Generation Exceptional

History definitely hasn't always been kind to older women, words like hag, crone and witch weren't uncommon, and women were described as hysterical, "bleare eyed, pale and fowle", although always, it would appear, by men. Dr Helen Foster is a historian and a creative writing practitioner working at Leicester University, and in this episode, recorded for The Generation Exceptional Podcast, she shares how she got involved with recording the real life testimonies of women and their personal stories of going through the menopause transition to create 'A Silent Archive'. The Silent Archive You can listen to some compilations on the East Midlands Oral History Archive pages on the University of Leicester website https://le.ac.uk/emoha/themes/the-silent-archive. Writing Workshops Helen will be running a series of writing workshops around these themes in March 2023. The workshops are free (with Wellcome Trust funding through the University of Leicester) and offer a safe space for women who are interested to explore their lived experiences of menopause through reflective and creative writing. No writing experience is necessary. Workshops are being held on the following dates: Monday 20 March 12:30pm - 2:00pm at Attenborough Arts Centre, Leicester Tuesday 21 March 12:30pm - 2:00pm at Attenborough Arts Centre, Leicester Wednesday 22 March 10:30am - 12:00pm at Attenborough Arts Centre, Leicester Monday 27 March 6:00pm - 7:30pm online Tuesday 28 March 6:00pm - 7:30pm online Thursday 30 March 6:00pm - 7:30pm online Bookings will open on Eventbrite soon. For more information contact hlf8@leicester.ac.uk Wellcome Collection Stories Also following on from Helen's talk at the Old Operating Theatre Museum, later in the year she'll be writing a series of articles for the Wellcome Collection Stories website (https://wellcomecollection.org/stories) exploring menopause through a historical lens.

If you've ever wondered what it's like to stand on the famous TEDx red dot to share your ideas with an audience, I'd love to share with you my own experience of how I got to give my TEDx Talk in Sep 2022. You might be surprised at how long the process can be and you might also be surprised to know that you don't have be all that special to get chosen either! I actually recorded this podcast as a YouTube video for a brand new channel I've just launched called 'My Butterfly Years' where I'm basically sharing my thoughts, ideas, experiences and adventures as a post menopausal woman with ADHD. I'd love you to head over to the Channel and check out some of the vlogs and videos I've posted so far. Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/@mybutterflyyears If you fancy checking out my TEDx Talk 'ADHD in Menopausal Women' use the link below: https://youtu.be/eRPSvRWRoXg And if you want to see the TEDx Talk that inspired my own journey, check out Brene Brown's 'Listening to Shame' talk from 10 years ago: https://youtu.be/eRPSvRWRoXg

My guest on the podcast today is Social Worker and Activist Maria Rooney. Maria worked for Leicester City Council for 12 years before taking them to Tribunal for menopause discrimination including constructive unfair dismissal, sex discrimination and disability discrimination. It's been a long and stressful journey, but Maria has already won her appeals at the Employment Appeal Tribunal (high court in London) with her 14 day employment tribunal final hearing in October 2023. She has made legal history as her case was the first menopause case/appeal in the Employment Appeal Tribunal relating to sex & disability discrimination. Maria shares her story, (although there are some areas she cannot discuss as this is an ongoing legal case) describing how let down, unsupported and invalidated she felt by her managers, her doctors and the tribunal judges among others. The number of tribunals where menopause has been cited as the reason for discrimination is on the rise, and many employers are failing to put in place the systems, processes and training needed to properly, and legally, support those employees struggling with menopause related symptoms. Menopause can cause some people to experience severe physical, mental and cognitive changes, often leading to difficulties in carrying out their usual day to day activities and often lasting for a number of years - which, by the definition used within the Equality Act 2010 in the UK, may well constitute a disability. Maria has been representing herself as a Litigant in Person for the past three years but she now has a new legal team who have kindly offered to take on her case. She has to raise funds to help pay for her legal fees so she can bring this ground breaking and highly significant case to the Employment Tribunal again at her 14 day Final Hearing in October 2023.   She's crowdfunding to help meet the £50k bill likely to be incurred to bring this ground breaking and highly significant case to the High Court.  If you would like to support Maria in her fund raising efforts you can donate at CrowdJustice .  You can also follow Maria's journey via her LinkedIn profile or join her Facebook Group Going Through the Menopause or Just Going Mad And if you're an employer looking to avoid the risk of being taken to Tribunal, one of the best things you can do is to train your people to understand what menopause is and how they can support their teams and colleagues.  And that's where we can absolutely help.  At Floresco Training we've been working with businesses both large and small, across all sectors for nearly 5 years providing training and consultancy services.  Find out more about what we offer at FlorescoTraining.co.uk where we will happily sit down with you to help find the best training solution for you. Finally, if you're a woman over 40 looking for support around menopause and navigating this weird period known as 'mid life' then do come and join my amazing Facebook community Your Best Midlife

In this MenoChat I'm joined by Lea Campbell who is another lovely member of my Facebook Community, Your Best Midlife. Lea and I chat about some of the positive elements that sometimes get overlooked when we focus on the menopause.  Even having been hit by some of the many disruptive symptoms of menopause, Lea proves that there is another side to this journey.  One where we get to step out of the old and into new, exciting and sometimes scary new adventures. One of those new adventures included putting herself out there and joining a writing course, which led to Lea becoming a published author. She's the co-author of the recently released book 'Beautifully Broken' - a compilation of stories written by 16 heart-led women, sharing their inspirational stories of working through tough times and the resilience they found to come out the other side having made peace with their past.  You can grab your copy HERE and if you're a Kindle Unlimited subscriber you can get the book for free right now, or just 99p for non-subscribers. Story sharing is an important part of how we can figure out what the right way forward is for us as we navigate menopause.  There's no one size fits all, and often hearing other people's experiences allows us the chance to take a different perspective.   So I'd love to invite all the women listening to come and join our amazing community in Your Best Midlife over on Facebook where you'll find over 1000 women sharing experiences, cheering each other on and building each other up so we can all thrive through midlife and beyond.  

There are some symptoms related to perimenopause that we just don't like to talk about.  Let's face it, it's personal and embarrassing. But maybe we should.  Maybe it's time to take any embarrassment and shame away from being a woman and acknowledge that our bodies don't always behave the way we want them to and it's not our fault! In my 4th MenoChat I'm talking to Ruth Jones, who candidly and without apology shares the impact of her symptoms.  She shares the story of having to tell her male supervisor she needed to go home to change because she'd flooded and how she felt forced to miss a weekend break with her husband because they couldn't risk being away from home when her periods were so heavy. Ruth also shares her frustration at not being able to find the words she wanted, her bouts of anger and snappiness with her family and her dilemma around whether to choose to have her insides burnt or a coil fitted to stem her excessive bleeding.  (between both of our menopausal brains we couldn't recall the word for cauterising the uterus – ablation). Ruth's story is raw and it's real and it's what we absolutely need to be sharing. We need to make it ok to talk about these symptoms so that we don't feel embarrassed or alone in dealing with them. Story sharing is an important part of how we can figure out what the right way forward is for us as we navigate menopause.  There's no one size fits all, and often hearing other people's experiences allows us the chance to take a different perspective.   So I'd love to invite all the women listening to come and join our amazing community in Your Best Midlife over on Facebook where you'll find over 1000 women sharing experiences, cheering each other on and building each other up so we can all thrive through midlife and beyond.

How do you know if what you're experiencing is menopause related?  What if you're not ready to hear that it is menopause?  What if you don't have a womb so you don't have those obvious signals that your periods have ended? That's how it was for my 3rd MenoChat guest, Lyndsey Byrne. Having had a hysterectomy with very few symptoms, Lyndsey was convinced that when hot flushes and other symptoms started with a vengeance a few years later, there must have been something other than menopause going on, especially since her blood tests told her she was definitely NOT in menopause. Going to some pretty extreme measures to manage her symptoms including wrapping herself up in plastic and exercising hard to literally 'sweat' the hot flushes away, Lyndsay finally began to accept that menopause probably was at the core and decided to take a functional medicine approach to manage her symptoms. I'm a huge believer in finding your own way through this transition.  Every one of us will approach our symptoms differently and there's no 'one size fits all'.  And that's why it's so helpful to hear different approaches, different stories and different experiences.  Story sharing is an important part of how we can figure out what the right way forward is for us as we navigate menopause.  There's no one size fits all, and often hearing other people's experiences allows us the chance to take a different perspective.   So I'd love to invite all the women listening to come and join our amazing community in Your Best Midlife over on Facebook where you'll find over 1000 women sharing experiences, cheering each other on and building each other up so we can all thrive through midlife and beyond. PS:  the book that Lyndsey referred to is called Easy Way to Control Alcohol by Allen Carr

One of THE most controversial areas of menopause is around whether or not those who have been treated for breast cancer should be 'allowed' to take HRT or not. Often there is a blanket no from medical practitioners, but what about personal choice?  What if an individual decides that it's their body and therefore their decision about whether or not they feel it's a risk they're willing to take in order to have a decent quality of life. My guest today is Ruth George.  Ruth was treated for breast cancer but found that the medication she was given after her surgery, intended to stop her natural production of oestrogen, was creating a whole host of other symptoms that were ruining her quality of life. She went on a personal quest to find out as much as she could about the actual risks, the benefits and the longer term implications if she did choose to go against her GP's advice. Story sharing is an important part of how we can figure out what the right way forward is for us as we navigate menopause.  There's no one size fits all, and often hearing other people's experiences allows us the chance to take a different perspective.   So I'd love to invite all the women listening to come and join our amazing community in Your Best Midlife over on Facebook where you'll find over 1000 women sharing experiences, cheering each other on and building each other up so we can all thrive through midlife and beyond. PS:  the book that Ruth and I referred to is called Oestrogen Matters by Dr Avrum Bluming and Carol Tavris PhD.

Welcome to the first of my Meno Chats where, in celebration of World Menopause Awareness Month, I'm going to be joined by some of the lovely women from my Facebook group, Your Best Midlife, as they share with me their personal menopause journey. There's something hugely inspiring and reassuring about hearing the stories of normal, everyday women, sharing their personal experience of the menopause.  We all have a different story to tell, but knowing we're not alone in this  is enormously comforting. Today I'm joined by Sue Ladbrook.  We're discussing how difficult it can be to know what to expect when you don't have your mum or any female relatives to ask.  Having lost my own mum in my early 20s, I can totally relate to Sue's experience. October has been designated menopause awareness month with the 18th October designated by the International Menopause Society as World Menopause Day.   Menopause should be a time to be celebrated.  A time when women move into a new and exciting season in their lives.  So often we get bogged down in all the negative messaging about menopause (and let's face it, for many of us it can be a pretty messy time) but there is most certainly life after menopause and I would even go as far as to say, ladies - THIS IS OUR TIME. So I'd love to invite all the women listening to come and join our amazing community in Your Best Midlife over on Facebook where we cheer each other on and build each other up so we can all thrive through midlife and beyond.

How do you deal with the feeling of becoming invisible as you move through the midlife transition? It's a story I hear all the time from women who feel they're withdrawing, stepping back, shrinking into themselves. Looking back I think I tried to combat it by losing a load of weight and becoming obsessive about exercise. I went back to teaching exercise classes and trained to be a personal trainer and a nutrition coach. I think I was inadvertently trying to over compensate for feeling like I was past my prime. So I was outwardly looking confident and in control but it was a cover for feeling incredibly lost. But I'm so glad I didn't allow myself to shrink away. I'm glad that whatever it was inside me that pushed me forward (even if I did feel like a fake at times, especially being the oldest PT on my course!) was strong enough to overcome the inner voice telling me I was too old. Those feelings of becoming invisible are a narrative of our own making. We can listen to them and act on them or we can stick a middle finger up to them and push through anyway. Maybe we won't be seen in the same way as we were when we were younger and maybe we have to make ourselves shout a bit louder to be heard but we can always choose whether to shrink or shine. You have to step into the new you and be seen for the amazing, talented, unique, beautiful woman you are. For more support for women over 40, around menopause and thriving through midlife, come and join my Facebook Group Your Best Midlife https://www.facebook.com/groups/yourb... For more resources head over to https://linktr.ee/Bev_Thorogood  

The Women and Equalities Committee was appointed by the House of Commons to examine the expenditure, administration and policy of the Government Equalities Committee.   The Committee has just published it's First Report of Session 2022-23 in July this year, and I'm joined today by my colleague Helen Hutchings who has summarised the report for us today. You can also read Helen's summary HERE The report focuses on 3 key areas that need to be addressed to ensure that those experiencing perimenopause/menopause are not lost from the workplace and are looked after appropriately both from a health and legal perspective. You can check out the full report from the House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee HERE

We're all pretty familiar with the idea that we have bacteria in our gut called the microbiome and that a healthy gut leads to better health. But did you know that we also have a vaginal microbiome and that it's possible to detect changes in hormone levels by monitoring the relative number of different microbes in the vagina? My guest on the podcast today is the Joint CEO of Agile Life Sciences, Jan Rogers. Jan is a scientist and, along with her colleagues, has developed a test that uses the vaginal microbiome, rather than the traditional measuring of hormones, to diagnose and manage the perimenopause/menopause transition. In this fascinating episode Jan explains how the test works, how it can be used and why it is so much more reliable than current testing protocols. Jan is currently (as of July 2022) looking for 1000 volunteers to help with their trials.  To be eligible to help you must have been assigned female at birth and be over 38 years of age.  You'll simply be asked to provide a urine sample using their testing and sampling kit, and a small number of volunteers may be asked to continue with the trial. For further details of how to apply to be a volunteer visit https://www.menoguide.co.uk/  You can find out more about the work of Agile Life Sciences at www.agilelifesciences.com or follow Jan's work on LinkedIn And don't forget if you're looking for support and help during your menopause/midlife transition come and join me in my lovely Facebook Group Your Best Midlife 

I can't think of a more challenging place to work while trying to navigate the emotional and cognitive symptoms associated with perimenopause than a busy hospital as a front-line nurse. Knowing how hard I found the brain fog, anxiety and sheer lack of energy when I was working a full time job, I at least had the benefit of being behind a desk and other people's lives weren't at risk if I made an error. Today I'm joined by my friend and now work colleague Helen Hutchings. Helen gave up her long and successful career as a senior nurse within the NHS earlier this year following an extended period of sick absence due, as she can now see, to the impact of menopause. Helen is candid in sharing her sense of failing, imposterism and self doubt but also shares how the pressure of the last couple of years turned out to be the impetus she needed to find the courage to change career and explore her rediscovered passion for creating unique pieces of art. Check out her stunning artwork at Little Bits of Wire on Facebook and Instagram as well as on her Etsy store. And don't forget if you're looking for a supportive community of women ready to help you navigate your midlife transition through menopause, come join us in Your Best Midlife over on Facebook. To find out how Floresco Training can support your employees through their menopause transition, through manager and colleague training, visit www.florescotraining.co.uk or get in touch at admin@florescotraining.co.uk  

The number of employment tribunals relating to discrimination where menopause is the reason being cited are on the rise. But where does menopause sit in terms of UK employment law? What should employers being doing to ensure they don't fall foul of the law? What protection do those experiencing menopause have under UK employment law? These are just some of the questions I put to my guest on today's episode, Emma Swan. Emma is a Partner at Forbes and Head of Commercial Employment. She has a wealth of experience in areas such as providing strategic level advice on employment aspects of restructures, transfers, mergers and acquisitions, advising on TUPE, conducting advocacy in Employment Tribunal cases, supporting with daily HR issues particularly discrimination issues, providing practical and strategic training and employment tribunal litigation across the country. Emma is a Legal 500 recommended lawyer. So I was keen to exploit that experience and expertise to help us all understand the law better when it comes to menopause and the workplace. You can contact Emma at www.forbessolicitors.co.uk or find her on LinkedIn  You can download a copy of our Workplace Menopause Checklist HERE and do a quick and dirty audit of how menopause friendly your workplace is.   And finally, if you're a woman over 40 looking for support and a friendly community of other midlife women navigating their midlife transition, come and join me in Your Best Midlife over on Facebook.  

I've recently discovered that I almost certainly have ADHD which has come as a bit of a surprise at the ripe old age of 56, but it definitely answers a lot of questions for me. It would also appear that my ADHD symptoms have become much more pronounced with the onset of peri-menopause, which got me wondering if there's a link between ADHD and low oestrogen. Turns out there almost certainly is. I'm joined in this episode by my good friend and my neurodiversity coach Hayley Brackley.   Hayley is a therapeutic coach and trainer and the owner of Great Minds Don't, offering impactful development, leadership and therapeutic coaching to allow individuals to let go of the strings holding them back, both professionally and personally.   In 2020, Hayley was nominated for an ITV National Diversity Award, under the category of Positive Role Model, this followed her work with individuals who considered themselves to be from a minority group, and Hayley embracing being herself - Hayley has ADHD and Dyslexia and will often be found sharing her story to help others to do the same.   Diagnosed with ADHD as a teenager she is also starting to recognise that she has many autistic traits too. I love Hayley's no nonsense approach to neurodiversity and the way she's able to make complex things understandable.  She has been an inspiration to me as we've worked together through my own journey of discovery around undiagnosed ADHD. I believe there are very many women who have undiagnosed neurodivergence who would benefit greatly from knowing how conditions such as ADHD manifest in women, since currently diagnosis and information is still biased towards the male norm. To find out more about Hayley you can find her active on LinkedIn or check out her website Great Minds Don't Links to additional help and support throughout menopause and beyond: Your Best Midlife Facebook Group The Business of Menopause - A Guide For Working Women The Menopause Mini-Makeover Self Guided Learning Programme

Whether you're a business owner or just someone who loves to share on Social Media, great looking graphics are going to entice your friends, followers and potential clients to engage with your content. And it has never been easier to create professional looking graphics, even for those of us with the creative skills of a shovel. My guest today has built her business around helping others to stand out with gorgeous looking graphics and video. Nicky Pasquier left her job as a senior legal PA in Civil Litigation in 2013 and started her business without any previous experience and with no financial safety net.  Yes another Gen X'er who made the jump from the corporate world into doing what she loves for herself, you're going to love Nicky's 'throw caution to the wind' story of reaching her midlife turning point.. She is now a Canva Expert, Canva Creator and Canva Champion and loves teaching small businesses how to successfully market their brands on line using branded visual content. Check out the many ways Nicky can help you look amazing through her range of done for you graphics and customisable templates at https://www.virtuosoassistant.co.uk/ You can also get a free 45 day trial of Canva Pro, rather than the usual 30 days, using Nicky's link here https://bit.ly/Nicky45 which will give you plenty of time to really get to know Canva and play around. And to help you learn what to do, Nicky has a fantastic YouTube channel packed with loads of 'how to' videos so you can learn all the tricks and tools during your trial.  https://www.virtuosoassistant.co.uk/free-canva-tutorials      

What if everything you've been told about how to look after your pelvic floor was wrong, and all those endless kegel exercises were actually doing you more harm that good? I'm joined today by Caroline Carty, lawyer turned somatic yoga teacher who very candidly shares her story of struggling with a pelvic prolapse.  Despite spending many years teaching her class members all about the benefits of pelvic floor exercises the research suggests that this may actually not be the best solution. Caroline is an experienced yoga teacher who is passionate about the potential of yoga to heal bodies and minds and transform lives. Originally trained with The British Wheel of Yoga (BWY.Dip) with further qualifications in Meditation. Also a qualified Somatics Exercise Coach and a registered teacher of Yoga for Healthy Lower Backs (YHLB). Caroline sits on the UK Steering Group of YHLB, a social enterprise whose aim is to promote better back care throughout the UK. She also represents YHLB in the All Party Parliamentary Group on yoga in society. Caroline has an extensive knowledge of anatomy and physiology which informs her work with yoga as therapy particularly helping people with chronic back pain Caroline says "My interest in Women's health and gynaecology stems from my own experience of living with prolapse including many years of research, self-treatment and surgery. In sharing my experience with my students, I have discovered a huge silent majority of women dealing with the debilitating, humiliating and embarrassing effects of pelvic organ prolapse. My mission in this area is to shine a light on this topic, to support women to step out of shame and demand better treatment options. There is very exciting new research in this area and new treatment options are coming....." Caroline references the work of Anna Crowle, a physiotherapist who specialises in women's health using biotensegrity and myofascial release. You can find Caroline via her website https://yogawithcarolinecarty.co.uk

My guest on the podcast today is Samantha Bradford. Sam is a financial advisor and money mindset coach and has a long pedigree in the corporate financial world. But when she made the jump to setting up her own business, Simplicity Financial Planning, she found that mindset, especially for women, was a big hurdle to independent wealth and financial growth. So we're focusing today on the mind blocks that stop us reaching our true earning potential.  We discuss the different money archetypes and Sam shares her thoughts and ideas for shifting our money mindset from one of lack and scarcity to one of abundance and opportunity. Sam says:  "2 Years ago, I followed my heart and stepped away from my employed adviser role with Barclays Wealth and set up my own business. I named my business Simplicity because I was frustrated with how complicated information within the financial services industry is to understand, when it is so important for people's long time financial future. Time after time I've witnessed a client's inertia rather than them risking ‘getting it wrong'; I've seen clients being talked down to and just plain not understanding what's being shared with them. It doesn't have to be like that and so I set up Simplicity. Our aim is to put our clients at ease around money and help them see things differently. During the past 18 months, I have also focused on the emotional side of money and am now a qualified Money Coach.   I founded and run the Women's Wealth Canvas where our mission is to help women build an enduring wealth plan through education, community and empowerment.  It's a 12 week programme designed to help women dream big and feel confident around money and money matters. I also have my own Podcast (‘Financial Chat from the Chicken Coop – how to grow your financial freedom') which educates around money topics and money emotions. You can find out more about the work Sam does via her website Simplicity Financial Planning, connect with her on LinkedIn  and Instagram or by joining her free Facebook Group The Wealth Canvas And of course if you love a good podcast (which you obviously do as you're here!) check out Sam's podcast  Financial Chat from the Chicken Coop  

There's something amazing happens when women come together to share their stories. You suddenly feel less alone. You feel a part of something bigger.   You get that reassurance of knowing we're in this together. Today I'm chatting with two wonderful, inspiring women who are sharing their menopause stories to help breakdown the stigma of being a midlife woman going through menopause.   Kim Gowing is a Canadian living in the UK. She is a Change Management Consultant and the founder of the group The Hot Ladies, a virtual network for women experiencing menopause. Kim hosts The Hot Ladies LinkedIn group and also a monthly online live get together where women can chat, share stories and tips and basically support each other through this sometimes turbulent transition. Fancy joining? Here's the link: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8975313/   Becky Webber is The Operations Director of one of the UK's leading recruitment specialists companies and the driving force behind the Menopause for Business LinkedIn Page. Becky took the massively brave decision to share her menopause story with her work colleagues for International Women's Day 2022 as part of the #breakthebias theme and has been blown away by the positive impact her story sharing has had. If you fancy giving Becky's LinkedIn page a follow here's the link: https://www.linkedin.com/company/7622...   Today we're putting the menopause world to rights as we simply chat through our respective journeys.   We hope that by sharing, you'll feel reassured that you're not in this alone. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button so you don't miss out on future episodes.   For more support for women over 40, around menopause and thriving through midlife, come and join my Facebook Group Your Best Midlife https://www.facebook.com/groups/yourb... For more resources head over to https://linktr.ee/Bev_Thorogood

Kate Muir is a journalist, author, documentary producer, activist and an advocate for women going through menopause. She's the author of the book 'Everything You Need to Know About Menopause, but were too afraid to ask', which pulls no punches in shining a light on the inequalities and shameful lack of understanding when it comes to women's reproductive health. She also wrote and produced the ground-breaking documentary 'Sex, Myths and the Menopause' presented by TV personality and menopause warrior Davina McCall. In today's episode I'm chatting with Kate about what led her to write a book that, quite frankly, has disrupted the established norms regarding perimenopause and the menopause transition. Kate talks about her own 'car crash' of a menopause and why a lack of education and understanding within the medical world is preventing way too many women from accessing HRT - a simple, cost effective treatment that replaces our natural hormones and which has been scientifically proven to prevent heart disease, bone disease and brain disease. Kate is on a mission to create a menopause revolution and with her forensic level of journalistic tenacity, I have absolutely no doubt she will succeed.  

Have you ever wondered how women in business define success? As a woman who started my business in my 50s I don't think I see success in terms of the traditional financial measures.  And it turns out I'm not alone! My guest today is Dr Hayley Lewis, an organisation psychologist who has recently completed her doctoral thesis delving deep into the psychi of female entrepreneurs and what really makes them tick. If you're a woman in business, you're going to resonate so much with what Hayley has to say, I'm sure. And if you're a woman in later life wishing you could do a degree, a masters or even a doctorate but wondering how on earth you'd fit it all in with a full time job, business, family and all the myriad things you're already dealing with, then you'll find it hard not to be inspired by Hayley.  She's sharing her top tips for fitting it all in and loving every minute of the journey. You can find out more about the fantastic work Hayley does by heading to her website Halo Psychology or follow her on LinkedIn and Instagram where you can get to learn her from her fabulous weekly sketchnotes.   Transcription: Bev Thorogood:] Hello everyone. And welcome to another episode of generation exceptional. If I could get my teeth in right today and talk properly, my guest today is Dr. Hayley Lewis. And I say doctor with some emphasis because Hayley has just completed her doctorate. And that's what we'll be talking about today. I'm very excited to be having this conversation. I believe Hayley, I was your first interviewee when you were doing your doctoral research, which makes me feel a little bit special. Hayley Lewis: Yeah you were so the second study I carried out as part of my wider research was original research where I interviewed women such as yourself. And yes, you were the very first one. Bev Thorogood: I didn't know that until last week. Hayley welcome to generation exceptional. I'm really pleased to have you here. Would you start us off just by giving us a little bit of a flavour of who you are and your academic journey to becoming Dr. Lewis? Hayley Lewis: Yeah, so I'm Hayley you don't need to call me Dr. Hayley. That makes me feel like Dr. Ruth or Dr. Phil! So in terms of my day-to-day, I'm a qualified psychologist and I've been in the field for almost 25 years and had a very wiggly career and now I run my own business.  In terms of my academic journey it hasn't always been that easy and it always makes me laugh when people call me an academic, because I don't see myself that way. It's never come easy to me. You know, I've had lots of failures along the way including failing my dissertation for my masters the first time more than 20 years ago. And that was mainly because I didn't put a lot of effort in, I was too busy partying, as I was in my mid twenties. But the route to to academia come to me later in life in terms of the appreciation for education and learning. I think I took it for granted when I was younger. And I definitely don't take it for granted now. I think we're so privileged to have that, those of us who have access to education and learning. And so, yeah, it was really in my thirties that I started to kind of get in touch with my inner geek. And I just found myself really enjoying reading research and using that to help in a work context. And then when I hit my forties I wanted to set myself a new challenge. And as I kind of headed further into my forties, I thought, you know what I want to give myself a bit of an edge in my field. It's a really very competitive field within occupational or business psychology, there's a lot of us. And then within that, there's a lot of people who are running their own businesses. And so actually what gives you the edge? I thought I'll do my doctorate. I want to stretch myself. I want to try and quell the remaining impostor feelings I have in the field. And learn something along the way and give something back all before I'm 50. So that was that was the kind of target I set myself. Bev Thorogood: That's fantastic so did you have a sort of a traditional route from leaving school to university doing a bachelor's from school? Hayley Lewis: Yeah, so I came from a very poor background, working class . I'm first-generation in terms of graduate. Mum and Dad, who are no longer with us, put a lot of stock into education. Particularly mum.  Mum was very clever, unfortunately she grew up in times. and had had a father who didn't believe in girls needing education. She actually got a scholarship to a grammar school, but wasn't allowed to take it. She was forced to leave at 15, get her first job so she could contribute to the family. And I think that she turned that resentment when she had kids, into me and my sister, she put it into us so I remember being drilled by her for my 11+ because where I lived, and at that time in the early eighties, we did the 11+. And I remember her making me do the practice tests again and again and again, then I could hear my friends outside playing in their gardens and I had to do more tests. I really hated it. I hated her at the time. And it's only as I got older that I am just forever in my parent's debt. And so I ended up going to grammar school, and loved school. Again didn't always come easy to me in terms of the learning. And yeah, I never questioned, so there was this expectation from my mum and dad that I would go straight to university at the age of 18 and I never questioned it. I just went “okay”. And actually I saw it was an opportunity to kind of spread my wings and get some freedom. I went straight from my A levels  into undergrad and then loved that. Spent three years doing my undergrad and then went out into the world. And it was five years later that I did my masters and I fell into my masters by accident. I never intended to be an occupational psychologist. My first degree, my major was history cause I loved history. But I happened to be in the right place at the right time and my mouth for once didn't get me in trouble, it helped me out. And I was offered the opportunity to move into the psychology team and studied for a master's and they paid for it. And so. Yeah, I can see you nodding. So lots of people want to know that story. Bev Thorogood: I'm fascinated by that. I always find it fascinating that our early years can really, really dictate our love or hate of education. And I am similar to you, you know, quite a deprived upbringing in many ways, not deprived in love or attention or any of those things, but certainly financially. It was tight and there was my brother and I, there was no expectation that we would go to university, you know, I think for both of us, we grew up in Newcastle on the outskirts of Newcastle and the expectation really was that the boys went and worked in the shipyards and the girls went and worked in shops or factories. And if they were a bit creative, they became hairdressers or nurses, you know, if they had that kind of caring side to them. So it would have been comical, I think, for us to want to go to university or to have that aspiration. For me that really stuck with me for many years. I probably carried it as a bit of a chip on my shoulder for many years. I did my undergrad at 48. And it took me that long to shake off the belief that I just wasn't going to be clever enough or smart enough to study. I remember when I did my bachelor degree in business and enterprise, I had no intention of ever being a business owner weirdly at the time. I remember chatting to my course tutor who was just coming to the end of her doctorate and being amazed at how anybody could feel they were smart enough to do that. I just assumed everybody that did a doctorate must be incredibly, incredibly clever. And I remember her saying to me, actually, do you know what? Yes, you've got to have an element of understanding. You've got to be able to read research. You've got to be able to interpret research and put your point across. But it's more the workload than actually, you know, being mega intelligent. And I still thought 'goodness me, I'm not clever enough to do a doctorate'. Where do you stand? What have you found going through that doctoral process? Was it just a hard slog of just do the work or has it taken you, well out of your comfort zone? Hayley Lewis: Yeah. Out of my comfort zone.  Definitely. I think overall I absolutely loved it.. I loved it. And it was a really nurturing environment, you know, not every doctorate is the same as the program I was on. We've now. in this country, made occupational psychology the equivalent to clinical and forensic. So your root is the same. So once you do your masters, you then go out in the field and then you log your work from an evidence-base for two years and get your registration with the Health Care Professions Council, and your Chartership with the British Psychological Society. And then you can choose to do another two years, which is your doctoral research, which then confers title of doctor, which is what happens with clinical forensics. And so actually I'd been out in the field a long time. I'd done my log book a long time ago. I'd got my Chartership registration. So actually going through that process of taking an evidence-based approach, drawing on theory, I'd kind of been doing that a long time. And then certainly since I set up my own business, you know, one of the selling points for Halo Psychology is making research and evidence accessible to managers and the leaders that I work with. And so again, I'd spent many years immersing myself in research, in journal articles, which I don't always find easy to read you know, I have to read the same sentence 10 times and still don't even understand what they're saying, but I was really comfortable with that. Whereas some of my pals in my cohort were having to kind of learn that from scratch. The biggest thing was juggling everything. So I run a business, you know, I'm the main wage earner in the family, as were many of the women in my study. And so I have to protect that time for my business and kind of keep earning. In the first year of my doctorate I was caring for my terminally ill mum. And again, that's really common for women in particular, you know, often we're the ones who take on some kind of caring commitment, whether it's being a parent or a grandparent, or if you don't have children you could be caring for a loved one or a family member, that does tend to fall on the woman or the woman takes it on. So yeah, it was the juggle more than anything, but actually I'm really ruthless with boundarying my time. And I took the little and often approach for each of my studies. And when my mum died actually the doctorate acted as a real anchor. She died in November 2020. And I remember Sue, my doctoral supervisor saying “you, okay, do you want to take some time out?” And actually I didn't, it was something for me to pour my grief into, to focus me. Because, you know, mou was so proud that I decided to do a doctorate and unfortunately she she'll never get to see me kind of wear the floppy hat and the big velvet cloak but yeah, I used that energy to just put everything into it. So yeah, so I'm not sure that quite answers your question, but all sorts of things came up as I was doing the doctorate and I feel less of an imposter. Bev Thorogood: It's interesting . twice now you've talked about the imposterism and I think we have a tendency to sometimes, don't we, think that the more qualifications we have the more credible we feel we are. And I'm interested to know, do you.... do you think the work that you've done on your doctorate has actually made you a better coach, better at job in general? Hayley Lewis: Yeah. So that's it, that's the answer? Yeah it has in that I wear multiple hats. With the business, with Halo, I am much more choosy about the kind of research that I draw upon so everything I do, whether I'm running a workshop for managers or I'm doing coaching with a senior client I'm much more discerning about the type of research that I reference or evidence I draw on.  You know the doctorate trains you to scrutinize the quality of research and not all research is created equal.   I have developed this bit of a a tick every time I see like pop psychology research on Instagram or LinkedIn, it drives me insane. Because it feels like once you learn and see it you can't unsee it. And I think it it's helped me formulate arguments a lot better when I'm having to influence some big corporate clients, particularly stuff around culture change. It's also really helped with the academic side. I teach at several universities on their master's programs including supervising dissertations and it's given me much more confidence to do that, but also to give really. Hopefully, helpful advice. I mean, my students say it's helpful advice. And they're the customers ultimately. I was supervising dissertation last year.  It was a post-grad dissertation and she was looking at psychological capital. And that was one of the things that I was looking at with my research. And she also wants to use a particular methodology within the qualitative methodology and I was able to really help her and advise her based on my own journey through the doctorate in a way that I probably wouldn't have been able to help if I hadn't done that. So yeah, it's helped in all sorts of ways. I've also become even more opinionated as my husband will tell you. Bev Thorogood: Yes. But now you've got the title behind you to give you the right to be opinionated which is good. And we will talk about the contents of your thesis but I'd really like to expand a little bit on what your research covered and on what you learned. I guess I want to let the listeners know why I was so keen to get you on because as the Generation Exceptional podcast is about trying to highlight Gen Xers who are doing things that maybe the rest of us are sitting back thinking “I wouldn't mind doing that, but I've got the imposterism or it's too scary, or I haven't got the time” so that's really why I wanted to get you on to say “do you know what, even if you are working, even if you've got your own business, even if you are a woman with all the other caring responsibilities that we carry, you can do this”. I think that's a great message to get across. But I do want to talk about the actual research that you did because the subject matter is quite fascinating, especially as a woman in business, just talk us through what your doctorate was about why you chose that that subject. Hayley Lewis: Yeah. So I had multiple reasons why I chose this particular topic, which was about female business ownership, female entrepreneurship. When you do a doctorate, you have to find something original. And like really go into minute detail, it could be such a specific question. And it should further build on the research that exists. So I thought in my field now in my day-to-day work both through Halo Psychology, and also teaching, my expertise and background is in leadership and management behaviour and how that impacts culture. Now, as you'll know Bev, the World and his wife has done research on that? You know, there are thousands of research papers into leadership and management, and I thought, what can I add here? And then I thought, actually, why not do something a little different where there's a gap in not just in the research, but in your field. So in occupational psychology, we tend to research leadership and management, teams, personality in the workplace, all that stuff. Nothing really for my field. No one has really looked at women in business or entrepreneurship. Most of the research comes from the field of sociology or feminist studies or business and economics. So I saw there was something here. So that was one of my motivations. The other motivation, I think, as I said to youwhen you attended one of my interviews, I'm anti-capitalist and I'm a feminist researcher, and it's never sat right with me that the mark of success, how we define business success, even for small and micro businesses is big profit, big turnover, you want to grow. You want to get employees, big sales. That's how traditionally, particularly in the Western world, we define business success. And so if you don't conform to that, what are you a failure? And that never sat right with me. And my instinct told me there was a different definition and I wanted to test that out. And then the other thing in terms of the feminist stance is this really masculine ideal of what it means to be a successful business owner and entrepreneur often perpetuated on things like the Apprentice, which I can no longer watch now because I just feel enraged because I think it's all that's kind of hammy and bad about business that you have to be pushy and, you know, stab each other in the back and, you know, really salesy. And again, I thought there has to be another way. because, if I think about my own journey as a business, I know I don't have to do any of that. So I just wanted to test it out. I wanted to actually do some research. And so, yeah, that's what I did and my main question was actually how do women business owners define success and what are the psychological factors that help them navigate those crucial first three years? We know around 60% of businesses shut up shop or ‘fail' in their first three years. And rather than dig into why they failed I wanted to talk to women who'd been navigating those first three years and were surviving, you know, in a pandemic by the way.. What was it they were doing? So I wanted to take the strengths based approach. So that's what I did. Bev Thorogood: I read an article quite recently in Forbes that said people over 50, I think it was were something like twice as likely to succeed in business than people  under 50. Why did you think that is, did your research give you any kind of understanding of why. I say we cause I know you're not over 50, but I am . Why are us over 50s likely to be more successful. And actually going back to your original purpose for the research, how do we even define that? Hayley Lewis: So the bulk of women in my second study were in their forties with a few in their fifties and a couple in their thirties. I think for those of us who are older I think it's a combination of life experience, that kind of accumulated and cumulative knowledge, skills experience. I don't know about you Bev, I've really felt this, certainly in the last year or so as I kind of head towards 50, I can't help but wonder as we get older we recognize it's not the end of the world if something doesn't work out or goes wrong, we'll do something different. You know, whereas I think when we're younger, it can feel like all or nothing if it doesn't work. Whereas I remember when I set up in my first business at 42, it was a big decision because I was in a highly paid corporate job, as a say I'm the main wage earner in my family with a mortgage to pay and all that stuff. But when I finally got around to doing it I thought, you know what, I'll give it a go. And if it doesn't work out, I'll just go and get a job. And I think you develop that practicality that, that kind of, much more practical approach to life when you get older I think that's what it is. Bev Thorogood: Yeah I've found this really strange juxtaposition, certainly with perimenopausal women, and you know that's obviously my area of interest, whereby hormonal changes, physical changes, mental, psychological, emotional changes can really erode confidence. And yet at the same time there seems to be this contradiction in levels of confidence that say “you know, what”, exactly, as you just said, you know, “what's the worst that can happen. I'm going to take my life skills. I'm going to take my years of knowledge and I'm going to do something. I'm just going to give it a go and have that level of confidence to do that”. And they're at total odds with each other and almost running concurrently. You know, I gave up my job because my confidence was through the floor.  Set up a business feeling really, quite confident about “well, so what if it doesn't work out, but I think it will”. I very luckily didn't have those financial pressures that I think some people do, which has been a bit of a blessing and a kind of a double-edged sword because on the one hand it's meant I didn't have to worry about finance, but on the other hand, it's meant that I probably wasn't as driven as I would be if finance was a real issue. So, yeah, it's strange. And what other findings did you have, how did women define their success? How are we different? Hayley Lewis: Well, just before I get to that, as you were talking Bev I wanted to share, I can't help but wonder if there's a societal thing as well. One of my colleagues in my particular cohort on the doctorate, Denise, she's in her sixties, she's just done her doctorate in her sixties. And she's had a really successful career as a psychologist. She has spent time in the East, in Tibet and places like that and in other cultures, they revere their elders. You know, you have the wise elder, the wise woman.  Often there's a whole ceremony around this acknowledgement of moving into a different phase and the wisdom that comes with that.  We don't do that in countries such as ours. We write or bin people off and her research looked at what it is to have a meaningful life in later life, after you've formally retired. So she's been sharing her stuff but yeah, that's got me fascinated around the whole societal thing as well around what it means to be old, let alone an older woman. So yeah, I just thought I'd throw that into the mix and I've become really interested in that. So it's interesting you talk about perimenopause. I mean, my energy! One of my symptoms is my energy levels drop. Like literally I cannot do or think. And so I've had to start to structure how I do work around my energy levels because there are certain points in the day where I am absolutely fit for nothing I have to have a nap.  I have to, I can't function otherwise. And so that's the other upside of being my own boss.. Bev Thorogood: Yeah, it's interesting though, of course, because one of the things that I do for a living now is go into businesses and talk about the impact of perimenopause and menopause on working women and the lack of energy, fatigue, brain fog, all of those things come into it. And I'm always very conscious of not encouraging businesses to throw the baby out with the bath water, you know, Yes, we are potentially having these low energy dips and all of the other bits, but actually look, you're working, running a business, you know, you're finishing your doctorate. It's not, actually impacting your output, but you're having to manage and change possibly the way that you deliver that. I setup my business at 52, 4 years later, I'm still doing this and I think I'm reasonably successful. We'll have to come back to, “how do I measure that?”. Yes, I have bumps in the road I have to navigate, but it doesn't stop me getting there. It still doesn't stop me doing the job. And I think that is really important. Cause I do hear a lot of people kind of say “well, if women are having all of these problems, why would anybody want to employ them?”.   Because we are bloody good! Hayley Lewis: We are you know?! Well, yeah, don't get me started, that's a whole other podcast episode around women in leadership. That's for another day, and I could talk about that stuff all day as well. It's always been my focus ever since I first qualified back in 2001, I've always had an affinity to, and done lots of work with women at different stages in their working lives. Right. The definitions of success. So in my first study, I looked at what the research over the last 20 years had said actually, none of them defined success. But they had used measures. So financial measures of success that every single paper had when they were doing experiments, doing research with groups of women and male business owners, they were using measures of success, such as amount of sales, amount of profit, number of employees. Bev Thorogood: Those traditional financial measures? Hayley Lewis: Absolutely traditional, not one of them had defined success. So, enter stage left Hayley. So there was a gap there in terms of my second study where people like yourself got involved There were really clear definitions of success. So it's not to say money isn't important because I think that would be really naive. . Actually money did come out as one of the definitions, but it was about earning a good income. It wasn't about six or seven figures, which is again, the narrative that you see on LinkedIn and Instagram. it's very much the social media. Bev Thorogood: It's the 6 figures? What does that even mean? Hayley Lewis: Well, or the seven figures I'm seeing a lot of, and I'm seeing a lot of women with their glossy, Instagram pictures, with their Mercedes, et cetera, it just sends me cold to be honest, “are you going have your seven figure year”. And actually there's a really good podcast called Duped which unpicks toxicity around business and the coaching that's offered to people like you and I and, and Duped actually educates us to ask more questions. What do you mean by big? And what's behind that?.  Actually helping educate us to be much more savvy in terms of what we buy, because that was another thing that really spurred me on with this research. I see a lot of good women spend a lot of their hard earned cash that often they can't afford on programs that promise the world and deliver nothing. And I feel really strongly about that, but anyway, for some money did come out as important. But in terms of being able to pay the mortgage, take the family on holiday and have enough money for a rainy day. It was never about,you know, I want  10 grand a month or. And that's not to say that wouldn't be nice, but the women I spoke to were really savvy that actually there were other things that are important as to how I define success to actually impact that income. Because in order to earn six or seven figures, there are sacrifices you have to make. And actually, I don't want to make those.    And so the other definitions that came out that were far more important and were really strong themes from talking to all the women.  Having real credibility with clientsand people out there saying she really knows her stuff. You need to work with such and such, that kind of word of mouth, that was a definition of success for many of the women. The second was having a really tangible impact, having proof, having data, having hard facts that you have made an actual, tangible difference to the people or companies that you're working with. And I think that goes hand in hand with the credibility. Those two came out loud and clear. And then the third was around freedom and autonomy. So I feel most successful and I feel successful as a business owner when I have enough time to look after myself, to have time out if I need it to go on a bike ride in the afternoon with my nephew, if I want, that's success to m.   Working nine to five, Monday to Friday or seven days a week would be the antithesis of that. That would be failure to me. That's not why I set up my business. So that again, came out crystal clear and then a really interesting unexpected one that came out was around this concept of thriving. So this is something that I've been really interested in for a long time. There's something called the Theory of Thriving at Work .  It is quite an old theory, but it's not that well-known, I love it. And it basically says we thrive when we're learning. And when we get energy from what we do. And that came out as loud as a bell across all the interviews. One of the women used the metaphor of love. I'm in love with my business. I love it. Actually it was almost like it was a person and that's the definition you know, your energy and vitality and the work you do. And that's evident to me in the stuff that I see you putting out Bev. So, yeah, it was really interesting, money was there, but actually there were other things that meant more to these women and that helped them define success. Bev Thorogood: Of course, the difficulty is how do you measure that? How do you measure how much love you have for the work that you do? It's not that easy traditional measure “well, this was my turnover, this is my profit this year. I love that actually. And I've not heard of that theory of thriving, but I'm feeling it. I think I look at the work that I do now, and my husband will say to me, goodness, me, you know, it's Saturday or Sunday and I'm working, but it doesn't feel like work. And therefore actually you are right about the success measure. I think my success measure for this coming year will actually be around how much time am I willing to move away and concentrate on my health and wellbeing, because that has definitely taken a back seat for the last two or three years. But partly because actually I really do thrive on doing what I'm doing. And I have not prioritized that enough. . So that will be my measure of success. Can I actually lose a bit of weight and get a bit of my fitness back? Because that's been the sacrifice for me in building what I've been doing the last few years? I think the other thing for me that I measure as success is, and again, not an easy one to measure. Am I seen as authentic?  Are people seeing the me behind Floresco and that sort of personal brand. I don't know if that's quite the right term for this, but I wonder with your six and seven figure business gurus, how authentic are they? And that's really important for me to be on LinkedIn and people go  “Yes. She knows her stuff. Yes. She got this business, but actually I feel like I know her” and that when they meet me in person, I'm probably not so different. I think for me, that's a really important thing. I don't know. Did any of that come out in your research? Hayley Lewis: Absolutely, so mine is the first research to specifically look at the role of personal values in the lives of female micro-business owners. No other studies looked at that. In my thesis, I talked about the Holy Trinity of personality competencies and values. Quite a few studies look at personality in relation to being an entrepreneur and being a business owner. And I do use those terms interchangeably. Because there's no, clearly agreed definition of entrepreneur. And actually many of the women I spoke to did fall into some of the definitions of entrepreneurship, as well as business ownership. Some studies look at competencies, but none have explicitly looked at values. So there was a real opportunity there and there were three values that stood out. They were like a moral compass across all of the interviews I did with, with the women. And the first of which was authenticity. It's really important to me that my business is congruent and how I show up is congruent with who I am. And you know, a few of the women talked about feeling like I can be me in a work context for the first time ever in my career. Every woman I spoke to, it was their first business. That was deliberate. I wanted to look at women who had made the leap from being employed to becoming self-employed. And yeah, a few of the women said, you know, I was in a role where I was having to pretend to be someone I wasn't. Because I was working in a certain sector, I was in a leadership role, for example, And that really resonated with me. I felt that I spent quite a large proportion of my life trying to fit in, trying to squeeze my size six feet into size four shoes, metaphorically, and not always feeling comfortable. And therefore, is it any wonder that I wasn't always my best self? So yeah, some of the stories that the women shared really resonated, but authenticity came out as number one in terms of core value. And then there were two other just wonderful values. It was such a heartwarming study to do Bev. So the second was around caring. caring for others.  Not in a, you know, being a parent or carer, but actually caring deeply about people, that you see yourself here to serve. So whether it's  kind of women navigating menopausal changes in the workplace you know, whether it's teams in conflict, which is some of the work that I do, you care deeply. And when we care actually that's when we build really trusting relationships, but then there was this deep, “I really care. I really genuinely care about others.” Others who I might touch in some way through my business. And then the third was around the sense of community, being community minded, community oriented. So recognizing you're part of something bigger than yourself .  As micro business owners, it can feel very lonely. There was one woman who said, and   it was quite an emotional conversation we had actually, she talks about her journey from being a director in a company to setting up her own business. She said no one tells you how lonely it can feel. . And she said “I felt like, you know, I'm a really experienced director and I felt out of my depth.” . She said, what humbled her and overwhelmed her were the number of women business owners who reached out and said, can I help you in some way? Do you want to chat? Here's some of my time, let me introduce you to some of my network or my contacts - just the willingness and generosity she said overwhelmed. She said, now, she proactively reaches out to others who have set up their own business. She says “it's really important to me that I give something back”. And that sense of community giving something back again was like a, like a steel rod through pretty much all of the interviews and came out really clearly as another value that helps women navigate the ups and downs of business. Bev Thorogood:  I love that. I absolutely love that. My working background was for the Air Force. Predominantly worked with men. Obviously I had a few sort of close female colleagues, but on the whole, it was with men. And I don't know if this is going to extrapolate across society, but certainly in the younger days, I never felt in competition with the men I worked with, but I often felt in competition with the women Probably perceived I don't know that there was any real rivalry, but in my head, I certainly perceived that.  It's interesting now working for myself as an older woman, I completely get that support network of other women doing, not necessarily the same business, but in business for themselves. It's so strong. And that initial, probably the initial six months of working on my own. I remember feeling very, very isolated, very alone. I'd go and sit in a cafe and work just to have the buzz of people around me and that, that sisterhood, if I could use that without it sounding too idealistic, that sisterhood of women in business that I've met and formed relationships with over the last four years has absolutely kept me going. And, you know, there are a few who really stand out (and you know who you are, girls!). But it's so powerful, isn't it? And I think if we can support rather than compete, there's such a power in that Hayley Lewis:. There really is and again, you know, I can't help,but think about other cultures.  You know, you have. other cultures where groups of women regularly convene and come together, again that wise elder council. Bev Thorogood: And do you think it's as prevalent in younger women or do you think there is this sort of, I don't know maybe it's a hormonal thing that, they're vying for that sort of survival and reproductive element? Hayley Lewis: I don't know if that yeah, potentially. I mean, that's an interesting study in its own, right. Isn't it? Potentially, I mean, Yeah, there could be that primal thing when you're younger that you're competing for a partner to procreate. I'm not saying that necessarily is the case. Not everybody wants kids. I don't have kids. it's almost like this primal competition or instincts Bev Thorogood: . Oh, gosh, we're running out of time.  You know I could have you back, I think, because there's so many other things I want to talk about.  I find it fascinating. but there are a couple of questions I really wanted to cover going back to doing the doctorate.  And the work that it entailed. What your biggest challenge do you think? Hayley Lewis: I think it goes back to one of my earlier points that it was about balancing everything, because there were some self-imposed deadlines, but you know, it's not cheap, doing a doctorate isn't cheap and I was paying for it myself. And I didn't want to go over 2 years, because I'll be paying more money. So there was almost like a self-imposed deadline. I'm also very action oriented. I like to get stuff off my plate. And so I was like, I want to get it done so I can move on to the next thing. So yeah it was managing time as I said and all the different things that I was in continuing to juggle with. That was probably the biggest thing. Bev Thorogood: How did you manage that? Were you time blocking? Hayley Lewis: Yeah, and so throughout my whole career, everybody's always commented on my organization skills and actually how boundaried I am.  It's one of the things I get asked for, particularly coaching clients who are struggling with that stuff, but yeah, everything from kind of time blocking, tasks blocking. For my first study I was blocking out the first two hours of each day, so I took a little and often approach. I'd read a paper, synthesize it, upload it onto my database. I had a lot of papers to go through, to do my first study. So that little and often, like a couple of hours each day, and then I'd go into the working day. For my second study, I just had to plan in advance for booking interviews in you know, so I just blocked out time for that. And then obviously work and business would go on top of that. And then for actually writing papers, I'm somebody who likes to go deep. So I blocked out a whole day. I can't do that in bits. I kind of really get immersed in the writing process. So, yeah, I kind of took different tactics based on what was required and also knowing myself really well about how I work. Bev Thorogood: Brilliant. So if you were to give three top tips to midlife woman contemplating going and doing some sort of maybe a masters or maybe it as much a doctorate, but doing some sort of higher educational study later in life. And I say later in life, that midlife bracket, what would be your top tips? What should we be considering? Hayley Lewis: So the first is do your research. On the program and the university, what kind of things do students say about it? So for example, one of the universities that I teach at most of my students are in their forties, fifties, and even 60s. And they wanted to go on that particular program because it met certain needs. So it's distance learning. As well as kind of weekend learning, they could do it around their jobs. Also many of the lectures are practitioners as well. That was really important to them. So do your research. The second is recognize the power of the group, the community. I can always tell how successful a cohort is going to be in terms of how well they work together inside the program and outside. So that's where things like WhatsApp groups come in. So it's really interesting, one of the universities I teach our masters, the students who are predominantly in their twenties, they've gone straight from school to undergrad, undergrad to masters, which I think is a different issuu - so competitive. And I say to them, you know, this is your network moving forward into your careers. What are you doing? Whereas the groups that I work with, who are older, they help each other out, they nurture each other. So yeah, kind of going somewhere where there is a sense of community and people looking out for each other. And then the third is even before you start a program to start doing some reading, ease yourself into it. Otherwise it can feel overwhelming. Just get back into the groove of what it means to read journal articles. Just think about how you're going to plan your time as well. If you are working or you've got other care commitments, just think about that stuff in advance. Bev Thorogood: Thank you very much. So are we able to get to read your 52,000 word thesis? Hayley Lewis: You will at some point,  It's just so bureaucratic Bev, there's a formal process that I'll have to go through. So I'm doing what's called minor amends at the moment. There's a lot of them, even though they're minor. Once I've done the minor things, I then send it off for formal sign off from one of the examiners and then it gets loaded up onto the university portal and then I will be able to share it. So yeah, hopefully within the next few months. And yeah, I'm under pressure to write a proper journal article as well and to submit to a journal. Certainly I'll be sharing snippets through my social media feeds as well. Bev Thorogood: Right. Where can people find you if they want to learn more about the work that you do with Halo? Hayley Lewis: So the main place is LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. I'm not on Facebook. The main place is LinkedIn. That's where I'm most active. And so, yeah, I've got my main business, which is Halo. I've set up a second one on the back of this research called Find Your Hive and Thrive. . That's fairly quiet at the moment because I'm just kind of easing into that. Cause Halo is just very busy Bev Thorogood: And what is Find Your Hive and Thrive? Hayley Lewis: Find Your Hive and Thrive is going to be a variety of offers based around my research. So an evidence-based approach, so creating community groups, running master classes on specific things. So whether that's kind of influencing to secure a proposal, all that stuff. So yeah, so I'm going to be creating kind of a suite of things over time. Bev Thorogood: Brilliant. And I have to say for anybody who doesn't know you go and check out Hayley's LinkedIn. Because she does the most amazing drawings, sketch notes. Sort of infographic type things.  I think. Are they every Monday? Hayley Lewis: A new one comes out every Monday and then the rest of the week I share old ones. So I've got about 170 now, and most of them are kind of evergreen content. They're always relevant. And there are the few that go viral. Like I literally have to come off social media because I can't keep up. Because they resonate with people, maybe stuff around leadership.  I like to make stuff that can sometimes be unnecessarily complex accessible to the public. Bev Thorogood:. Brilliant, Hayley it's been an absolute pleasure. Good luck with the thesis when it is released, I'm sure you will get some amazing feedback. I know you will. It's been great talking to you. Thank you so much for giving me your time. Hayley Lewis: Thank you for asking me. Thank you.  

You know what it's like if you don't get enough sleep. You end up grouchy, stressed and struggling to concentrate.   We all have times when our sleep is poor, but when it goes on for an extended period, it can have a massive impact on quality of life.   Whilst good sleep hygiene can help, sometimes we need to get to the root of what's interrupting the sleep behaviours.   What's our relationship with our bed like! How much is the anxiety around not sleeping causing us not to sleep?   Well, I got these any many other questions answered when I had a virtual coffee with Tracy Hannigan, AKA The Sleep Coach recently.   Tracy uses Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia to help her clients to not only get a good night's sleep but to change their relationship with sleep for good.   Tracy is ffering listeners of Generation Exceptional a 10% discount on her CBTi for Insomnia online Sleep Recovery course with the code GENX22.   Check out Tracy's Instagram channel @Tracythesleepcoach https://www.instagram.com/tracythesle... or head over to her Facebook Community Sound Sleep Strategies https://www.facebook.com/groups/14935... You can also follow her on YouTube 'Tracy The Sleep Coach' https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQle... Transcript:   Tracy Hannigan Hi everyone. And welcome to another episode of generation exceptional with me, Bev Thorogood. My guest today is really going to appeal to any of the women out there who really struggle with midlife sleep disruption. My guest is Tracy Hannigan, Tracy, The Sleep Coach, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. Very excited to be here. You're very welcome. This is one that I'm really interested to talk about because I hear so many women tell me how poorly they sleep.  Now I've been quite lucky. I have occasional disrupted sleep. I think that's probably quite normal. It's probably a little bit more frequent now than it was in my thirties, but it's not a major problem for me, but I know some women, it is absolutely ruining their lives, that they're not getting enough sleep. So I was fascinated to have you on the podcast. I saw you speak a couple of months ago at a Facebook event. And I just thought I have got to get Tracy onto the podcast because the way you talk about managing sleep and repairing sleep patterns, I suppose it's different to anything I'd ever heard before. Let me stop talking for a moment and introduce you, I'll let you introduce yourself. . Just tell us a little bit about who you are, your background and how you ended up as a sleep coach. Right.  So my name is Tracy Hannigan. My background is actually as a registered healthcare professional and that has taken different guises over time. I worked in community mental health, courtesy of a degree in psychology, back in the States and obviously in that environment, dealing with a lot of situations and a lot of people who really struggle with their sleep, either as a cause or consequence of their mental health issues. Moving to the UK and training as an osteopath, obviously seeing a lot of pain issues with sleep issues. And so the more I looked around, the more I saw sleep as just a very fundamental problem. We all have disrupted sleep for short periods, but there is a certain percentage of the population who struggle in an ongoing way. Often unnecessarily with, with their sleep. And I'm very interested in sleep from a, from a personal point of view as well. I had my first bout of insomnia in my early twenties, after the death of my husband. Obviously you would expect that there'd be sleep disruption, but it went on for years. And then another bout a little bit later in life where I learned the tools and the skills that cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia can give somebody and decided that I would train in this particular technique courtesy of being able to use the other bits of my background and began working in a clinic setting in person with people. And then when the pandemic hit I took that online.  I'd thought about doing it and then the situation, the context, just gave me that little bit of an extra push. And so now I'm working completely online with people who are trying to sort out their insomnia. We'll talk about the methodology that you use in a second or two, but I'm just wanting to pick up, you said in terms of cause or consequence. That was interesting. So insomnia is the cause of problems or insomnia is the consequence of problems? I'm guessing from what you said it can be either. It can be either. What do you see normally? Is it, is it normally that the sleep is disrupted? You mentioned your first bout was after a bereavement, I imagine stress is a major factor when it comes to insomnia. Yeah. So insomnia can be a cause or a consequence.  Very often in sleep coaching we talk about things that predispose people, make them more likely to be to have problems with sleep in the future. And those are much more common. So if someone is an anxious person or if they have generalized anxiety, some kind of clinical anxiety disorder or panic disorder, PTSD, your whole collection of mental health issues as well as physical health issues, that can predispose somebody to having difficulty sleeping. The most common thing is a predisposing factor to anxiety or a personality trait that some of us might unfortunately know all too well, which is an unhealthy level of perfectionism. Yeah, so all of these things make somebody more likely to develop longer-term sleeping problems after a short-term bout of sleeplessness, because it's really important to differentiate because stress can cause short-term sleeplessness. It happens to all of us, something exciting is going on. Something sad is going on, but what turns that short-term bout of sleeplessness into a longer term sleeping problem? And the answer for a lot of people is one of those traits. Okay. So is there a genetic predisposition to insomnia, is there a physical predisposition? So it depends on how you're defining insomnia. When I'm using the term I'm speaking about insomnia disorder, which is a discreet clinical condition. There are a lot of other sleep disorders that people will often describe as insomnia that aren't insomnia. And some of them can have a genetic predisposition, but I would say that the most likely genetic factor would be in those predisposing factors. The things that make people more likely to develop insomnia. So if there is a genetic predisposition to a certain kind of mental health condition in the family that will make it much more likely that you will be predisposed to developing sleeping difficulty. Why do we see such an upsurge in sleep disruption in women as they enter perimenopause and go through their menopause transition? Because anecdotally I definitely see that the majority of women that I talk to, and I talk to lots of menopausal women, as you can imagine. I would say probably 80 to 90% of them have sleep disruption as one of their key symptoms. Where's the connection. Why such a rise? Yeah, there are a few different explanations for why insomnia becomes more prevalent. And in the literature, when they are looking at broad population levels, the prevalence ranges from 23 to 65, 70%. So it depends on what kind of community you are in. Obviously in these communities, we're seeing people who are very self-directed about wanting to sort out their issues so the, the number of people seems very large and the number is too large. And the consequences are too high. So the question is then why they're still, (you would think that they would have this one down and there'd be tons of research about this.) picking it apart. I would say that there is. in women who are going through perimenopause menopause and post-menopause, there is a predisposition because of the hormonal change to anxiety and depression. So those conditions alone are predisposing factors to developing sleeping difficulties. The change in hormone levels can affect the production of melatonin, which can create further sleeping difficulties. And then you layer on repeated wake-ups because of vasomotor symptoms and hot flushes and all of these sorts of physical symptoms that affect women at night. And those obviously wake people up, but in the entire context of all the other symptoms that are being experienced, anxiety about being woken up repeatedly at night feeds the sleeping problems. Multifactorial. I was going to say, is that almost a self fulfilling prophecy here? That actually my sleep is disrupted now I'm anxious about the fact that my sleep is disrupted So as the anxiety worsens, the sleep worsens. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. So let's talk about the methodology that you use because we are all fed the idea (and I am probably I'm one of those people spouting off the idea) of sleep hygiene, you know, make sure you have a regular wake time, a regular bedtime, have a wind down towards bed time, magnesium in your bath. Then, you know, like magnesium sprays and warm baths before bed. How much of that is rubbish, how much of that being spouting isn't really helpful?  Or does it help?  Because those aren't your methods actually, are they? Yeah, they are a tiny part of what is considered the evidence-base for working with adult insomnia. So when we're talking about sleep hygiene, sleep hygiene is what we would consider helpful, necessary for some but not sufficient in and of itself. No amount of nice smelling sprays on the pillow or warm baths is going to counteract your anxiety about not sleeping at night. It might help you relax, might feel really nice, but the sleep hygiene tips and tricks don't get into the root of what's feeding the insomnia long term. And that's why we say they're necessary, helpful, but not sufficient in and of themselves. And in terms of the research, sleep hygiene interventions alone are not considered to have any evidence when compared to things that have a lot more evidence. It doesn't mean that your cup of tea in the evening is a negative thing. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't have a hot bath if you enjoy having a hot bath, but what happens is people go online or they get a handout from their GP with all the sleep hygiene tips and tricks in it. They feel like they have done it all because that's the most easy to access information. And they are frustrated because it didn't work, you know, in big air quotes “it didn't work”  as they're still having difficulty sleeping. So it sets off this perpetual search and this perpetual anxiety about finding the answer. And I've had people come to me with literal spreadsheets full of things that they do. Their routines have become so rigid because they have attached a certain order of things and a certainty.  Perhaps a certain spray and I got a good sleep that night when actually it may have nothing to do with it. And then when it quote unquote “stops working”, it fuels that anxiety even more. Interestingly in terms of sleep hygiene and CBTi there are more and more CBTi - I wouldn't want to call them tips or tricks - but basic principles that are creeping into those lists, which is nice to see. But without the context and without doing the cognitive work, the behavioral pieces alone are not always enough either. And I can talk a little bit more about that. Talk about how it all works. I'm just thinking as well, you know, certainly I found for me my sleep hygiene at that surface level isn't always great.  I'm a bit of a night owl always have been. But actually what I do find is even when I, you know, when I put myself into that position where actually I'm going to really focus on getting to bed on time and doing the things like not having backlit lights, that sort of thing. It does help me get off to sleep, but it doesn't stop me waking up at three o'clock in the morning with my head full of stuff and not being able to get back off to sleep again. Yeah. It's a different category of experience. And I have to say that because a lot of people who come to me come after doing online sorts of methods, they have much better sleep hygiene than I do. And they still have sleeping difficulties, you know, they've got a dark room, that room is cool. Now these things, again are not necessarily negative things, unless you start obsessing about them. That's when they actually feed the problem rather than helping with the problem. I think as well, you know, I guess if you've put all of these sort of factors into place and you're having the warm bath you know, you've got your bamboo sheets or whatever else it might be, if it's not working, suddenly that becomes “there must be something fundamentally wrong with me. If I'm doing everything I'm being told to do, and I still can't sleep. What's wrong with me.” Now you've already mentioned CBTi which is the methodology, the system, (I don't know whether that's the right word) that you use to help people.  Talk us through what CBTi is.  I know what CBT is, cognitive behavioral therapy. But if you could do me a favour please and just go through in essence, what CBT is and why CBT for insomnia is your chosen methodology? Yeah, CBTi is my chosen foundation for the work that I do, because it is where there's over 30 years of evidence behind it. It works for over 85% of people for whom it's suited. It's very effective. Unfortunately it's just not that well known and it does get confused with CBT. Are they very different? They are different in the sense that CBTi the behavioral component focuses on both physical behaviors around sleep, as well as mental behavior. So in behavioral sleep medicine and in cognitive behavioral therapy world, we think of thought patterns as behaviors, the mental behaviors.  CBTi works on the physical behaviors around sleep, as well as the mental behaviors around sleep. So somebody comes to me and they're having difficulty with sleeping. Some of the tools that we use for the mental behaviors for the cognitive side, they are very similar and are often drawn from the work that is done with CBT, but we focus exclusively on the thoughts and emotions and feelings behind the sleeping issue rather than more broadly, because that's, for me, that's outside of my scope of practice. But the behavioral pieces that apply to the physical sleep world are usually not things that are ever addressed in CBT for say anxiety or phobias, for example. So there is some overlap but the pieces that don't overlap are more around the behaviors around sleep. So things like not spending nine hours in bed, trying to catch a few minutes of extra sleep when you're able to only generate six hours, because it's a little bit like rolling out a pizza dough. If you only have a six inch blob of dough and you try to roll it out onto a nine inch pizza plate what's going to happen. It's going to get full of holes. It's going to get thin around the edges. It's not going to support what you need to put on top of it. It's a great analogy for sleep. And that sort of thing is not addressed in CBT for things like anxiety. Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. What about this idea that all adults need between seven and nine hours sleep.  I think I now realize that I work best on about seven hours and 15 minutes. Seven hours and 15 minutes I feel great.  If I have less than that, I feel a bit groggy. And if I have more than that, everything aches. , I found that seven 15 is my sweet spot, but we're all so unique and so different is that one of those sort of throw away lines, like 10,000 steps, 7 to 9 hours sleep, what should we be getting? Because cause I think we get hung up on, oh gosh, I haven't had my full seven hours sleep. I'm not going to get through the day when I'm not sure, is that true? Such a good question. So somebody's individual sleep need is genetically determined and there's going to be an optimal amount of sleep for a given individual. Unfortunately, the soundbites are, you know, if you don't get eight hours, you're going to have strokes and all of this other stuff is going to happen to you. And it's just, that's like saying everybody needs to wear a size six shoe. It's just not the case. If you imagine a bell curve, the majority of people say that they feel pretty good in that seven to nine hour range. And really it's not the amount of hours that's the important piece. It's about is whatever sleep you're getting enough for you to feel refreshed and able to do what you need to do during the day. And for some people that might be six and a half hours for some people that might be nine hours and it actually creates problems for people who need less sleep to start searching for more sleep. Oh, tell me more about that. So it is like if somebody has, and I heard the wonderful podcast, can't remember the name of the podcast now, this gentlemen was definitely a perfectionist type personality who created projects out of everything and had been reading that he needs eight hours of sleep. We take this hypothetical person. And he is able to generate six and a half hours but really wants eight because eight is supposed to be the optimum. And this person's always interested in optimizing their life. Well, that's like taking that six hour blob of pizza dough and trying to stretch it out onto a plate that's too big. You actually give yourself insomnia. And in the research world, when they are testing, short-term sleeping medications, they actually induce insomnia in healthy people who don't have sleeping troubles. By having them do things like stay in bed for 12 hours when you can't generate 12 hours of sleep.  Their sleep becomes broken and unhealthy. So how do you know if you're getting enough sleep? That is a very common question. You know, how do I know what my number is?  In the process of CBTi that becomes clear, but if you are falling asleep within 15, 20 minutes but not less than five. If you wake up a couple of times in the night and you fall back to sleep within that same amount of time, 15, 20 minutes. And if you wake up in the morning, feeling refreshed, whatever that number is, is your number. You got to embrace your number and not search for a different one. It's really, important because actually I know there's, there's certainly been times where I felt like I've slept really well but felt exhausted when I've woken up and I'm guessing it's because we go through all these different stages of sleep, light sleep, REM sleep, deep restorative sleep, et cetera. I have a Fitbit that tells me, I have no idea how accurate it is, the levels of sleep that I've been in. How can we, how can we make sure that we're getting to those deeper kind of more restorative levels of sleep? Having good sleep that is satisfying for us, that has a good quality - we'll generate the amount of time that we need in each of these kinds of sleep areas. So people ask me about different kinds of tracking devices. And unfortunately, although they're getting better with are you asleep or are you awake, they're still not great. They're really not very good about what phase of sleep people are in. So people often show me their graph and, oh, I've got like three minutes in deep sleep. What's wrong with me? It doesn't necessarily mean you actually only got three minutes of deep sleep because the brain will generate the sleep that it needs. If you have had a period where you've been extremely sleep deprived, And then you have a really deep sleep and you spend the whole time dreaming and you wake up exhausted because the brain is saying, I need this kind of sleep. So as soon as we fall asleep, I'm going to get all of that sleep. So avoiding as best people can , having things like insomnia, treating sleep apnea etc, that's really important, particularly for women as we get older and our hormones change, those hormonal changes affect more than the skin just above our knees and our wrinkles and things. It affects all of our soft tissues and makes us more prone to sleep apnea, which really destroys sleep quality. And being mindful of things like not too much alcohol that also can destroy sleep quality. If we can get out of the way of our sleep system. it does a pretty good job of giving us what we need. Good. Good. Good. So how does does CBTi look then? What actually happens? Yeah. The first and most important thing when somebody comes to me or any other therapists doing CBTi is that they are screened for safety. So like I was saying, insomnia is just one of many, many different kinds of, of conditions. And some of the interventions that are suggested to some people, when doing CBTi in the beginning can make people more sleepy. If they have another sleep disorder already, that makes them sleepy, they could become unsafely sleepy. So you first get screened for these sorts of things, any untreated or out of control,mental health issues, things that would get in the way of CBTi then what happens typically, at least in the beginning to get a foundation is we do a prospective sleep diary. So we look at what does the sleep actually look like going forward because human beings are not good at necessarily knowing, what their sleep is like on average because we tend to focus on the worst nights. Sometimes looking at diary data over a couple of weeks, it's actually really easy to pick out, you know a statement such as when I have a bad night, it wrecks the rest of the week. Yeah, it doesn't always, and sometimes you can show that to people right. In their data. And in standard CBTi which isn't necessarily appropriate for everybody we want to use the principles and apply them to the person's situation. But we typically do behavioral interventions first because they help reinforce the idea in a person's lived experience that their sleep system is not broken. These interventions typically make people sleepy and the first one is geared around helping create the appropriate size pizza plate for the amount of sleep that someone can generate. This helps deepen someone's sleep quality so that the sleep they are getting, even if it's not enough is a better quality and is more refreshing and restorative. And then we look at behaviors around sleep in the bed that can interfere with people's association with the bed.  Because before we develop sleeping difficulties, we don't think about our relationship with our bed. It's a completely unconscious thing. We get sleepy, we lay down, we fall asleep. So if you have a relationship like that for years and years, and then suddenly your relationship is that sometimes I sleep and sometimes I toss and turn and sometimes I lay here sweating and upset, and sometimes I lay here worrying about what's going to happen tomorrow, or I'm going to have an argument with my spouse, the relationship becomes confused. And so adjusting people's relationship to their bed vis their behavior, whether they're in bed or out of bed, is the second, most powerful thing that we do. And then when someone is feeling a little bit more confident in their ability to sleep, we don't stop there. Even if people are sleeping really well. It's a good idea to not stop there because what hasn't yet been addressed and we begin to address, is why are you terrified of not sleeping in the first place? Because it is the anxiety of not sleeping well after a short-term bout of sleeplessness. The worry about that short-term sleeplessness is what creates the longer-term problem, which is why you can have an incident or an excitement. And then after it passes people still aren't sleeping. So working on all of those cognitive pieces, which is the CBT and the mindfulness Acceptance and Commitment Therapy kind of element does that. It's fascinating because it's so individualized to the person and what their particular worries are. So we would kind of pick through which ones of these are rational and which ones aren't. And how can we reframe how we think about sleep? For example, being up all night can be terrifying for some people, because it's what they're trying “to not do”. And the trying is fed by the fear of being awake. But if we can reframe that being awake one night by looking at actually the consequences, aren't that bad, because look, you never crashed the car and you used to get in arguments with your spouse when you slept well. And you just put these things into perspective. And you're building sleep drive, which will build sleep quality in the long run. You just flip it on its head and look at it differently with the support of somebody who's working with you, it takes that arousal down because it doesn't matter how little sleep you've gotten, usually, or what time of night it is, what time your circadian rhythm is telling you, you know, it's time to not be awake, now you should be sleeping. It doesn't matter how strong those two components of the sleep control system are. If we think of bears coming into the cave and we're responding to sleeplessness, like a bear is coming into the cave, we're not going to be able to sleep. That's why it is so important to kind of see it through and do the mental work and the work with the anxiety. That is how I now can have bouts of sleeplessness that don't turn into yet another insomnia problem, because I'm very neutral now about when I don't get good sleep. When does a disturbed sleep pattern become insomnia? That's a really good question. So according to the big, big textbooks that define insomnia, you want to be waiting three months before it actually gets defined as insomnia. But if somebody has not been sleeping well for a few weeks and has this kind of pattern and this developing anxiety, I'm not going to tell them that they need to wait for three months before they can get some help. I really like the idea of doing this, actually writing a kid's book, teaching children or young adults that after their sleeping has settled back down from their teenage years this kind of sleep disruption is normal and to not panic about it, because we could prevent so much ongoing sleeping disturbance. You know, you go through your life and even if you have a medical condition or if you have pain or if you're having vasomotor symptoms, those things may wake you from your sleep. But if the sleeplessness is like on a 10 scale is like an eight out of 10 and five of it is due to that anxiety, we can reduce that a lot and really help improve people's quality of life. Yeah just for the listeners, I'm sure most people do know, but when you're talking about vasomotor symptoms, we're talking about that sort of internal temperature gauge in the body so leading into hot flashes night sweats, those sorts of things.   Okay. So tell us a little bit more about you and your business? The business is Tracy, The Sleep Coach . So how can people get help from you if they are struggling? There are a variety of different ways that I work. I do run kind of a do it yourself. CBTi based sleep recovery course. I offer one-to-one calls. So I call it a sleep jumpstart call where you get the entire assessment diary and spend a 90 minute call with me and you leave with a really solid plan based on your needs to tackling things from a behavioral point of view and some things around the anxiety piece And then a package that includes some follow-up calls. And usually that's more appropriate if there is quite a lot of sleep anxiety or the issue has been really long-standing. And I do offer a quick start call, which is essentially you can book almost the same day, 30 minute chats. Obviously doesn't have that assessment piece in it. But I guess people find that helpful for, I would've thought just to reassure that actually this is quite normal. Yeah. Yes. I had somebody come to me with a perfectly normal sleep diary once very worried about it taking, you know, 10 minutes to fall asleep on waking up in the night for 10 or 15 minutes. And it was simply a matter of education. But that's actually normal. If somebody is taking less than five minutes to fall asleep, we actually consider that a problem. Okay. Gosh, that's my husband. As soon as his head touches the pillow, and he has been like that for as long as I've known him, I've been talking to him and I'll hear his breathing change. I think, goodness, me, it's only like two minutes since he got into bed. So I guess for him, it's probably his normal if that's the way he's always bee?  Now you've got me worried that he's got a problem haha! Yeah, we can definitely talk about that. In any of the services that I offer one-to-one is that screening for safety. And there's a really simple assessment. And it tends to revolve on how easy is it for you to fall asleep in weird places, what it comes down to. Cause that's more associated with other sleeping disorders. Whereas insomnia is that tired and wired kind of can't nap. I can't fall asleep. I wake up. I had a question in my head and my menopausal brain has just done its normal thing and the question's completely escaped me. What, what was it? I will come back to that.  Okay. So where can people get hold of you? People can find me through my website, www,tracythesleepcoach.co.uk. I'm also on Instagram @Tracythesleepcoach and brand new sparkly slowly growing YouTube channel again, tracythesleepcoach. If you put it in, you'll find me in all of my places. I do run a free Facebook group called Sound Sleep Strategies that is underpinned by the fundamentals of CBTi and there are a lot of video resources in there to help people get started. Brilliant. So you've got your Facebook, your Instagram. Tell me about the course, this DIY course. I guess most of us want a quick fix with everything. It's human nature, isn't it, to want to quick fix which is probably why things like sleeping tablets and all the rest of it are such a go to for a lot of people, I think that certainly for a lot of women in menopause, you know, that that sense of relief. Just, just give me a sleeping pill and now I can get a good night's sleep. How how long does it take to put things right. If that's not too open ended a question and the DIY course that you're talking about how much of this can we do ourselves? Because it sounds like something you would need to work with a therapist. Yeah. So how long is how long does it take to work through? This really is how long is a piece of string? However, People can learn the skills that they need to learn in terms of understanding their sleep patterns, understanding how to adjust their sleep patterns, depending on what their issue is and getting a really good head start on using the tools to help them identify where their anxiety lies and what to do about it within sort of like 6 sessions.  Usually 4 to 6 sessions, depending on how long the sessions are. And that's why the course is geared toward being six weeks long. I'm actually thinking of, of extending it a little bit, but sometimes we have something that goes on too long it's difficult for people to kind of maintain the consistency with it. The Sleep Jumpstart that I offer. It is quite an intensive 90 minutes where we look at all of these things. I explain the fundamentals and give a person a plan, but in that kind of four to six session, four to six week mark people can learn those skills themselves and they can do it themselves. I know a lot of people who've done really, really well learning to apply those fundamentals to their own situation. And then I'm always around to help tailor it if it needs to be further tailored. Yeah. So tell me about the sleep recovery course. Yeah. It it's a 6 week course with a 6 week built in mindfulness component. Mindfulness is what I would put into any program because it helps with that sitting with the anxiety piece. So I think it's really, really important not to just use relaxation techniques, like a hammer on a nail, like, Ooh, I need to fall asleep I'm going to do a relaxation technique.  But because of hyper arousal that feeds insomnia as a 24/7 problem, Mindfulness is a fantastic way for people to really easily practice in their daily life. So I run them in parallel. Each module of the course working through the mental pieces and the physical behavioral pieces has a mindfulness module attached to it. So it goes through a basic sleep education, understanding how the sleep system works and helping people identify where their sleep behaviors may have gone wrong and potentially contributed to the problem. And then we look at the physical environment. So there is a sleep hygiene component to it with a bit of a twist it's all focused on that hyper arousal piece rather than a prescriptive “if you take a bath at this time, that's the best”.  There is kind of more expansive concept of sleep hygiene module. There's a set of modules on understanding what it is that you are thinking and what those fears are. And teaching people how to use the tools. They can dig into their own fears around what and why is it that not sleeping is scary because there's a difference between discomfort and something being scary, but we often pair those things together. So helping people unpair those mental and emotional responses and working with those and then really, how do you not do things like take a six hour blob of dough and try to stretch it out onto an eight hour piece of pizza. And then when you're getting really good sleep for whatever hours that is for you, how do you expand it out until you get the amount of sleep that you need? That's deep in quality, refreshing and allows you to live the life that you want to live and be prepared for future sleep blips. The last module in the course is all about acknowledging that in the future, things are going to affect our sleep. We cannot help that from happening. What we can do is we can be aware of what our patterns are, what we tend to want to do, whether that's going to be a helpful thing for sleep or not. And just reframe how we approach those short-term bouts of sleeplessness. It sounds absolutely brilliant. And I know you're very, very generously offering listeners, a 10% discount on the D I Y course with the code GENX22, which I'll put in the show notes anyway, which is very, very kind. And this has been fascinating. Some of it I can't really relate to because I wouldn't say I have any major sleep issues, I have occasional problems as most women do. But what would be three top tips for someone who maybe doesn't have severe insomnia, but just, you know, wants to have better sleep hygiene if we're allowed to kind of go down that route. Yeah, definitely. The number one tip that I give people I think is particularly pertinent to women who are waking up in the middle of the night is to stop watching the clock and letting the clock tell you how you should be responding the next day to how your day is going to be. We spend a lot of time cycling in and out of, of light sleep and deeper sleep. And that's totally normal. If you wake up one night at three o'clock. For whatever reason. And you look at your watch and you say, oh, M G it's 3:00 AM. nd tomorrow is going to be a disaster. You're accidentally training your safety system to say, oh my, if I'm, if I'm going through one of these lighter phases of sleep, I better wake up and really check that something really scared her and something really upset her. So it leaves you less places to hang any anxiety about waking up in the night. If we don't know what time it is - and to be honest, knowing that you're awake for 47 minutes in the middle of the nigh - it doesn't help your sleep at all. You cannot use that information. So my number one tip is always to stop watching the clocks, take your alarm clock, turn it around, face it away from you. Don't look at your phone for lots of reasons, but particularly for the stimulation of the, of the time piece. The second thing is that no matter how well or poorly you might've slept the night before, if you're having any difficulty at all with sleep, always get up at the same time of day. So pick a time that works for you throughout the week on average, and even in the beginning, even on the weekends in the beginning, get up at a consistent time. This will allow you on nights where you're not sleeping so well to have almost a training effect. Your brain will say, Ooh, I only get this amount of time to sleep I better sleep more deeply and get what I need because she's going to get up and start her day. Having lie ins also can mess with our circadian rhythms and as we get older, our circadian rhythm is going to shift anyway. So it just helps introduce a little less chaos into that, into that picture. Just, just on that so get up at the same time. Are you then therefore saying go to bed at the same time or just, just make sure you have the wake time nailed? So, if someone is sleeping reasonably well, I would say, don't worry about what time you go to bed. Getting up at the same time is a more important piece, but if somebody is not sleeping well, getting up at that, that consistent time, what happens is if somebody is not sleeping well, they may take quite a long time to fall asleep. It doesn't help them to get into bed and lay there and wait for it to happen because usually that creates stress and anxiety, which then becomes associated with the bed. So the correlate to that would be go to bed when you are sleepy enough to fall asleep. Brilliant. And your 3rd one? Don't be in bed if you're not happy to be there. So I've gotten to a place now where I'm very emotionally neutral about when I'm awake in the night. I'm not awake nearly as much as I used to, but life still happens. I still wake up thinking about things,  as long as I'm kind of content and relaxed and feeling neutral about it I stay in bed. It's really advisable if you are laying there tossing and turning fretting worrying, sweating, being upset. that you take those feelings and you bring them someplace else, have them out in the living room. If you can sit in a chair you don't like,  have that experience there. You'll be building sleep drive because you're awake and you're physically active and you will be helping to improve the association with your bed. You take those feelings. Do what you need to do with them. Go back to sleep when you're really sleepy. And it's not like, oh, I did that for two days and it didn't work. It is a retraining process. You're simply saying, look, brain sleepiness bed. Oops, didn't work this time. Let's do it again. Brain, sleepiness, bed, and doing that with consistency can help rebuild that positive association with your bed. And that is actually one of the most evidence-based standalone approaches for all of the tools we have in behavioral sleep medicine, so simple. But I think the idea of getting up when you're absolutely exhausted and you're not sleeping, you're wide awake and your head's spinning, the idea of getting up and going into a different room and doing something different, feels counter intuitive. It feels like, well, I'm never going to sleep if I'm sat up in a chair. Although I must admit, I know I've had times where I've got out of bed and gone down to the living room, sat on the sofa and fallen asleep like that. I've actually had some really good quality sleep on the sofa.  Am I therefore building up other patterns whereby I associate good sleep with the sofa? Such and good point because the caveat to this particular technique, if it's appropriate for somebody is to not surf and fall asleep elsewhere. Because if you have a really angsty relationship with your bed and you've got lots of sleep drive, cause you're not sleeping well and you can't sleep in bed, but you got a lot of negativity there and you go to the sofa and you don't have that negative. And you're already up. So you're not like trying to force yourself to sleep. You're not doing something to try to sleep. Your arousal comes down. That bear leaves the cave and wow you fall asleep. You can actually develop a sleeping association with your bed, with your sofa or your recliner and if that works for people, that's fine. My mother still sleeps on the sofa after 20 years, it works for her relationship. But what happens then is if you decide you want to be sleeping back in your bed, you have two hurdles, you have to tear yourself away from the place you're getting sleep and recreate the sleepiness association with your bed. So what becomes a nice reassuring short-term fix can create longer term problems. Just being really aware of that is real important. . That's really good to know. Now in true menopausal fashion I've remembered what I was going to ask about 10 minutes ago. It always is there. If I just hang around long enough, it normally comes back. I heard a term a little while ago that I'd never come across before, but by God it's me  - sleep procrastination. Have you come across that? I'm sure you probably have. I wrote a feature in The Independent on sleep procrastination! Well, I'd not heard of this. And then I heard a gentleman talk about it on a podcast and I thought I do that! I can be beyond tired sort of midnight with every ounce of my being screaming at me to go to bed. And I will find a dozen different jobs to do-  a little bit more surfing or the end of another Netflix episode. And actually, my husband's the complete opposite. He will walk away midway through a program. Cause his body says it's time for bed. I'm tired. And he'll just say I'm off to bed now. And I'm like, how can you not watch the end of this episode? Talk to me about it? Because it's a real thing for me. And when we're talking about that cognitive behavioral piece, I know that I am sometimes in danger of getting anxious about the fact that I procrastinate about going to sleep. And that makes it worse. Hmm. Yeah. Sleep procrastination is really common and it's on both ends of the spectrum. So sometimes people will wake themselves up prematurely in the morning to have time for themselves or time for certain activity. Some people will stay up later than they should. They're denying themselves sleep opportunity, as we would say, because they are trying to get other things done. And I think people fall into two camps there. The procrastinator camp in general, for whom this is just the thing. Yeah. Lots of other areas as well, to be fair. And in the boundaries issue, because I think a lot of people, particularly women who tend to, for better or worse, take on kind of a caregiving role, we give, give, give, give to other people all day long. And we give to our business all day long and we give to all of these things except for us. And it's the only time where we feel we can go and we're still conscious. Right. And part of us wants that conscious time with ourselves. And I think one of the things that I learned, because this was an issue for me, and it's sometimes an issue for me still is really time-blocking and managing time and boundaries more appropriately so that I can have that time for myself during the day to do the things. It really did help the procrastination piece for me, especially for me as a fellow procrastinator, it weaves its way in to so many different arenas.   I could spend six hours doing two hours of work, but if I'm time blocking, I'm now blocking time for myself at the beginning of the day, in the middle of the day and the end of the day, and stacking those times with myself as habits on the things that I'm already doing. It's like being given a smaller handbag, you have to decide what you're going to put in that handbag. And it helps you choose where you want to put your energy and how you want to direct your energy during that gap. So working on those boundaries and time management pieces will often leave people feeling like they don't need to do that at night, or they don't need to do it in the morning, or at least not so much, but it's a really fascinating phenomenon and it can lead to insomnia in some people because of the worry about not getting enough sleep. What you've just said that around sort of giving too much to the business. You know I work far more hours in the day now that I work for myself, than I did when I was working you know, in my paid job, my employed job. But it doesn't feel like work a lot of the time. I enjoy doing it.  I'm working for myself. It's a blessing, isn't it? But it does bleed out. But actually it does mean, as you say, I don't give myself a huge amount of time for me during the day. And maybe that is why, you know, come the evening when Mark has gone to bed, cause he does generally go to bed before I do, I have this, this time, this block of probably two hours that is just for me. And I guess I'm probably hanging on to it. It's one of those things where, you know, logically I know I should be going to bed, but emotionally I'm clinging on to this time. I haven't really made the connection as I've always been a night owl but I don't think I've ever procrastinated around sleep in this way. Absolutely fascinating. It is a really, really interesting topic. Really interesting. I mean, I would think, well, I want time for myself. I'm going to go knit or something like that, but what do I end up doing? Like, well, let's scrub the stains off the back of the pots, you know, just like weird things like that. I just sit there watching Netflix or scrolling through Instagram. Anyway. Tracy, thank you so much. I think this is a fascinating conversation. I think sleep is one of those things where we really don't, even to this day still don't really know a huge amount about. I do think that we underestimate how important sleep is in our lives. Certainly for me. I know that when my step is disrupted , my stress is higher and when my stress is high my sleep is disrupted. It does seem to go hand in hand. And when we've got brain fog already with perimenopause, actually lack of sleep and stress,don't help with brain fog. So, I think for anybody listening, if you are struggling, genuinely struggling with poor sleep do look Tracy up, Do go and grab her sleep recovery course, even if that's just a foot in the door to get an idea of what all this is about before they come to you for some one-to-one help, . I love the way you explained it all, you make something complicated feel really simple. Well, not necessarily easy, but it's actually very straightforward once you understand how it works. Brilliant. Thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for giving me your time and we will talk to everybody again soon. Thanks for listening guys. Take care.  

How would your friends and family react if you told them you were going to give up your well paid corporate job, at the age of 48, in the middle of a global pandemic, to start a company, without any experience of running a business? Well for my guest today, Katy Walton, the director of the training and coaching company MAKE REAL PROGRESS, that's exactly what she did - and yes, most people thought she'd gone stark raving mad. But despite everything, she's now built a successful and highly respected business delivering creative leadership and talent development solutions and supporting HR and L&D folks to Make Real Progress in their lives and careers through her Facebook Community The Progress Club. You can find out more about the work Katy does by visiting MAKE REAL PROGRESS or if you're in the HR/L&D world why not become a part of her Facebook community at THE PROGRESS CLUB and if you're ready to get Fired Up, here's the link to sign up to Katy's FIRED UP FRIDAY online summit.   Transcript:   Bev and Katy Podcast So, hi Katy do you know what, it's funny, it's been a while since I recorded a podcast with somebody that I feel like I just know so well, so this is just going to feel like you and I having a little conversation, I've already done an introduction, so people know who you are, the formal bit. Tell me a little bit about the informal Katy. Tell me bit about your background. Okay. The informal, Katy, I'm just wondering how informal to go. So my background is learning and development through and through, but it really started 26 years ago now, when I was working abroad in France for a holiday company called Eurocamp, and I'd been a holiday rep for years, and then I'd managed teams of holiday reps out there. I was headhunted to work in the training centre in Paris for Eurocamp and it was such an amazing experience. I got to work with a bunch of, I think there was about 9 or 10 of us altogether, trainers. And we had 180 holiday reps coming every three days into the centre and it was just such an amazing experience. So I got to really come on, if you imagine 180 people every three days And how old were you then? 23. Gosh, that's young isn't it, when I think about what I was like at 23, I I don't think I'd have been confident enough to be leading and teaching teams like that. That's great. Well I wasn't underneath the surface. Here's the funny thing, you know, we'll probably get to talk a little bit more about self-confidence and doubt and everything else, but I, I felt confident leading teams at that age. When I reflect back, I think it was more because I knew less and I had less fear So I just did what came naturally and instinctively and it worked really well. What I've found is, over the years, the more I know about management and leadership, the more I started over thinking some things.  I think there's some benefit really in youth and naivety. I met my husband when I was in Paris, he's English, but we met out in Paris and we spent a couple of years working out in Paris side by side, and I decided to, I think it was along the lines of, I decided not to live out of a rucksack anymore. I wanted to settle down and to put roots down. So I moved back to the UK and I started working for Alton Towers actually in their training department, moving from one leisure organization to another. The focus there was learning and development again, through and through specifically helping leaders and managers to lead well. So it's in your blood, isn't it?  This whole sort of development and helping people to grow and be the best they can be at what they're doing. It's almost like it runs through your veins. Yeah. Do you know what?  I've often thought that as well. And there's been certain times, because I moved from Alton towers to another company then onto Nationwide building society, where I spent most of my career, and I'd often sit and reflect. I had some brilliant career and development conversations with my managers. And they'd often say to me, is it time to look differently? Is it time to look outside of learning and development or outside of HR? And I never wanted to. I've absolutely always had such a passion for learning myself and for helping support others' development. And I remember sitting and thinking, when I stop learning ,when I stop being interested by it. when I stop being passionate about it, that's the time to do something different and I just never have. And that's interesting. It sounds really exciting, actually. It sounds like there's a bit of a party animal in the informal Katy that just loves to tie in Alton towers and Eurocamps. Maybe I can see where the attraction was. So we actually met a couple of years ago while you were still working, before you'd started your business. And really what I want to talk about today is this whole idea of being able to continue to make real progress in your life. And there is a play on words there, which won't be lost on you, but we will get to it in a second or two.  I've watched you move from employee to business owner to developing your own learning and development company and the learning, just your own learning, that I've kind of been a part of that, and it's, it's been a real privilege to kind of grow in our businesses at the same time. And I have to say. I think mentorship is so important in any role in life. And they can come in formal and informal ways. For me, you've definitely been one of those sort of informal mentors. And it's been a bit of a, almost like a two way swap, a bit like a swap shop. We've kind of worked with each other haven't we, but it's been such a joy to watch you move away from the corporate world and into your business and how that's developed and grown. Talk to me a little bit about Make Real Progress, what it is, where the idea came from. And the transition, I guess, what made you want to leave that corporate world that you obviously loved and enjoyed to take that big leap that kind of step out on your own. Where did that come from? Okay. So if I take you back, first of all, to when I was at Nationwide, it was such a huge chunk of my career. 17 years spent there and I transitioned there from delivering training to becoming more of a consultant and business partner where I would work with directors, typically helping them to understand some of the performance gaps and the challenges in their business and use development in a different way. So helping people to stretch their career paths, helping people to think about their performance challenges, helping them to think about developing the talent in their teams as well. And I started to get really, really fascinated in the psychology behind performance and behaviour. And at that time Nationwide very generously funded my training to become an exec coach. I was then working with more senior leaders in the organization and the more I worked with them and the more that I understood that a lot of the challenges that the leaders were facing were around their own mindset and their own confidence levels, the more I realized that that was holding a lot of people back, the more I started to think about some simple creative ways that I could help people to move forward and make real progress both in that their day jobs and in their own mindset and their confidence. And so I started thinking about how I could then support people to make real progress myself. At that point, I wasn't necessarily looking to set up my own business, but I'd started to sow the seeds that just started growing and growing and growing. And from Nationwide, I moved to a company who were more local to me. As much as I loved working at Nationwide, I live near Peterborough. Their head office is in Swindon and I was spending so much time on the road, away from home. So there was a real pull for me, first of all, to be closer to home, to be closer to my family. Then when I moved over to Peterborough, I suddenly realized that there wasn't really a local community nearby. Years before I'd volunteered for the CIPD (charted Institute of personnel and development). And I volunteered to help run local events. After I'd moved away the other volunteers had stopped as well or needed to be drawn away for different reasons. So there was no local HR or learning and development forum or group or opportunity for people to connect. So I kind of tied two ideas together. One was the fact that if I wanted to set up my business in future, I needed to know people who were local. And the second was, I had an abject terror of networking. I hated the word network. I hated the thought of networking and it filled me with horror. So I thought, one of the ways that I could get over that is to take a bit of control by setting up a networking group and cause, you know, it's easy, if you're setting up a networking group, people know who you are and people will come to you. And I found that so much more comfortable. So I worked with a woman I know who you know well, Nicki Mawby, and we co-founded our first HR networking group, HR connect over coffee. And that's where I got to know you. And then what happened? So you're still working at this point. I know that's where you were running HR connect out of the organization that you were working for,. What pushed the button? Ah, okay. So what pushed the button for me to set up my own business was really a strong desire to take control and to have autonomy and freedom to do the things that I wanted to do. I like to think I'm pretty creative in the way that I run my development workshops and programs for people. And basically, I waned to do what gave me real energy and joy and what had happened in my last role is that I'd had another promotion. and I was spending my time formulating the strategy and doing strategic workforce planning and things that are very important to the business, but they weren't things that gave me joy and passion and energy. So what I really wanted to do, that seed that had planted when I was at Nationwide, then grew and grew and I thought, you know, I could set up my own development and coaching business and I could do things my way and focus on things that gave me energy and passion and joy. So that's really where it started and it was roundabout the start of lockdown when things started to move quite quickly. And of course, when we went into that first period of lockdown, it gave lots of people lots of opportunity to stop and reflect and think about “what do I really want, what do I really want from life? What do I really want from my career?” And for me, that was the real turning point. Yeah, I love the word turning point. Of course you and I worked together last year on a program called turning point, which was very much about midlife women reaching a turning point in their life. It's interesting that you've, you've segued beautifully into my next question, which is, in the world that I'm in, I talk a lot about menopause, that midlife transition. How much do you think of that transition for you was about reaching a turning point, that mid-life turning point? Do you think your menopause transition had anything to do with that decision making or had you not made that connection? Do you still not make that connection? I hadn't made that connection at the time. In retrospect, there may be something about the fact that, you know, with the perimenopause that I was experiencing there may well have been a connection, but I certainly didn't make it at that time. All I knew was that I wasn't feeling as fulfilled as I could be, and I just wanted to make a change. I suppose if we're talking about a midlife transition, there was part of me that was thinking, how many more years have I got in the workplace? How many more years will I be relevant? And if I don't do it now, will it be too late? If I leave it another 8, 9, 10 years, for example, It's an interesting word relevant. Talk to me about that. Over that first lockdown, I also grew out the dye in my hair and I've been really dark for a number of years. And I think there was probably something about confidence and letting my hair dye grow out and a shift in my identity thinking if I'm perceived as being older, will that be a benefit or will people gravitate more toward people who are younger and I suppose in my mind, stereotypically more, more energetic. I don't know, but here's the interesting thing, Bev I spent years and I mean literally years when I was younger, looking at a colleague of mine. I won't name her just in case, but looking at a colleague of mine. And I remember so clearly she looked like she had everything under control. She felt so warm and wise, and I thought, you know, I can't wait until I have that much maturity and age and experience behind me because I knew that inside, I thought I'd have more gravitas. So isn't it quite interesting. I hadn't made this connection before really. But thinking back when I was younger, I'd wanted that maturity. And then as I was becoming more mature, I was thinking am I still going to be relevant. That's quite interesting. Yeah. It is a weird juxtaposition isn't it.I, I think certainly found that the year or two before I resigned and started my business, there was definitely an identity crisis going on. It's funny that you don't always see these things until you look back in retrospect, I definitely had an identity thing going on. So let's talk about the actual transition, cause it's quite a brave move to make. Do you mind me asking how old you were when you made the jump? I'm trying to remember how old I was. 48. Okay. Yeah. So I was 52 you were 48, so it's quite a courageous move. Isn't it. To make a big life change. At any time in your life, to be honest at any time. So what were the challenges? What did you find difficult? There were a couple of really practical challenges. Number one, my husband is self-employed as well. So I think I told myself a story for a few years about the fact that it would be too difficult to manage having two sets of unpredictable income. Our children are still living at home with us and I had to have an income. There was no two ways about it. So I couldn't afford for a business not to work. that was kind of my first challenge, deeply practical. The second was well, I suppose if I can just go back to the start of COVID when I'd first started setting up my business, I'd reduced my working days down to four in my previous role. I'd been very open about the fact that I was starting up my own business. And my first focus was actually working as an associate for other people. And that had been my intent for a good couple of years, to work as an associate and grow my experience that way.  It felt like a nice little stepping stone into self-employment. However, what had actually happened during COVID is all of the associate work that I had in the diary, which was all face-to-face, it all cancelled out one after the other. And a lot of people I was working as an associate for had made the decision that they wanted to remain face-to-face, they didn't want to transition into training virtually. So it felt like I had a decision to make. If I go ahead and I set up my own business and I start, I'm going to have to generate my own business. I'm going to have to build a business rather than act as an associate, because otherwise I don't have control about whether work comes my way. So it did feel like quite a big leap to make, going from I'm leaving work to become self-employed to I'm leaving work to set up my own development and coaching business. So I had to make that shift quicker than I originally planned. And that scared me witless Bev, if I'm honest. And I know you probably know a lot of it because we had a lot of conversations. You were brilliant at the time. When we were talking about informal mentorship, you are just absolutely up there for me as one of the most helpful people that I've ever had the pleasure to know and work alongside. Let me take this opportunity to thank you for your mentorship. Thank you. That, that means such a lot. So, so there were practical difficulties? Actually, that was one area that wasn't such a big challenge for me because my husband was in the air force we had an income from his pension as he left the air force. So actually I didn't have that financial pressure, but it's interesting so for me, what it meant was I don't think I had that feeling of pressure , what is it they say, it's under pressure that diamonds a formed isn't it. And I don't think I had that pressure. So it's taken me longer to build my business out, but I can see that, you know that drive to pay the mortgage, you know, the kids have still got to have food on the table and shoes on their feet… sounds like a Dickensian novel. Doesn't it? So that pressure, how did you put that pressure into energy, I guess, to drive you forward? Okay, well, it's, you know, actually, again, looking back that pressure was quite helpful because I knew that I had to make it work. And so I was keen to explore every single opportunity I could. To make sure it worked. And yeah, it led me to have lots of conversations with lots of people to figure out as quickly as possible the things that I needed to know that I didn't know. So things like how to build out a website, . How to do my finances and some of the really deeply practical things that you have to do when you're setting up a business. One of the things that scared me witless was things like tech and It support because although I'm fairly tech savvy, I'd always relied in the corporate world on IT support. I knew that I could always pick up the phone. I mean, normally they'd tell me to turn it on and off again, and that would fix it, but there was always somebody there to help. And I think that was one of the most frightening things for me. Upfront thinking, can I do it all on my own? Can I figure it out? Am I able to do all of this? So that was another challenge and barrier that I had to overcome. And I quickly realized, no, I can't do it all on my own, but what I can do is connect in with people who are friends who can support. I found that it was a balance at the beginning between wanting to learn, because I do think you have to kind of understand it, even if you don't necessarily need to know all the nuts and bolts of how these things work. If you're going to be getting somebody else to come in and help you with it, you need to have an understanding of the art of the possible. Otherwise you're likely to be asking for the impossible. Or, it would be very easy, wouldn't it to be taken advantage of, if you haven't got a clue about, you know, you're paying somebody by the hour, you want to know roughly how long that task is going to take them. So you don't get duped . So you had the tech struggles. you had the financial struggles or financial worries, I guess, concerns. What other sort of challenges did you have? Well, I think one of the big ones is trying to match up is what I want to offer out to what people actually want and need. So there was so much before I left, and when I first started out, that was in research phase, talking to so many people to find out who are the people who I want to help, are the people who want help the people who I want to help and do the people want what I want to offer. I had so many conversations. My diary was filled with conversations, virtual coffees mainly, with people to pick their brains, to find out information. I also spent a lot of time volunteering, offering out my help and support in a variety of different networks because well, two fold, First, I'd always liked to share, help, support and share information with others. And two, it really helped me to understand the market and understand what it was that people were struggling with, what they were finding difficult and challenging. And then I could then match that up with my energy and my passion and what I wanted to deliver.. Brilliant. Now you said earlier that you hate networking. I know that for both you and I, one of our first clients was actually people we'd worked for before.  How important do you think it is to tap into your existing network? And, if I use exploit, I don't mean in a negative way, but in the truest form, exploit that resource that we've got, how important do you think that is? And is it something that we should pursue? I think first and foremost relationships are king and anybody who's thinking about setting up a business, just think relationship first, before anything else, that was always been my ethos. And it's always served me well, when I think relationship first, What it means is picking up the phone to have a chat with somebody to find out, genuinely, how are they doing  and what's going on for them at the moment? And if there's a need that arises and emerges from that conversation. Brilliant. So the way that I've leveraged my network, I suppose, has been through maintaining genuine relationships with them. And for me, that's fundamental. I don't appreciate nor ever have appreciated in the past, cold selling, hard selling or anything like that. And that's how I feel going forward. I want to build relationships with people, connect with people, see how I can help and support them. So we've talked a lot about the practical elements of getting settled into this new, new identity as business owner.  And I was going to be a bit facetious there and I hope it lands well. How do you feel about becoming this sort of business mogul that you're turning into. Ha, actually it took a long time for me to even talk about myself as being self-employed. And then when I became a limited company, trying to call myself director for the first time. I know. Did you want to laugh? As you said it, I used to find myself wanting to giggle because it felt so far from me. So let's talk about what's going on inside the head then, because we've talked about the practical stuff. What about the mindset stuff? What did you have to work through? Not least of which calling yourself director, what else did you have to go through? I think you were spot on when you were talking about courage earlier, because it's not about having the confidence to do it because you can only have the confidence in something that you've already done and experienced and you know that you've got confidence going forward. It takes courage to leap out into the unknown. So for me, it was about making sure that, I suppose the practicalities did come into play, because I wanted to make sure that I felt safe enough to say, right, I've got four months' grace before I'd need to have some income. So I set myself goals and targets of what I would need to do, how many people I might need to speak to, what products I might need to develop and everything else so that I could be pretty sure that I would meet my target at the end of four months. But the confidence, I suppose, the confidence wasn't an issue per se, because. I'm so used to speaking with people, I'm so used to doing the development and doing the coaching and delivering it. I don't have any qualms in that sense. It was more “Should I stay, should I go” and having to really think through what are the consequences and the benefits of staying in a corporate role? Because it's safe?  Not what I want to do versus what are the potential payoffs? So I had to really do an awful lot of convincing myself that I wouldn't let down my family, that I wouldn't let myself down. And yeah, I guess it was that more than anything else. So a lot of self-coaching going on a lot of, sort of, a lot of self coaching and being coached by other people alongside. And it does make a difference doesn't it, having somebody there to almost act as a cheerleader? I think for me, that's something that's been so important, surrounding yourself with people that actually want to see you succeed because quite a few people I think, fall into the trap of mixing with people who haven't got your ambition, or haven't got your vision and we put a lot of store in the voices of people that we care about when. They're not always the best people to drive us forward though, are they? Absolutely because they might have concerns for you for whatever reason, that are perhaps a bit misplaced at times. I cannot tell you how many people reacted in the same way when I said to them, I know it's during COVID and during lockdown and lots of people are feeling really uncertain, but I'm actually leaving a safe, well-paid corporate role to set up my own business. And without hesitation, every single person looked shocked and horrified and went blimey you're brave, which really felt like they were saying, are you crazy? You're doing it now right now in the middle of a pandemic?? So it didn't feel like an awful lot of people were really rushing out with the support to say, yes, absolutely. It's the right time. It's the right place. You can absolutely do this, but I think it was genuinely coming from a place of people not wanting to see me hurt or fail or whatever. Yeah, just when you say it out loud, I'm just going to give up this really good career that I've got to potentially not make any money in an area I'm not really certain about. I mean, you, you obviously were certain about your trade, there's no doubt about that. But actually, one of the things I really learned very early on was that being good at what you sell is not good enough, now you've got to be able to sell it, but actually selling it, marketing it, getting out there and meeting the people, doing the groundwork, building the audience. That's the bit I didn't know, that that's the bit I had to learn really, really quick. And it is quite a steep learning curve. Isn't it? There's so much that's done for you in the corporate world that you don't realize, you know, and yes, there was all of that. There was the, the creativity element. So I am naturally creative, but translating that into how do I want my brand to look and feel? And what does good look like when I'm putting something together? What does great look like? How, how do I engage with people. How do I bring people into my world? How do I raise their awareness about what I offer? And that's all on top of the other things that we've talked about, the, you know, the finances and everything else. And how do you take all this new tech, which I've never experienced before? Because in the corporate world, I was really quite limited . How'd you learn all of these new systems. How do you work out how they integrate, how do you work out what to leverage and then how do you form your strategy as a business owner? It's not enough just to go out there and think, well, I'm going to have a few conversations with someone and deliver some training. You have to then start thinking a year, three years, five years ahead. And I had people asking me. What's your exit plan? What's your end goal? And I was thinking, I haven't even, yeah, I haven't thought beyond my first year and in all honesty, my only goal for that first year was to replace my salary and that felt like such a stretch goal for me. I didn't want to think about anything else about, you know, the why's and wherefores and how I would do it. So I gave myself that first year to really play and experiment and find out what I really enjoyed, what people wanted with the aim of replacing my salary in the year. I think you and I both did a similar thing. We kind of threw the net quite wide from the start I don't know how much of that for me was I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do, or I was just a bit like you ,kind of a broad creative mind. I think I couldn't see what it needed to look like. So I was trying everything. And that in itself was quite problematic. It was a double-edged sword actually, because what it did, it exposed me to lots of different opportunities, new ideas, but at the same time, it meant that I was not focused on any one thing. If you were to give somebody else, some advice, maybe if they were looking to start their own businesses as a midlife woman, would you condone doing the same sort of thing, spreading the net wide and seeing what catches or would you come at it more from a right, ok I'm only going to focus on these one or two things and I'm going to work hard at them. Which way would you go? That is such a good question. And I don't even know what I would do if I did it again, because I see real pros and cons for either. So the massive pro that I see when you're specializing is that very quickly, you become known as the expert in your field. So people seek you out. You become the person that in other conversations, people say, oh, right, okay, menopause awareness, you need to speak to Bev, for example. You become known for that niche and that gives you a golden opportunity to be able to really focus on your messaging and everything else. However, that said, if you don't know what that one thing is, if you're not crystal clear on that one thing it really pays to kind of test things out and experiment. There've been a couple of things that I thought this is going to be a no brainer. This is going to fly off the shelf and it didn't have the success levels that I thought it might do. So I'm really pleased I tried out a lot of different things, cause that gave me some real clarity and insight into what I think people do want and need going forward. I mean, I could be wrong, but you're absolutely right. It does present a challenge because if you're looking at offering out three or four things people may not want to work with you as much because they may not perceive you as an expert in such a way. And it becomes very difficult to clearly articulate to people this is what I do And possibly more importantly, this is who I do it for. I think that's sometimes a bit of the puzzle that's lost as well. I think there's also a danger that if we pigeonhole ourselves into, into too narrow a bracket to begin with, first of all, can we really be absolutely clear that we're offering something that other people want.  And I think that I've certainly been fixated on this in the past where I've had a great idea, great product idea, or service idea. But I actually haven't tested the market. So it's great in my head but I haven't got a clue if anybody actually wants it or not. And the other thing that I fell into and I don't know if you relate to this, I guess you've got that push or pull. I was pushing stuff that other people may not want, but also I was being pulled towards directions, probably being led by the money if I'm honest, that I've actually fundamentally just not enjoyed doing it. Then I've looked at what I'm doing and thought, do you know what, why am I doing this?  I don't enjoy it. This is not what I went into business to do. Why am I doing this? I dunno if you, can you relate to that? Absolutely, I think that certainly is something that I've experienced over the last year. You know, I talked to about energy and passion and joy. There's definitely some things that haven't given me so much energy, passion, and joy, but again, it's been a brilliant learning experience because now I know what I'm passionate about and what I would like to work on and who I would like to work with. It's much easier now to say no, it was really hard at the beginning. Like you said, there's a fear fear factor. So going back to the fact that I needed to get some money and some income in, I was saying yes to things because it was a paying job. And I think I had in my mind, if you're self-employed, if you have your own business, you have to take on anything that you're offering. Because that's how you're going to be successful. And actually what I found is that it would take me three times as long to complete a piece of work, whether that was the design or admin for it or whatever, it would take me three times as long for the thing that I wasn't really fully on board with, because I didn't want to do it. So I was kind of forcing myself to do it and I thought this isn't why I've gone into business. And surely it makes much more sense to focus on the areas that I know that I can deliver. I really want to deliver well. And you do it very well. Thank you Now, then. The Progress Club. Yes. Talk to me about The Progress Club. I'm a part of it so I don't want to, you know, I don't want to steal your thunder by telling people what it is. I'd like your take on what The Progress Club is. And also what The Progress Club Plus is all about please. Okay. So I've mentioned to you about the fact that I used to volunteer for the CIPD to run events. And then I set up an HR connect over coffee networking group, as well. During lockdown, I realized that the HR connect networking group was face-to-face and it was quite local to Peterborough and Cambridge area. What I really wanted to do was to help people connect virtual. And I saw a real opportunity. There's plenty of networking groups online for HR professionals, and there's a couple of really good ones for learning and development professionals as well. But what I saw a a real opportunity was for people who were either in HR roles or moving into L and D roles to help them really think about how they can develop themselves to develop others. And that's what The Progress Club is all about. So primarily for HR and L and D folk, but it's all about developing them to develop others. So some of it is really practical things. Like how to put a decent PowerPoint deck together. Or some of it may be on confidence, mindset. Some of it might be really practical around how to run a really good challenging conversation session. The idea behind The Progress Club first and foremost is, it's a community and it's over on Facebook. And the idea is that people can connect and talk and ask questions and help and support each other out. And I've been building that for about a year and a half. And I think there's around 1300 people in the community at the moment. And in all honesty, I love running it. It's one of the things that really gives me joy because I've certainly benefited myself from other people's ideas and input and everything else. But I also, as I mentioned earlier, I love sharing my experience. I've benefited massively over my career from the learning and development that was invested in me. Not everybody has that opportunity. So I want to make sure that we're helping people who have got to develop others as part of their role, helping support them so they can do it to the best of their ability. Brilliant. And it is a great community. I'm a part of The Progress Club and it's just the most generous community. You know, everybody is so willing to share and give and very, it's a very respectful, I think that that's probably one word I would use for, it's a very respectful community, but you're taking it a step further forward. Aren't you? With the Progress Club Plus, which is a paid membership. What is the difference and what are the benefits of being a member of the paid community. Well, first and foremost, people who are already members of the progress club were connecting with me and messaging me to say, how can I work with you on a one-to-one basis? But a lot of what they were asking for was quite similar in nature. And actually for some people, they couldn't necessarily afford to have an external trainer come in and deliver. They just needed some help and support to to be able to design and deliver things themselves. So The Progress Club Plus is a deeper dive. So. In The Progress Club I'm sharing ideas and hints and tips and so on. And in The Progress Club Plus I'm going to be running monthly workshops for people on monthly theme topics. So the first one we've got is influence and impact. And the second one we've got is coaching. So yeah, I'll be running monthly workshops, there's going to be guest experts coming in, doing sessions. And the sessions are going to be a mix. Things that I think would be really interesting based on people I've heard speak, and also things that they really need right now that maybe I don't have a specialism in. And in addition to that, we're going to have fortnightly collaboration sessions that I'm quite excited about because they're going to take various different forms.  One fortnight the session maybe on group coaching or hot seat coaching. So really helping somebody to move forward on something that they're stuck on. Another one might be a coworking session where we set our intentions at the beginning of an hour, and we work in silence together, but know that each other's there and then come back together to really help get a sense of community,  And other sessions maybe idea generations or hackathons or creativity sessions. So. Lots of opportunity, really, to be shaped by the founder members who join us. And that launches when? Launch is the 21st of January. Doors are opening on the 21st of January, only open for 10 days until the 31st of January for this time round. And the membership itself starts on the 1st of February. Fantastic. Well, I'll get the links from you to register.  Is there a wait list? Yeah, there is a wait list and there's quite a number of people on the waiting list at the moment. And then from the 21st of January, I will be flinging the doors open with some great bonuses as well. So if people know that they really want to join, if they sign up in the first 24 hours or 48 hours, they'll get additional bonuses as well. Brilliant. And actually people can come along and get a taste for you and how you deliver and some of the experts that you might bring in,at an event that you've got later this month as well haven't the?  Talk to me about Fired Up Friday. Oh, okay. So fired up Friday. This came about in October, as we were just heading into the winter and I was thinking ahead to January and how I often get to January and it's such a long and gloomy month. So I wanted to give a day of focus and inspiration. I've gathered together 12 different people, all talking broadly on the topic of development in very, very different ways. It's a free online session. People can register and sign up to either one session, two sessions, or all of the sessions, all 12. Give us a flavour of some of the guests. Okay. So I've got some people who are working in house. There's a guy called Dan Bass. He's second up. He was a senior leader in the last organization that I worked for and I loved working with Dan on projects. He was brilliant. Sharing his views, sharing his perspective, being incredibly supportive and really focused on the development of his team. So he's going to be coming along, sharing some stories about how you can help as a leader, develop a culture of learning outside of HR. Then I've got the brilliant Dr. Andy cope. Who's coming along. He's phenomenal. I've seen him speak a number of times. I had the pleasure of sharing a stage with him as well. He's going to be talking about the art of being brilliant. So his company's all about how you can be your brilliant best self. He will bring a huge ray of sunshine. And let me pick out also Cat Hase who's going to be in the afternoon. She's going to be talking about bringing creativity and fun into your learning  helping you become more innovative, more creative in your approach It just sounds fab. I'm gutted that I can't join you, but I will be sunning myself in, Mallorca, unfortunately. Well, assuming I can get the flight out there. You couldn't make it up, but the apartment we were meant to be staying in had a rockfall and a big boulder burst through the wall of the apartment. So we've got to get a different accommodation. And then of course, with the whole COVID thing, they've changed our flights. Arghh.  It will happen. It will happen, but it does mean that I won't be able to get Fired Up Friday. However, I will put the link to register to in here too. Thank you. Well, I'm really, really pleased because I think ultimately all of the speakers want to give something back to people, they all recognize what it's like in January. And they've all just got that personal dose of brilliance that they're going to be bringing. And it's quite a challenge that I've set for people. They've got just 20 minutes. So each speaker is going to be joining on the hour or on the half hour between 10:00 AM and 4:00 PM. And they're going to have basically just 20 minutes to get us fired up and ready to grow. No, I love that. Whenever I get asked to do a short talk, I find it so much harder to prepare for than a longer one, because you know, you've got a short amount of time. You're going to make every word count. I just know it will be absolutely fantastic. Katy, just before we sign off, what I would really love you to do is give me three bits of advice, I guess your three top tips for any woman wanting to move out of corporate and into the self-employed world. From your perspective, I know you don't profess to be a business coach, so I'm not asking you to do that, but just your personal top three tips from your own experience, what would they be? Okay, well, number one, without question build you network.  It doesn't have to be networking, but connect with people, talk to people, build relationships, and build genuine relationships with people. Not because you want to be able to pick their brains on an ongoing basis, but because you're genuinely interested in them. So build your network is number one. Number two. Is thinking about the opportunities that are available to you. It's entirely likely if you're a midlife woman that you've got a stack of experience behind you. So what you've done in your corporate career, you've had a corporate career up until now. It doesn't necessarily have to be the thing that you use going forward. I just think we've got so much experience that we can bring to the table. And when we start looking for those opportunities, you'll find that there's more than you ever thought. And the third one is build your courage muscles. So it's likely that you are going to be feeling a little bit nervous, apprehensive beforehand, but find small things that challenge you and take small steps, build your courage muscles over time. You don't have to think, right I'm stopping right now. I'm making a leap. But you can challenge yourself in small ways. For example, it could be, if you were setting up a development business, it could be to become a speaker at a number of different places that fill you with nerves and apprehension, but do something to build your courage muscles, because the more proof and evidence that you've got that you can do it and you can succeed the more likely you are to feel confident in your abilities going forward. Absolutely. Couldn't agree more. We need to get together for coffee again soon. Absolutely we do. When I get back from holiday. Thank you so much for your time. Good luck with fired-up Friday. I know it will be absolutely brilliant. I would definitely encourage anybody to go and join The Progress Club if you're in the L and D or HR world and good luck with The Progress Club Plus I know it will be amazing. Thanks very much, Katy. Thanks for having me and see you soon.  

Have you ever wondered why it's so much more difficult to lose weight and get fit over 40 than it was in your 20s and 30s? That's because the strategies you've used in your 20s and 30s simply don't work for women in their 40s and beyond.  Our hormones are changing, our stress response is changing and as such our previous strategies might actually make it even MORE difficult. In today's episode I'm chatting with Rob Birkhead who is an expert in the field of health and fitness for women over 40. Rob is co-founder of TRINITY Transformation and the UK's #1 Health Coach for professional women over forty. He is an expert in sustainable weight loss for women across the areas of exercise, nutrition and mindset, with over a decade's experience working with over 6,500 clients internationally. He's also just released his first book Fit Over 40 for Women which lays out exactly why those old strategies won't work and may actually be adding to the difficulties, but also guides you through what does work and how to implement more effective strategies. He's also offering my listeners a FREE copy of his book.  Simply opt in to receive Trinity Transformation's  daily motivational tips and emails and Rob will send you your personal copy in time for Christmas.  Use this link to get your copy Just a quick reminder that my own book The Business of Menopause A Guide for Working Women is available on Amazon and from all high street bookstores.

Do you struggle with midlife weight gain?     Maybe you've been in a constant seesaw of diets where you've lost weight, gained weight, lost weight and gained weight.   It can feel like all you ever think about is food - then comes a cycle of pleasure followed by guilt, followed by pleasure, and then more guilt.  And the horrible cycle continues.   What if it was NEVER about the food?   What if you could actually change your thinking and break the 'on the wagon, off the wagon' cycle of dieting?   Well, that's exactly what my guest Tanja Shaw helps midlife women over 50 to do.       In today's episode Tanja and I chat about how we can break unhelpful patterns of thinking and get beyond the BS diet fads and obsession that often keep us tied to emotional eating and stop us leading the best life we can.   Tanja is the host of The Fit and Vibrant You podcast where she shares tips and tools to help women to be, well, fit and vibrant!!  It's well worth a listen if you're wanting no-nonsense, no-fluff, down to earth and actionable steps to get in shape.   Here's a bit more about Tanja and how you can connect with this gorgeous lady.   Tanja Shaw is a sought-after life and weight loss coach, host of the Fit and Vibrant You Podcast, founder of Ascend Fitness + Lifestyle, a holistic health coaching studio in Chilliwack, BC, and Fit + Vibrant Over 50. Tanja has built a credible reputation for helping 1000s of women get to their happy, healthy weight permanently, naturally and without the obsession so that they can LIVE their life.Tanja, her husband Keith, and their son Jacob live in Chilliwack, BC, about an hour outside of Vancouver Canada. She loves being active outdoors, such as running, hiking, paddle boarding, mountain biking and camping. She also loves a good cup of coffee and glass red wine.   Instagram: @tanja_shaw, Facebook: facebook.com/tanjashaw, Fit + Vibrant Women's Community: www.tanjashaw.com/join  

My guest today is financial planner Steph Smith.   Steph helps women to improve their financial wellbeing through a blend of regulated financial advice and coaching. In today's episode we're discussing the cultural and mindset barriers that can often leave women feeling under confident when it comes to taking control of their financial wellbeing as well as Steph's tips for taking back some of that control through education and planning. Steph mentions a few resources that can help including the UK Government's State Pension Calculator  and also the UK Government's Pension Tracing Service. If you want to find out more about the work Steph does or join one of her upcoming Wine, Women and Wealth Webinars, you can follow her on Facebook at Stephanie Smith FP. Steph is also going to be sharing regular tips and financial guidance in my Facebook Group YOUR BEST MIDLIFE where you'll also be joining a community of fabulous midlife women taking control of their health, wealth and menopause who simply refuse to let age define them.   NOTE - please note in the episode I refer to Steph as an Independent Financial Advisor which is incorrect.  She is a partner with St James' Place.

If you ever find yourself getting overwhelmed dealing with 'stuff' that isn't even your stuff, then chances are you've got a boundaries problem. If you find yourself saying yes when you really want to say no, then getting angry and resentful at being taken advantage of, then chances are you've got a boundaries problem. If you find yourself weighed down by other people's problems all of the time, then chances are you've got a boundaries problem. In this episode I'm sharing 3 tips that have helped me to get better at upholding my boundaries. They're simple, but like anything to do with changing habits, they're not necessarily easy.  But, the more you use them the better you'll get. I'll be sharing why you need to let go of some of the rocks, learn how to say a positive 'no' and figure out what will or won't 'make your boat go faster'! If you enjoy what you hear, why not come and join me in my Facebook community Your Best Midlife  where we share more hints, tips and tricks to help YOU  live your best midlife.  

Sadly when I ask the question 'what comes to mind when you think of menopause' many of the women I speak to use really quite sad and negative language.  Washed Out.  Over the Hill.  Miserable.  Past It.  Old.  Dried Up. I really want to try and change the mindset around how we approach menopause, and getting older in general. So in this Gen X Shorts episode I'm sharing my own thoughts on how to create a more positive mindset so we can feel more in control and enthusiastic about our next chapter rather than dreading it. As a coach I know the power of mindset on our quality of life and the decisions and choices we make.  The good news is, our mindset is not fixed and we can change the stories we tell ourselves to get a much better outcome.  I hope you enjoy this episode.  Let me know your thoughts on getting older.  Positive and Exciting or Negative and Fearful?

Recently menopause specialist GP and menopause education advocate Dr Louise Newson, who runs the My Menopause Doctor website, surveyed over 5000 women to find out their experience when it came to get a diagnosis of menopause.  The results are quite shocking and also pretty saddening especially for the women who were left waiting often for years simply to get confirmation that what they were dealing with was menopause. You can read further details of Dr Newson's study here. But today I wanted to share some of her findings and also share 10 myths to listen out for from your own GP if you're trying to get a diagnosis of whether or not you're in your menopause transition. And when it comes to educating women in the workplace, maybe ask you HR department if your organisation does anything to support working women through their menopause transition - maybe they have a menopause policy or offer up training.  But if they don't you might want to ask them why not.  And point them in my direction so I can help educate them as to why they would do well learn more. You can find out more about the work I do with businesses at my website www.florescotraining.co.uk Enjoy the episode and I'd love you to share with me in the comments your own experience of getting a menopause diagnosis.  Was it easy or did you have to jump through hoops?

One of the questions I get asked frequently by managers is 'how do I put a risk assessment in place to cover the menopause?'. I'm not a H&S expert, but I know a man who is.   I'm joined today by H&S expert and podcaster Colin Nottage who hosts the award winning Interesting Health & Safety Podcast, and is the owner of IMG, a health and safety training and consultancy firm based in the East Midlands. Colin is also the co-founder of a Health and Safety 'mastermind' group called 'Project Mollitiam' whose objective is to empower occupational health, safety, wellbeing and risk professionals to unleash their true potential and create better workplaces. Colin has a refreshingly pragmatic and human focused approach to health and safety and he brings to our conversation his extensive expertise and a genuine feeling of empathy to what is often seen as a dry, sometimes sterile topic. If you'd like to find out more about the work Colin does you can connect with him on LinkedIn. And if you'd like to know when my next free Introduction to Menopause in the Workplace is going to be, drop me a line at bev@florescotraining.co.uk and I'll let you know when the dates are confirmed.

My guest today is Julie Randall, a Female Empowerment Coach and Domestic Abuse Trainer and the owner of 'Enlivened' coaching and training. 1 in 4 women will be affected by domestic violence during their adult lives. In the past 12 months over 500,000 working women in the UK experienced domestic violence and abuse. These shocking statistics, as well as Julie's own personal experience of domestic abuse, have propelled her on a mission to help support survivors of domestic abuse by providing a safe space to talk through what they've gone through with someone who not only understands but who can also help them to develop the courage, self-belief and strength to rebuild their lives and thrive. Julie is also committed to supporting businesses to understand the impact and scale of domestic abuse on their employees and to help them to support and signpost those affected to get the help they need. During this episode both Julie and I share some of our own experiences of domestic abuse and how we rebuilt our lives, in the hope that those listening will be reassured that there is always a way out, however hard it may seem. If you would like to contact Julie you can find her on Facebook, LinkedIn and soon on her website which is currently under construction.  

How confident are you that your business, or the organisation you work for, would be on the winning side of an employment tribunal if one of your employees took action for menopause discrimination? Were you aware that menopause discrimination was even a thing, or that tribunals have been won where employers have unfairly treated someone because they were going through menopause? In this Gen X Shorts episode (that means it's just me and no guest) I'm sharing with you some cases where the employer has fallen short of their obligations with regard to equality and have paid the price at Tribunal. I'm also sharing some ways you can put in place measures to help ensure that you're doing all the right things to make sure you're fully supporting your menopausal employees and hopefully keeping out of trouble with the law! If you'd like to know more about how Floresco Training and Coaching can support your organisation with menopause awareness training, for all employees, or with individual or group coaching for your female employees, give me a call on 01778 302464 or drop me an email to info@florescotraining.co.uk and we can have a conversation to see how we can help you to be a menopause friendly employer.

I'm joined today by Dr Claire Macaulay.  Claire is an oncology doctor who treats people with breast cancer. She is also a sex science geek who is passionate about supporting people to create the kind of sex life that is right for them. Throwing away ideas of what people “should” be doing,  she concentrate on what is meaningful and nourishing to you as an individual. Drawing on modalities as widespread as neo-tantra, orgasmic yoga (yes that’s a thing!), somatic sexology, coaching and erotic intelligence alongside practical science and research, Claire brings her own blend of compassion, fun and pragmatism to create sex positive spaces where people feel safe to explore and thrive. With a particular interest in working with people who are in the perimenopausal or menopausal phase of life, whether naturally occurring or as a consequence of medical treatment.  Claire works with clients 1:1 or in group coaching programmes, delivering training to healthcare professionals on matters of sexuality and loves nothing more than speaking in public about all things sex. It's a fascinating conversation and definitely gets me challenging some of my own beliefs and inhibitions around sex, particularly as we head into perimenopause and beyond. You can find out more about the work Claire does by visiting her website The Pleasure Possibility or follow her amazing work on LinkedIn or join her private Facebook Group The Pleasure Possibility.

On this International Women’s Day 2021 with the theme #ChoosetoChallenge this is a gem X shorts episode, so just me, sharing my thoughts on how we can choose to challenge our perceptions of the role of older women in society. I'd love to get your feedback on your perceptions of how older women are seen in the Western World and what stories you’re telling yourself. I’m also sharing details of a fantastic new 12 week programme I’m launching in April called Turning Point. The programme is perfect for any women over 40 who have reached a Turning Point in their lives and want some help figuring out what and how they make they make the next step in their journey. Check out the details here www.bit.ly/KatyandBev

My guest on the podcast today is solution focused hypnotherapist Emma Rose.   Emma has her own hypnotherapy practice, Inspired to Change, in South Lincolnshire and today she's sharing her story of overcoming severe anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) through hypnotherapy before retraining as a hypnotherapist herself.   Emma explains exactly what hypnotherapy is and how it works, as well as busting a few misconceptions and hopefully allaying a few fears people may have about hypnosis - categorically reassuring us that at no point will we be clucking like chickens!   I'm also excited to be releasing details of the launch of my new 12 week group coaching programme, Turning Point, aimed at women over 40 who have reached a crossroads and want to do something different with their next chapter but don't know exactly what that looks like or how they can get there.  If this sound interesting, have a look at the details HERE.  The waiting list is now open and as it's a beta programme, spaces are limited.   If you want to find out more about Emma and the work she does, check out her LinkedIn profile or her website Inspired to Change.

Today I'm chatting with life and style coach Philippa Guy as we discuss how to look and feel your best by wearing colours, styles and shapes that make the best of what you've got despite bodies that seem to have a mind of their own as we head past 50. We talk about finding what works for you, and whether the 'style rules' for the over 50s actually exist.  Philippa also gives some great tips on how to look your best and make the best impression on camera in our increasingly virtual world of business and social interactions. Philippa can be found on LinkedIn and Facebook.  And why not dive in and take advantage of Philippa's offer to give 10% discount to any of our listeners.    The offer is open for the next 2 weeks (from today, 5 Feb 21).  

In our first episode of 2021 (and at the start of a 3rd lockdown) I'm delighted to be chatting to the founder of Bizjuicer, Andy Goram all about keeping our people happy and engaged and why that simply makes damned good business sense. Andy is a business strategy and employee engagement consultant, but as someone who considers himself a hybrid of Marketing, Operations, and HR, he wanted his company to be a bit different from the norm.  Even the name, Bizjuicer, is a bit different.  But that's all about getting more great stuff out of your brand and the people that work within it. Andy passionately believes that businesses and brands can be more successful if all their people, especially the ones closest to the customers, really get what you do and they feel emotionally connected to it, as this makes businesses stickier.  That means that your talent wants to stay with you because they thrive in your organisation, and your customers are more attracted to you because of the quality of the experience you deliver. Andy has spent years engaging and aligning front line teams, business colleagues, external partners as well as C-Suite peers on strategic brand, marketing, cultural projects, and challenges.  Always with a dual focus on customer and employee experience.  In fact he loved doing that so much, he decided to set-up Bizjuicer to help more businesses successfully release the latent power of their people and brand combined. Andy's passion for getting the best out of people and focusing on making sure communication is great and that values are lived across the whole organisation comes across so clearly and he shares his best tips for really engaging with your people. You can follow Andy on LinkedIn or on his website Bizjuicer.com

I was joined last week by Catherine Maskell of TPD Marketing in my Facebook group 'Your Best Midlife' to talk about personal branding and marketing ourselves as we hit midlife. Often midlife is a time of change - our identity is being redefined as we move into the next chapter of our life and this catalyst for change can be empowering and scary as we learn to let go of who we were and embrace who we want to be moving forward. It's a fascinating chat, plus we got to talk about wine as Catherine's other 'brand' is as The Casual Wine Expert - a personal hobby that she's now sharing with others through her Instagram posts where she shares her tips and recommendations for choosing great wines. If you're an ambitious midlife woman who's not prepared to let age define you, why not come and join me and the other ambitious midlife women in 'YOUR BEST MIDLIFE' over on Facebook for some support, friendship and fun.

If you've ever felt like you're not good enough, that at some point your colleagues, your boss or your customers are going to find out that you're a fraud and you don't actually deserve to be where you are in your business or career - you're probably suffering from a dose of Imposterism. It's estimated that 70% of the population, male and female, experience Imposter Syndrome to some extent at some point in their lives. It's incredibly common yet it can be absolutely crippling if we aren't aware of it or able to manage it. In this episode I'm joined by my good friend and exceptional executive coach Katy Walton of Make REAL Progress.  We're discussing what Imposterism is, how it's affected us in our own, personal experiences and how we've learned to manage the symptoms and break through the hold it had on us. The recording was taken from a livestreamed interview I did in my new Facebook Group, Your Best Midlife - a community for ambitious midlife women who refuse to allow age to define them or stop them living their best midlife and beyond.  If that's you and you'd love to be surrounded by other ambitious midlife women, I'd love you to come and join us.  Here's the link to Your Best Midlife Also, if you'd like to work with Katy you can get in touch via her website Make Real Progress or join her growing community in The Progress Club, another fantastic Facebook community for people leaders and HR professionals.

Imagine your partner telling you they want a divorce after 34 years together, at the age of 50, and having to start a brand new life on your own. Imagine realising that the person you gave your life to has had more affairs that they can count on 2 hands, and leaves you questioning if you ever really knew them after all. Imagine being at your lowest and darkest time in your life and turning it around completely. Meet my guest today, the wonderful Polly Crowhurst of Polly Bloom. Polly  is a divorce and separation coach. She became an accredited Divorce & Separation Coach after going through her own dreadful divorce 6 years ago. The tsunami of emotions she faced were overwhelming and she asked herself how was she expected to handle the splitting up of the matrimonial home, her family, friends and way of life she'd had known for many years effectively whilst emotionally charged?  She flipped the negative experience into a positive one and now helps others to cope with the same rollercoaster of emotions.   You can find Polly on Instagram or visit her website www.divorceseparationcoach.co.uk.  You can also email Polly directly at pb@divorceseparationcoach.co.uk Oh an while you're on why not come and join me on Instagram too.  You can find me on our Generation Exceptional Podcast page and follow me on my Floresco page too.   Enjoy the show.

My guest today is Ali Dilks, a nurse practitioner with a special interest in menopause.  Owner of Simply Menopausal, Aly runs her own menopause clinic in Leicester and today we're discussing HRT.  There's so much controversy over hormone therapy and in this episode we aim to share facts and challenge some misunderstandings.   Aly qualified as a Registered General Nurse in 1988 and as a midwife in 1992. She has had a varied career across a whole spectrum of specialities within  nursing including working with Homeless Healthcare and has studied to Masters level in diabetes. The majority of her career has been spent in the field of women's health and she has been working as an Advanced Nurse Practitioner in a GP surgery in Leicestershire for the past 7 years. ​Aly has several years experience in the field of menopause working in both the NHS and the Private Sector. She is a member of the British Menopause Society (BMS) and the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare (FSRH) and holds a letter of competence in both coil and implant fitting and removal.  She has also completed The British Menopause Society Certificate in Menopause Care. ​She is passionate about helping women to understand their menopause and offers advice and treatment to help with their symptoms. She has had several articles published both professionally and in many journals and is a regular writer for Active Magazine and Liz Earle Wellbeing. She has been actively involved in promoting menopause awareness and how this can be addressed in the workplace and offers a service to talk at corporate level. She has also been involved with teaching GP and pharmacists how to conduct a menopause consultation in a busy NHS GP practice.  You can find Aly via her website Simply Menopausal   Aly has also written for Liz Earle and you can read her article on menopause and anxiety here and also her article on getting hold of HRT during and since lockdown here

In today's episode I get to chat with one of my favourite people - Steve Parke from Parkecore Personal Training.   We're chatting through the benefits of Neuro Linguistic Programming for helping us to manage uncertainty and anxiety.  We share our thoughts on the benefits of gratitude and mindfulness, and share a tip or two for dealing with overwhelm. Steve has his own podcast with his lovely wife Mandie called 'We Are the Parkes' and if you want a chilled out, fun filled podcast to listen to over a nice cuppa, it's definitely one to check out. And if listening to Steve has inspired you to get in shape, why not give him a shout via his website.  

"You got to know when to hold em, know when to fold em, know when to walk away and, know when to run" Sound advice from the iconic Kenny Rogers' song 'The Gambler'. And the S4B team have decided to 'fold em and walk away' - but it's all good. In this very last ever S4B podcast, Pete, Dyf and Bev explain why even the best things in life, must sometimes come to a close. What's been incredibly insightful is how the plans, communication, honesty, trust and clear objectives that we set out with at the start of our collaboration proved to be vital throughout the last 6 months and in finally reaching the decision to bring it to an end. You can watch our conversation on on our YouTube Channel where you can also find all our previous podcasts. Finally, we'd love to thank all of you wonderful listeners who supported us over the last few months, we were genuinely touched by the lovely comments, likes and shares that you gave us.

Today we're chatting with Mark Underwood.   In the current climate good leadership is more important than ever.  So what does good leadership look like and how can anyone possibly be an expert in leading through a pandemic when we've never had to deal with this in our lifetime?  We discuss this and more with Mark today. Mark is a business advisor at CMU Partners, which he founded in 2013. Working with owners and managers of SMEs to specifically focus on improving business performance and developing companies so they can meet their full potential. CMU tend to focus on manufacturing and distribution businesses, where the close relationship and understanding of the customers’ needs are paramount to the success of the business. Mark started his professional life working for a medical device company in the healthcare sector before becoming a shareholder and managing director of one of the largest businesses in the sector operating across 16 different countries.   He have spent 30 years working at board level and has always trusted his core values to achieve success. He strongly believes that rank is not what makes you a leader or successful.  Becoming a good leader means that every day you need to lead by example, demonstrating honesty, integrity, trust and care for your people. This is the only way he believes you ever experience true success. If you invest in your people, they will take care of you and your business. He extends these values in all areas of his life. He has four amazing children, three are entrepreneurs building their own businesses. Business is a part of family life in the Underwood household.  You can get in touch with Mark, or find out more about CMU Partners, by visiting his website at https://www.cmupartners.com/services/

There's no denying podcasts are getting more and more popular. There's never been a better time to easily access and cost effectively use podcasting and as a means of connecting with your audience.  As a marketing tool a podcast is right up there with the best of them.In today's episode Pete and Bev are discussing the benefits and the drawbacks of having a podcast to support your marketing efforts and they also talk about the potential benefits to businesses of using podcasts to support their internal comms.No Dyfrig today as he's too busy sunning himself in sunny Italy and we're not jealous at all, honest!  But normal service with the 3 of us will resume next week.Let us know in the comments if you have a podcast, either for marketing purposes or to engage people within your business.  We'd love to know how it's working out for you.  

Many of the young adults entering the workplace right now have been brought up not knowing life without Google.  They are tech savvy, information rich and ready for a future that looks very different to that of us older generations. In today's episode we're chatting with Amaan Nadeem, a marketing exec with a range of work experience behind him, despite being 'younger than Google' at just 18 years old. Driven, ambitious and hungry to learn, Amaan shares with us his hopes and fears for his future and what he believes young people need from their leaders to enable them to perform at their absolute best. We talk about the education system and whether Amaan feels it really equips young men and women with the life skills they need as they start out on their careers.  We talk about how mental health issues are addressed across the generations.  And we discuss whether stereotypes around the different generations are a real reflection of the people or if we're basically all pretty much the same at heart. You can find Amaan on LInkedIn or contact him for digital marketing and sales lead generation at Joseph Creative Business by emailing design@josephcreative.co.uk

In this 3rd and final episode of our 'In The Spotlight' series, we get to learn about our S4B Partner,  Pete Rushmer, and more about the wide range of services he offers at his company, Flagship Partners.   Pete is the Managing Director of Flagship Partners, and specialises in Vehicle and Transport Compliance, having worked for 14 years in the industry in a Senior Leadership role, before starting Flagship in 2018.   Flagship Partners offer a variety of services to improve the running of a business. From over 100 training courses to Human Resources and Health and Safety Consultancy, they  offer it all, and the courses can be tailored to suit the needs of the business too. Training courses include First Aid, Driver CPC, Professional Development and many more!   To find out more about what Flagship Partners  visit www.flagshippartners.co.uk or message Pete via his Facebook page.  You an also connect with Pete on LinkedIn   

In the second of our 'In The Spotlight' series, the S4B team learn more about Dyfrig Jenkins.  Dyfrig created YOU. Development in 2016, he is a qualified Executive Coach and a skilled facilitator with over 20 years’ experience in corporate Learning & Development. His work takes him across the UK and overseas too.  Dyfrig specialises in leadership, management and team development. He does this in two ways:  Firstly as an Executive Coach, Dyfrig works one to one with his coaching clients to help them make important decisions that benefit them and their organisation. Secondly, he spends a good amount of time creating and facilitating events, workshops and programmes to help businesses and their people, move closer to performing at a consistently higher level.  Naturally, Dyfrig has adopted a more virtual approach to meet his customers’ needs and is developing these with his business customers.  Dyfrig frequently associates with other organisations as a coach and facilitator and brings in trusted partners to deliver effective solutions for his own business customers and coaching clients. These include tailored 360 feedback reports, individual and team assessments, working with actors to support practical leadership development and online resources such as video and eLearning.  Join Pete and Bev as they put Dyfrig In The Spotlight in their usual informative and informal style. You can find out more about the work YOU. does by visiting https://youdevelopment.co.uk/#hello  and https://www.linkedin.com/in/dyfrig-jenkins-b9807216/ You can email Dyfrig@wwwyoudevelop.com, call him on +44(0)7971258771 or book time in his diary by following this link https://calendly.com/dyfrigatyoudevelopment

In the first of a 3 part 'In The Spotlight' series, the S4B team take turns to find out more about each of the partners, starting today with Bev Thorogood. Bev is the owner and founder of Floresco Training and Coaching.  Floresco delivers group and individual training and coaching with a particular emphasis on the needs and skill sets of women. In particular, Floresco speciliases in menopause, bringing this often taboo subject to the fore, helping business leaders to reduce absenteeism and increase staff retention through menopause awareness training, communications and management skills training and policy support. With a long career within the public sector Bev has a broad and extensive knowledge across many business functions but her love for learning and development and supporting others to reach their full potential sits at the heart of everything she wants to achieve with Floresco. Join Pete and Dyfrig as they put Bev in the spotlight in their inimitable relaxed and chatty style. You can find out more about the work Floresco does by visiting www.florescotraining.co.uk or get in touch either by email:  bev@florescotraining.co.uk or via LinkedIn.

No guest today, but the S4B team are discussing the important of making sure that new employees and those returning to the workplace after a period of extended leave are welcomed back into the organisation successfully and productively.   This is especially relevant as many employees are returning after furlough, more than likely to an environment that looks and feels different, and maybe even to a business that has changed dramatically.   Whether you're a small business bringing onboard your first employee or a major player with thousands of staff the onboarding process is your first chance to make a good impression and ensure that you get the very best out of your people.   Find out more about Stronger4Business on our LinkedIn Page  or drop us a comment below and let us know what you'd like to know more of from the Learning and Development/HR/Business world!

Matt Ode is a Stage 3C Testicular Cancer Survivor who has faced multiple near death experiences. Matt is now a Keynote Inspirational Speaker and Mentor sharing his message and story to help individuals transform their setbacks into their superpowers, while guiding them to use their story to impact those in need.   Matt credits his faith, positive mindset, health background and support team with his fortitude to survive. It is his hope to share his story with others so they may draw value from his challenges.   Matt's experiences, while tragic, empowered him to find purpose in this life; and that purpose is to help individuals overcome trauma, regain their mental and physical strength and channel that energy to give back.  Matt joins S4B today in an honest and sometimes frank conversation, we talk about some of Matt's experiences and how they relate to individuals, leaders and business. We are sure you'll find it beneficial and even inspire you to make some positive choices afterwards.    Matt's website is https://mustachesformatt.com and you can find him on Linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-ode-64376715b/

No guest today, just the S4B team discussing Imposter Syndrome, what it is, who it affects and a few personal stories of our own experiences of imposter syndrome.It's estimated that approximately  80% of adults will experience this phenomenon at some point in the career and yet it can really hold many people back.  Talking about it and realising we're not along can make a big different in helping us to move forward.Share your own experiences of imposter syndrome with us in the comments.