43
  Nicola Lowe: And then when I started putting the jigsaw puzzle together, I was like God, no wonder.
• 31:47
  Nicola Lowe: Like you know, burnt out, like how did I last as long as I did?
• 31:50
  Nicola Lowe: And that's when I was like I need to start talking about this.
• 31:53
  Nicola Lowe: And that's where the idea for wisdom for working moms came about.
• 31:55
  Nicola Lowe: And when I thought I couldn't have another child, I thought, right, well, I'll just birth this into the world then.
• 32:02
  Nicola Lowe: And kind of, this will be my new baby.
• 32:04
  Nicola Lowe: And I'd got it all ready in the background to launch.
• 32:08
  Nicola Lowe: And then I found out I was pregnant.
• 32:09
  Nicola Lowe: I had this moment of, oh my God, this is amazing.
• 32:13
  Nicola Lowe: And what do I do with this kind of business?
• 32:15
  Nicola Lowe: Do I shelve it.
• 32:16
  Nicola Lowe: And I just thought if I don't put it out into the world now, I don't think I'm ever going to do it.
• 32:20
  Nicola Lowe: So I launched it six weeks before I had my daughter and kind of done blog, podcast and kind of recorded a load to go out while I was on maternity leave and it really just took off from there.
• 32:32
  Elizabeth Willetts: How did you approach?
• 32:33
  Elizabeth Willetts: Did motherhood second time around feel different?
• 32:35
  Nicola Lowe: Because you do all that really massively, massively different, like I talk about.
• 32:40
  Nicola Lowe: It healed me, because I think the first time broke me and the second time really healed me.
• 32:44
  Nicola Lowe: So just things like I approached my pregnancy completely differently.
• 32:49
  Nicola Lowe: So I'd learned about postnatal depletion and there's a brilliant book by guy called Dr Oscar Selyak who wrote about postnatal depletion, and so I fueled myself during my pregnancy.
• 33:01
  Nicola Lowe: I think in my first pregnancy I was like I'm, you know, I'm a business owner.
• 33:05
  Nicola Lowe: I've got to earn all the money to fund my maternity leave.
• 33:08
  Nicola Lowe: So I was, you know, on the train to London, on the tube, you know, quite heavily pregnant, just like I'll work and work up until this point, whereas I took a different and I paced myself and I fueled myself and I really took care of myself.
• 33:21
  Nicola Lowe: I had a massive resource plan for what I called my fourth trimester.
• 33:25
  Nicola Lowe: So the 12 weeks after giving birth I had.
• 33:28
  Nicola Lowe: I had things like I paid for my cleaner to come in twice a week.
• 33:32
  Nicola Lowe: I hired a postnatal doula to come in and help me with my, my other job, like I just was like what's the support I need?
• 33:39
  Elizabeth Willetts: Just getting that village in that you're in the first time around.
• 33:42
  Nicola Lowe: Anticipate I might need more, whereas normally I'm a bit like, oh no, I'll be okay.
• 33:45
  Nicola Lowe: I like I was just like no, I'm going to anticipate I'm going to need more than I need, and if I don't, that's great.
• 33:50
  Nicola Lowe: I spent, you know, yeah, a lot of time getting my psychology right, getting my well being right, getting my village right, like I approached it totally differently and it made a massive difference, like I felt amazing afterwards, whereas with you know, with my son, clearly I didn't.
• 34:05
  Nicola Lowe: So, yeah, it's a whole different experience.
• 34:07
  Elizabeth Willetts: So wisdom for working on who do you help, how do you help them, and talks doing that business.
• 34:14
  Nicola Lowe: So it's basically for women that are kind of mothers, that also have a career that they want to continue, so either women that might feel pushed out of the workplace because they're mothers, or that they're in the workplace and it's not working for them.
• 34:31
  Nicola Lowe: So I work with both individuals and organisations and I work with them around both coaching so helping them think through all of the things that are going to help them to thrive, feel connected to their internal resources, to ask for what they need, to give themselves permission for that and to kind of really stand in their power.
• 34:49
  Nicola Lowe: But also to push back on kind of their village, to kind of ask for what they need and contract with their organisation to do things perhaps a little bit differently, to support them and their circumstances and to have those difficult conversations so that you know they might not always get exactly what they want but they feel empowered to ask for it and have those conversations.
• 35:08
  Nicola Lowe: And I support organisations with maternity coaching but also right through the motherhood pipeline, because we often think about, you know, the maternity leave being the difficult part, but as we know that every stage has its own kind of opportunities and challenges, and really supporting women.
• 35:24
  Nicola Lowe: So I talk about the motherhood pipeline and the leadership pipeline, so that they can navigate those two alongside each other.
• 35:30
  Elizabeth Willetts: Yeah, as individuals.
• 35:31
  Elizabeth Willetts: What do you mean as organisations?
• 35:32
  Elizabeth Willetts: I suppose both.
• 35:34
  Nicola Lowe: So I have private individuals that come to me but I also organisations will pay for me to go in and coach individuals.
• 35:39
  Nicola Lowe: But I also do group workshops through to kind of keynote talks for employee resource groups and work in parent groups and those kind of things.
• 35:46
  Nicola Lowe: So lots of different resources both in terms of the one-to-one coaching but also kind of taking people on their own journey with that, and sometimes we do it in a group setting.
• 35:55
  Nicola Lowe: I support kind of those working parent groups to facilitate sometimes.
• 35:59
  Nicola Lowe: So that's the sweet part for me it's around women, their leadership journey, and they don't have to be, you know, formal leadership position but that leadership journey about their own development and their well-being, kind of those three things together are where I tend to work with either individuals or organisations.
• 36:16
  Elizabeth Willetts: I know that obviously everyone has different circumstances and people stories are different, but do you see a lot common threads coming through?
• 36:24
  Elizabeth Willetts: When you're talking to people?
• 36:25
  Elizabeth Willetts: You know what are the challenges.
• 36:28
  Nicola Lowe: I think the big one that comes through is about kind of female well-being, about how particularly the current generation have we been raised to say we can do it all and have it all?
• 36:41
  Nicola Lowe: But then the reality of that, when we find ourselves, you know, we've progressed our careers so far and it's yeah, we want to now kind of have a family, and if we're blessed to have a family, then realizing, oh my god, this is difficult and it can be difficult because the organizations we work in aren't supportive of how our working practices might need to flex to support us being able to do it or whether it is.
• 37:05
  Nicola Lowe: You know, I was only reflecting, on holiday this summer I got to talking to a woman in the swimming pool.
• 37:10
  Nicola Lowe: We were both kind of swimming around just watching our kids playing the swimming pool and we just got chatting and she very quickly she didn't know the work I did, I didn't kind of share that she very quickly opened up to say she got a six-year-old boy and she was like this mom, stuff's really hard, isn't it?
• 37:26
  Nicola Lowe: And she started telling me a story that she'd had a career in investment banking, she lived in London and she was from South Africa and her family were from South Africa lived still over there and she had to give up her career because she couldn't get a fronkinary wolf back to the nursery before it closed and she was like I've got no choice.
• 37:44
  Nicola Lowe: And a sadness in her eyes because she you could tell that she felt that she should feel grateful because her husband had got a big career that could afford for her not to work, and she should be.
• 37:56
  Nicola Lowe: You know, there was that kind of it's that should, isn't it?
• 37:59
  Elizabeth Willetts: It's like what we were talking about earlier it's the should all that time.
• 38:02
  Elizabeth Willetts: You should be doing this, so.
• 38:03
  Nicola Lowe: I think those what I would call the ideal work of paradigm, where you know, if we're doing a good job, we can focus on our work, with that interruption of kind of our outside lives, and that ideal mother paradigm and so many people have asked me about why do you focus on mothers and not parents?
• 38:19
  Nicola Lowe: And I kind of get that because I think there's a really important message about equalising parenting and all of that.
• 38:24
  Nicola Lowe: But I still think there's a long way to go for mothers to unhook ourselves from that ideal mother paradigm.
• 38:31
  Nicola Lowe: That is, you know, if we're a good mum, we're constantly there for our children, we take care of every need, we take them to every club that's going and we are focused on their development and their well-being 100% of the time.
• 38:42
  Nicola Lowe: And if we're not, we're not a good mum.
• 38:44
  Nicola Lowe: And where those two paradigms collide is where we get squeezed, because it's the you know, it's the old adage if we're trying to work like we don't have children, we're trying to parent like we don't have our work.
• 38:52
  Nicola Lowe: And then there are specific nuances, depending on people's family setups, about whether they're single parents, whether they have a partner but actually they still carry most of the domestic load, whether they're the flex point in the family.
• 39:04
  Nicola Lowe: So there's those layers around it.
• 39:06
  Nicola Lowe: But the key part is, you know, we're trying to work our butts off to do a great job and work our butts off to be the kind of mum that we want to be, and we get kind of lost in that process.
• 39:15
  Nicola Lowe: So the classic of, you know, not taking any time for ourselves, not having the right boundaries to support us.
• 39:21
  Nicola Lowe: The individuals I tend to work with are high achievers, so they tend to be what I call over-functioners they over-deliver, they over-help, they over-mit.
• 39:30
  Elizabeth Willetts: Yeah, I bet they're doing more a brilliant big job, and then they're also like PTA and doing loads of things.
• 39:35
  Nicola Lowe: Oh, yeah, absolutely, and that's where they kind of they lose themselves in the process and they lose and then they become depleted and when they're depleted they're not able to kind of connect to the resourcefulness that kind of goes in a lot we said about.
• 39:47
  Nicola Lowe: Why am I struggling to do these half days, like why am I even attempting that?
• 39:52
  Nicola Lowe: You know, because we're so in the survival mode of it of just kind of being on the treadmill to be able to stop and go.
• 39:57
  Nicola Lowe: This isn't working.
• 39:58
  Nicola Lowe: What would enable me to live my values and show up in the way that I want to, and what would it take for me to go and find out how I can make that happen?
• 40:07
  Elizabeth Willetts: What would you say to?
• 40:08
  Elizabeth Willetts: Obviously you've got a daughter and you've got clients as well.
• 40:11
  Elizabeth Willetts: What would you say to people that are struggling with that sort of guilt?
• 40:15
  Elizabeth Willetts: And I exist.
• 40:15
  Elizabeth Willetts: It's the guilt from where, it's the guilt from home, and can we manage the juggle?
• 40:20
  Elizabeth Willetts: I?
• 40:20
  Nicola Lowe: think it's the most important thing is getting in tune with what's important to you, and for every person that will be slightly different.
• 40:28
  Nicola Lowe: So what I would talk about is we talk about guilt.
• 40:31
  Nicola Lowe: Guilt as an emotion actually has a function you know like.
• 40:34
  Nicola Lowe: So we know not to leave our kids or our dogs in a car on a hot day because you know it will harm them and if we do we'd feel guilty.
• 40:42
  Nicola Lowe: So that guilt serves a helpful function.
• 40:45
  Nicola Lowe: But I think a lot of the guilt we feel in motherhood is dysfunctional guilt.
• 40:49
  Nicola Lowe: It's just not helpful, you know, it just eats us up alive.
• 40:54
  Nicola Lowe: So I have this really clear thing when I'm working with clients is let's create a non-guilt agreement and it's all the things that I will not feel guilty for, because the stuff that I need to feel guilty for, because that keeps kind of Giving them in a hot car.
• 41:07
  Nicola Lowe: Yeah, not feeding them, you know, whatever it might be, but here's the stuff that I just need to let go of and I literally it's a contract with myself to go.
• 41:14
  Nicola Lowe: I won't feel guilty for this.
• 41:16
  Nicola Lowe: I remember there was an Easter parade at our school and I never made an Easter bonnet.
• 41:20
  Nicola Lowe: I'm like, I'm not creative, it's not in my zone of genius.
• 41:23
  Nicola Lowe: I get really annoyed doing it.
• 41:26
  Nicola Lowe: I choose not to make an Easter bonnet and I remember talking to one of the members at school and it literally was a revelation to her that she could choose not to, and that's a silly example.
• 41:34
  Nicola Lowe: But in each of us we've got that stuff that we just think we have to, and being able to step back and have some psychological flexibility to go, oh no, there's some choice here.
• 41:43
  Nicola Lowe: Let me choose the stuff that I'm going to feel guilty for.
• 41:46
  Nicola Lowe: So I've got some clients that say you know, it's really important for me to do two school pickups a week and that's my non-negotiable.
• 41:52
  Nicola Lowe: And if I fail to kind of commit to that, I'm going to feel guilty for that, because that's I'm choosing that.
• 41:57
  Nicola Lowe: And I've got other clients like I really don't want to be on the school playground, not bothered about school pickups.
• 42:02
  Nicola Lowe: But there's other stuff that's really important, that I do want to be there for them in a different way and every individual will be different.
• 42:08
  Nicola Lowe: So I think having that non-guilt agreement and really consciously and intentionally choosing how you want to show up and try not to listen to the noise and the comparison and find your way, because every individual it'll be different.
• 42:22
  Nicola Lowe: I've got a client that I used to work with and she's changed role and she's got a massive job for a very well-known company.
• 42:28
  Nicola Lowe: She lives up north, her family are based up north and this role she's kind of senior on the board.
• 42:32
  Nicola Lowe: He's down in London and she was like I don't think I can take it, I'm going to be away from home too much.
• 42:37
  Nicola Lowe: But as she explored it she was like actually I'm going to be in London two or three days a week and I'm going to be home for two days.
• 42:46
  Nicola Lowe: And they've given her a flat in London, this organisation, and she literally when she's in London she is on it with her work and she gets so much done in those three days, the two days she's back home.
• 42:58
  Nicola Lowe: She's said actually I'm here for my family far more than if I was working five days up north in a big role.
• 43:03
  Nicola Lowe: So it's looking at the unique circumstances and matching it with actually what is really important.
• 43:09
  Nicola Lowe: How can I show up?
• 43:11
  Nicola Lowe: And that will look different for each individual, and trying not to let the judgement of what should be get in the way of that.
• 43:17
  Elizabeth Willetts: It's been such a pleasure to chat with you.
• 43:19
  Elizabeth Willetts: I feel like I've gone through therapy just talking to you, so thank you so so much for such a fabulous conversation.
• 43:26
  Elizabeth Willetts: Where can people find you, connect with you and learn more about you, about Lumina and about Wisdom for Working Mums?
• 43:33
  Nicola Lowe: Yeah, so if you head over to Wisdom for Working Mums, so it's wisdomforworkingmumscomuk.
• 43:42
  Nicola Lowe: That's the best place to kind of find me.
• 43:44
  Nicola Lowe: If you get on my email list, you'll get details of everything I do in terms of blogs and podcasts.
• 43:49
  Nicola Lowe: I'm over on LinkedIn as LinkedIn forward slash illuminate Nicola Lowe, and you'll find out all the information on there as well.
• 43:56
  Nicola Lowe: I also hang out on Instagram as Wisdom for Working Mums.
• 44:00
  Nicola Lowe: So, yeah, on any of those platforms you'll find me.
• 44:03
  Elizabeth Willetts: Really well.
• 44:03
  Elizabeth Willetts: Thank you so much, Nicola.
• 44:04
  Elizabeth Willetts: It's been such a pleasure to chat with you today.
• 44:07
  Nicola Lowe: It's been great.
• 44:08
  Nicola Lowe: Thank you for having me.
• 44:10
  Elizabeth Willetts: Thank you for listening to another episode of the Work it Like A Mum podcast.
• 44:15
  Elizabeth Willetts: If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review and subscribe, and don't forget to share the link with a friend.
• 44:21
  Elizabeth Willetts: If you're unlinked in, please send me a connection request at Elizabeth Willett and let me know your thoughts on this week's episode.
• 44:28
  Elizabeth Willetts: You can also follow my recruitment site Investing in Women on LinkedIn, facebook and Instagram.
• 44:34
  Elizabeth Willetts: Until next time, keep on chasing your big dreams.