Clare Muscutt talks with Hannah Foley talking about balancing CX careers and motherhood!
Episode #012 Show Notes.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Hey, Hannah!
Hannah Foley:
Hello! Nice to see you.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Welcome to the Women in CX podcast. How are you today?
Hannah Foley:
I’m great. Thank you so much for having me. I’m very excited to be here.
Clare Muscutt – host:
I bet you’re also super excited as – at the time of recording – today is the publication of your second collaboration book: CX2. Is that right?
Hannah Foley:
Woo-hoo! Yeah, really exciting. It’s really exciting for it to be going out on the Kindle launch, and I can’t wait for a few weeks’ time to get an actual hard copy in my hands.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Ah, wow. Well, many congratulations.
Welcome to all the listeners, as well. Let’s dig in, shall we?
I guess, Hannah, I count you as one of my original Women in CX community members because it’s been a while since we connected – back in the day on Instagram – but I always will remember you as being one of the first women who supported and inspired me as you’d just started your own business, hadn’t you, as well? And I was the CX nomad, and we connected just after you launched your brand, I think.
Hannah Foley:
Yeah, definitely. I’d been following you for quite a long time because there weren’t many people on Instagram 15/18 months ago. You were one of the people on Instagram, and I love Instagram. I need to put Instagram on ‘do not disturb’ because I’m constantly scrolling. My biggest time waste is scrolling my Instagram feed. Your content, I think it’s so – I love Instagram because it’s really authentic and I’m really enjoying, at the moment, seeing more of the CX sisterhood and people being more authentic on LinkedIn because it always felt like there was this separate thing. So, it was really, really nice to connect with you and be inspired to leave the corporate world and actually start my business. So, thank you.
Clare Muscutt – host:
That’s so nice. I think you’re the only other person I know who’s got three Instagram accounts like me.
Hannah Foley:
Three that you know of.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Oh, my god. Have you got more secret ones?
Hannah Foley:
I’ve got three, and then I run my husband’s one. Because of the algorithm, you get random people that are CX people start following my husband’s window company because there’s obviously the connection with mine in the background, so Instagram goes, ‘Oh, here are some accounts you might like.’ When you see one popping up, you’re like, ‘Oh, I wonder who’s behind that one?’
Clare Muscutt – host:
Oh, yeah. I totally get you, yeah. I’ve got one that’s about fitness, and CX people keep trying to follow me on there but it’s a private account because I’m in my gym gear all the time. So, no offence to anyone that’s tried to follow me on my private Insta. I’m keeping that bit of my life separate.
Where are we going to start today? As well as being an incredibly inspiring woman in CX, I really admire your work as The Unsung Working Mum – one of your Instagram accounts – because I love how you’re talking so plainly about how bloody hard it is to work and be a mummy at the same time. So, we’ll definitely be coming back to that one shortly. But also, I’m equally inspired by the brilliant work that you’ve been doing in your local area of Leamington Spa and Warwickshire with your initiative to bring working women together through Cloud Femme and the community there.
Hannah Foley:
Oh, I love it. Cloud Femme, so when I started my own business – how long ago is that? Just over a year ago… sorry?
Clare Muscutt – host:
I was going to say, in fact, let’s start there, with ‘Why is Yak CX called Yak CX?’ We’ll come to The Unsung Working Mum and Cloud Femme shortly.
Hannah Foley:
It’s probably the right order to do it in, actually. The ‘yak’ bit for my business came from before I was a mum, after working for a while – I’d always had this goal. I’d set myself some goals in my 30s, and one of them was to go to Everest Base Camp. A few years ago, I turned 30, and in my 30th year, I realised in the November/December before I turned 30 that I hadn’t done this yet. I didn’t have kids, didn’t have a steady relationship or anything; I had no commitments except for my dog. I was like, ‘Right, I’m going to book this.’
I booked it the November/early-December, and I went to Nepal in the following March, so I didn’t give myself much time. My friends would absolutely kill me because I was like, ‘Right, January, we need to go to Snowdon and do a practice walk.’ We went up Snowdon and there was so much snow; it lived up to its name.
So, I went to Everest Base Camp. I went on my own in March the following year, and it was just incredible. It was something I’d always wanted to do. There’s always reasons – I think like work, I’d always been so committed to my job, working all hours, and you think, ‘No, no, you can only have two weeks’ holiday or just have a week here and there.’ I said to my boss, ‘Look, I’ve been here for nearly eight years. I’ve slogged my guts out. I would really like three full weeks to be able to go and do this. This means a lot to me.’ And actually, when you ask about these things, people are quite welcoming. We just have these own inhibitions in our heads that people are going to go, ‘Oh, no. You can’t do that. It’s not in your contract. Can’t do that.’
And so, I went, and it was just incredible. It was with an organised tour, so I didn’t go and do it all by myself.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Less scary.
Hannah Foley:
Yeah, but actually, just flying – I’d never flown that far on my own. You, as the nomad – think back to your first time you went far-flown; probably donkey’s years for you. But for me, the furthest I’d ever been was that far on my own when I got to 30.
I went via Mumbai, had a bit of a flight change at Mumbai, and then into Kathmandu. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before. It was just incredible. I look at photos of Kathmandu, and the thing that struck me more than anything at the time was all of the wires. I don’t know if you’ve been to Nepal, but there are cables and wires everywhere, all these old telephone wires. It’s amazing. Then, you’re driving around and there’s just a cow sat in the middle of the road, and everybody drives round the cows because they’re sacred. And you think, ‘This is just nuts that there’s a cow in the middle of the motorway,’ their four-lane roads, ‘and everybody’s driving around it.’ Everybody drives nuts, don’t they, around the world? Yet they all slow down and go really carefully for cows.
So, I did my trek up to Everest Base Camp. It’s nine days up, six days down, staying in the little tea houses. The tour company that I went with had their own permanent camps, as well, so we stayed in tents. There were probably 12 of us trekking, we had Sherpas, and then we had about six yaks on the journey with us; they carried all of our gear. We would load up these big bags, the yaks would carry them ahead, we would trek with the Sherpas, and then, we’d get to camp or the teahouse, and our bags would be there ready for us.
Then, we got all the way up to Everest Base Camp, which by the time I got up there – I didn’t have any altitude sickness, but the day I actually got to Everest Base Camp was basically like I’d drunk way too much on a night out: I felt drunk; I was staggering my way into base camp. It was like nothing I’d ever imagined, but I made it. I was really, really chuffed because three of our group didn’t actually get there because of altitude sickness.
That was quite life-changing for me. It was a lot of time to reflect, a lot of time with headphones on, a lot of time chatting to people that had come from all different walks of life. Actually, most of the group – there was only one guy in terms of the trekkers – the rest of us were all female, so just incredible women with incredible stories. It was quite a profound moment for me, and when I hear certain songs on my Spotify or the radio, it takes me back to certain parts of the journey. That, for me, is really cathartic at certain times.
Fast-forward through having been a mum and to 18 months ago, I was like, ‘Do you know what? I think I’d like to have a go at setting up my own company.’ You go through all of these ideas like, ‘What am I going to call my business?’ There were already loads of incredible CX-related names, and some really nifty little things. I was like, ‘What am I going to call it?’ And I went through all of these words to do with going up to Everest because that had been a bit of a turning point for me in my career. I was like, ‘Ascent… Sherpa…’ and there were already loads of businesses with all those names. So, I was like, ‘Right, how did I get there? The yaks! I wouldn’t have got there without the yaks.’ So, the more I started thinking about the yaks, I got all these real connections with customer experience. They can weather any storm; those yaks are so built for the conditions, they can weather any storm. And that’s what you want from your business: you want your business, when times are tough, when you’re facing a recession, you want to know that your customers are going to be loyal. So, I thought, ‘Well, that’s a good connection.’ High-performing at altitude: again, they’ve got all the right equipment, the right tools for the job to keep them going. When your business is growing, you want to know that if you grow at scale, you’re going to be ready for whatever that throws at you, so the ability to do that. Reliable and consistent: what do we want from our businesses that we give our loyalty to? We just want them to be reliable and consistent over anything, don’t we? If you can’t trust them to be reliable, that’s a problem. Those yaks, whatever the weather, whatever the bags, whatever we threw at them, whatever the conditions were – we were going over rope bridges across these huge canyons and these massive yaks are scaling these bridges – these guys are just going to deal with whatever this mountain throws at them. Then, finally, as I mentioned before, cows, yaks, they’re sacred animals; they’re so well-respected. Ultimately, we all want our businesses to be number one in their field. Clients that I work with, everybody wants to be number one, don’t they? You want to be the business everybody looks up to. So, those are my – maybe tenuous – four links to the yak that I’ve underpinned my business with. There’s a long answer to your short question.
Clare Muscutt – host:
I love the yak metaphor. I knew that it was something to do with you having travelled because I saw your website. I love the imagery of some of the stories that you just told there. I’m imagining these yaks tiptoeing across the rope bridges. That sounds absolutely incredible.
I guess, like you, travel was a really life-changing experience for me in wanting to become independent in work. Because once I discovered solo travel, which was actually later than your age: you were 30; I was 35 the first time I travelled on my own. I was only the CX nomad after I left Sainsbury’s. That whole experience of getting out there and living, with the freedom to do it entirely on your own terms, I agree with you. That was a huge turning point for me too. I can really feel you on that one.
Hannah Foley:
It also makes you feel very grateful, doesn’t it? It makes you feel – being out there and going and seeing different cultures, you feel very proud and grateful for what you’ve got, as well. It’s so easy to see things on a TV, but it doesn’t feel quite real until you actually step yourself onto the soil of somebody else’s country, that you feel this connect.
Clare Muscutt – host:
I wasn’t solo, but India, I remember the cows when I backpacked with my friend around India. Seeing the reality of just how easy and nice you’ve got it in the UK, for example, in comparison to the poor parts of Delhi. Like you say, you see it on TV, but until you genuinely see how hard some people’s lives are, I don’t think you really do appreciate your own, either. That attitude of gratitude that comes from travel, I’m totally with you on that one, as well.
So, pre-Yak days, before Yak, you started out in the construction industry, I see. Is that right?
Hannah Foley:
Yeah, construction merchanting, like B2B2C. My customers were plumbers, heating engineers, housebuilders, all the contractors working for the housebuilders, so from very local one-man bands right up to big national contractors that you would see building tower blocks in London; a real spectrum of small one-man bands right through to big corporate organisations.
Clare Muscutt – host:
For me, that is a really unexpected place to find customer experience, but as we know, today, someone got in touch with me asking me for CX support in this industry. Obviously, I referred them to straight to you because I wouldn’t have a clue where to begin when it comes to plumbers and piping.
From the outside–in, construction seems to be a particularly male-dominated environment and, as I said, a world where customer experience might not automatically spring to mind. I was just wondering, what was it like working as a woman in such a male-dominated end-customer industry? How was it trying to crack the CX code when it came to emotion and empathy in what is quite a transactional environment?
Hannah Foley:
I’ll be real: it was tough. There are so many things that I – well, I absolutely love the construction industry, and I loved working in the company I worked for. We were one of the biggest merchants; we had 600 stores across the UK. I did their graduate programme. I went round a load of graduate fairs. I was like, ‘Right, I want to work for FTSE100 company,’ and I came across this one and their graduate scheme, and I was like, ‘Oh, this sounds interesting.’ So, went in – my dad had a bit of background in construction – I was like, ‘I’m going to go for it’, and I got accepted onto their graduate programme, and it was bogs and boilers. I was like, ‘This is not very glamorous, but let’s see what it’s going to throw at us.’
The first three months, I was actually working in a branch in one of the merchants. So, you have three months on the ground. Like you say, it’s a really male-dominated environment. The branch manager said to me after the first month, ‘This has been our best sales month’, because word had got round that there was a girl working in this store locally; there was a girl there! It was very unheard of. We’re only talking 50 years ago, there were no women in any of the branches around the countries; there might have been a couple of admin ladies, and there were women in the head offices, but there were none in the branches. It was really interesting. I learnt my way around, learnt my 15mm from my 22mm copper tube, all about boilers, and this, that, and the other. I think there is nothing better to equip you for a customer experience role than having been on the shopfloor.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Of course. I totally agree.
Hannah Foley:
Yeah. And my background was marketing, so I then worked in a number of marketing roles. It was interesting because it was a typically male-dominated environment. The deals had been done on the golf course. The events programme, the events part of the industry was huge – so, like the curry nights – and it still is really big. It’s a really social industry, which is great.
You can see within – like we’re talking about empathy – the relationships the customers have with their branch teams and those guys and girls (now) that work behind those trade counters is incredible. That’s where a lot of the loyalty comes from because they know that when they need something, and they’re in a jam, they can ring up the branch manager who they can go in and see, and they can go and speak to the guys they’ve got relationships – because they see each other, some of them, two/three times a day. We looked at footfall numbers, and we look at behavioural data for the customers, and it’s like nothing you see in other industries because they’re just in and out and in and out because things happen: you’d go into responsive maintenance jobs where somebody’s boiler is broken, and you don’t know what you’re going to need; and they’ll have things on their vans, but then they’ll be like, ‘I need this. Have you got it?’ ‘Yep. We’ve got it. Come in.’
Then, the insight that I was doing through marketing, I was talking to them going, ‘Look, guys: we’ve done loads of data; we know who our customers are; we know we’ve got great relationships. But when you’re one of the national, the biggest retailers in this industry, you can’t rely on that alone. We have to have the products on the shelves when they need them. We have to have reliability: when we tell them that we’re going to deliver stuff, we’ve got to deliver it at the right time. You’ve got to be reliable and got to be consistent.’ So, as we talked about in my Yak bit, that reliability and consistency, if you don’t do that, you’re letting down your branch teams, and you’re letting down your customers. The environment was becoming more and more competitive.
I finally got the ability or got the investment to set up a bit of a small CX function. We had a lot of investment to start gathering, proactively, voice-of-the-customer insights. Previously, we might have done ad hoc insights when it was looking at what do people like from a catalogue, or what do they want the website to look like, but not on the things that really mattered on a day-to-day basis. That generally came from conversations on the golf course or from people’s conversations with each other, which was quite often the right things, but was it the most important things? So, gathering insight gave us the ability to make decisions off a foundation of insight, and it gave us the ability to get better investment from the wider group, which was brilliant. We started gathering lots of insight, we started doing lots of focus groups and ethnographic stuff. That was really exciting because it was the first time that a lot of the senior leaders had actually seen what the customers had to say because a lot of the time it would come from the branch teams and move up the chain by email or by somebody saying, ‘We’ve had loads of customers complaining about this’ or ‘This is a problem’. Whereas you get them in a focus group and they’re chatting. We had our leaders behind glass, and they’re going, ‘Oh, wow. That really is a problem. We really need to do something about that.’ We started to get much more buy-in from just getting people involved, and seeing the customers upfront, and seeing the raw things that were a problem.
It’s a fantastic industry to be a part of. I’m sort of still a part of that industry, working with clients within there. It was great to be a part of it, but there are always some downsides, I think, from working in a very male-dominated environment: you have to pick your battles and you’ve often got to fight your way for being heard, sometimes. But I was very honoured and privileged to work with some really great leaders who valued my input and my perspective and gave me time at the table to share my ideas of things – obviously, they weren’t always the ones that got forward.
It was a good 12 years working there. It was great fun, as well. It’s a really good environment. I think some of the funny parts of the career is when things like the ‘Banter at Work’ courses have to come in because of the levels of banter in a trade environment and a retail environment.
Clare Muscutt – host:
I was going to say, traditionally, cat-calling and stuff is synonymous with builders, isn’t it? So, I can only imagine what being the first woman to ever work in a trade shop might have been like for you, sometimes.
Now, I’m really interested to hear a bit more about your experience of becoming a working mum because, clearly, you’re ambitious when it comes to your career and you want to work, but was motherhood something that you always aspired to, as well?
Hannah Foley:
When I was watching your podcast with Inez and Claire and Rachel, it was really interesting. I loved the conversations that you guys had, and hearing Rachel’s journey and planning, and then, you were talking about how you would plan it. For me, becoming a mother wasn’t planned; it was unexpected. About a month before I found out I was pregnant, my dad sold his antique rocking horse because he told me I was never going to have kids because I’d never really been that maternal. I’d never seen kids, really, as a big part of my future.
Then, I got pregnant; we all know how that happens. It wasn’t a conscious thing, but I can honestly say it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I’ve got two children. It was just shortly after I came back from Everest Base Camp, about six months later, I got pregnant. It was quite hard to get my head round at first having never really seen it as part of my future, but it wasn’t a disaster when it happened. It was just one of those things where I was like, ‘Oof, what does this mean now?’ I think until I actually left work on maternity leave, I didn’t quite anticipate all the emotions, and how that would feel, going from being in a career at a million miles an hour to being at home with this little creature, keeping them alive, feeding them, being at their beck and call. It’s quite lonely and isolating is maternity leave. You’ve got to be very proactive about going out. People, like friends and family, pop in, but actually it’s very lonely. The nights are quite long, and the days are unexpected; you don’t know what that day is going to bring. It took quite a long time for me to personally adapt to that. My partner, he was brilliant. We’re very equal in our relationship. He’s the one that gets up in the morning and makes the packed lunches and makes the cups of tea. Now, he’s the one that gets up with the kids in the morning. I’m a night owl, not an early bird, but luckily, I married an early bird, in the end.
Then, going back to work having had a child, going back into the workplace, that was probably the hardest part for me. You think you’re going to go back to everything as it was before, and you’re not. It probably took me until after I went back after my son, three years later, to actually get my priorities in the right order because I was trying to do everything I did before I was pregnant with my daughter with my career, but with a child and everything that comes with that. You just have this permanent mum guilt, and it never goes away, no matter how balanced you think you’ve got. It’s just this permanent mum guilt of, ‘Should I be at home? Should I not?’ I think stay-at-home mums have that guilt of, ‘Should I be going to work? Should I be doing this?’ And if you’re a working mum, there’s this, ‘Oh, everybody thinks I should probably be at home nurturing my children and not be going out to work.’ But for me, it was a no-brainer. Not working was something I could never do because to be a good mum, in my humble opinion, you have to be happy in yourself, as well. That’s probably become more of a reality over the last few months, for me, or even probably the last month-and-a-half, two months after lockdown relaxed. It is probably the most stark realisation of that for me is that I’m not good at home 24/7, seven days a week, with my kids. It’s not healthy for me. It’s not healthy for them. They get so much out of going to school and spending time with family, and I get a lot out of interacting with people like you, with clients, with friends, with fellow women in business. I need that interaction, and I need to be able to celebrate your successes, like the book. Being able to write a chapter for a book and get my head into that and then see that come to fruition just gives me a buzz, and then it makes me a better person when I go home. It’s about trying to – when you did your Instagram lives last month, that was really interesting, that work–life balance piece with – I can’t remember her name, sorry…
Clare Muscutt – host:
Claire Fry.
Hannah Foley:
… with Claire. Yeah, that was brilliant because it’s trying to find that balance and trying to find that – even though you never have that balance, but actually finding that piece, that bit where you go, ‘Actually, I’m alright with being at work and the kids being in childcare. That’s okay for me.’ It’s so individual, being a mum, that you’ve got to find what works for you. I see other friends, they’ve made other decisions; they are decisions that I wouldn’t have made, but it’s right for them. That’s what is so important. Everybody’s situation is so unique as a parent.
I think that’s what I’ve – if I ever went back to work and had a team again, I think I would have much greater appreciation for people’s out-of-work lives. I read an article not long after I’d had Erin, and it was when flexible working was still very new – we’ve been catapulted at the moment to getting this work–life balance – and it was a company in Australia, it was a big brand – I can’t remember which one – but basically, it was a manager talking about the fact that one of his team loved to surf, and he lived for the surf, and he said, ‘Look, if there’s surf in the morning, and that’s what you love doing, then just text me and let me know. If you come into work two hours late and you make those two hours up another time, then that’s fine. Because I know that when you come to work, because you’ve ridden that wave and you’ve got that buzz, you will be a much better person in the workplace, and I will get more out of you.’ I think that really hit a chord, for me. It’s not about just being a parent; we’ve all got things, whether we’re parents or not, in our lives that are just so important to us as people that as a leader or a manager, you’ve just got to let your people be, because if they can’t be who they are, then when they come to work, they’re not going to be the right people for the job, either because they’re not going to be able to do what you need them to do.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Yeah. Just thinking back to that IGTV I did with Claire Fry, she said that she didn’t believe it to be a ‘balancing’ act because that means that at some point, you will find it. She called it a ‘juggling’ act of parenthood. It’s more like trying to keep everything moving and in the air whilst priorities and stuff have to change continuously. As a non-parent, if that’s a word, someone without children, I find the juggling act of my own life hard as it is, just balancing relationships, health and wellbeing, financial priorities, career stuff, I never have enough time for myself. So, I have absolutely no idea how working parents, and particularly these unsung mums and unsung single mums – I’m starting to meet more amazing role models, actually, at the moment – manage to fit it all in.
Was there anything that you ever had to make a trade-off that you didn’t feel that you made the right decision? Did you ever have to choose work or kid priorities?
Hannah Foley:
I think you’ve probably hit the nail on the head, there. That’s a really difficult part of the journey of becoming a parent is that point where you have to make a choice. I remember my little girl being poorly, and I stepped back and went, ‘This shouldn’t even be a choice of staying here and leaving her a little bit longer in childcare to try and finish this meeting.’ If I’m working for the right people, then they will understand that I’m not going to be giving my whole self if my head’s not in it. I think I realised quickly. That was part of starting Yak was when I was pregnant with my son, my daughter got that year before she started school with me, and I had more time and it was really valuable. Once they start school, you realise that that’s it: for the next however many years, from Monday to Friday, they’re in school, and you can’t do so many things with them.
The two reasons, when I started my company, were: one, I want to see what I can achieve as an entrepreneur and as a woman starting her own business; and two, I want to spend more time with my son before he starts school this September – not quite as much time as I’ve now been gifted over the last few months. Like you say, the trade-offs you have to make, they don’t feel quite so much trade-offs when you’re okay with that and you realise that a lot of things in our lives, we might think they need to happen at this point in life, but do you know what? It’s not the end of the world if that doesn’t happen until a couple of years later. I’m not a big planner, so for me, if things sometimes don’t happen at the time that I think they’re going to happen, then that can be adapted.
We went to Australia last year with the kids, and I would never have taken the kids to Australia on a 24-hour flight when my little boy is two years old, but my brother was getting married and he lives out there – he moved out there a couple of years ago – but it was brilliant. My choice would have been, ‘No, we’re not going to Australia. It would be a waste of money taking the kids. They’re not going to remember it; he’s definitely not going to remember it.’ But do you know what? It was a brilliant experience. They still talk about it now.
So, sometimes, when things happen when you don’t expect them to happen, it’s not always the end of the world; you just have to live it and see what happens. I am a bit of strong believer in fate, and that things will happen at the right time. You just have to roll with it, don’t you, and see what happens?
Clare Muscutt – host:
It sounds like it’s a theme for you, things happening not on purpose, but ending up being the making of you. I like that.
Going back to a couple of things that you mentioned there, which was the inevitable parental guilt, which again I have no frame of reference for, but I can imagine; I empathise. Also, you said about you wanted to spend more time with your son, but lockdown gave you more than you ever anticipated you could have or would want to have. I remember talking to you during lockdown, and you were quite down about the experience of being an enforced stay-at-home mum because, as you said already in this conversation, that environment doesn’t suit you so well because you want to be out and engaging and interacting, and then when you come home, you’re the best version of yourself.
I just wondered, was that one of those parental-guilt moments? I’d imagine, from the outside looking in, you’d be like, ‘I should be appreciating, loving have all this time with my family’, but if you’re not feeling good about it at the same time, that must be really hard.
Hannah Foley:
Yeah. I think maybe it’s a bit – we’ve talked feeling ‘Imposter Syndrome’ before – it’s almost like that imposter thing of, ‘Am I actually a good mum?’ You sometimes question yourself when you’re not that kind of – I’m not an earth mother, I’m not great at thinking up all the recipes to cook them. We can just be very overcritical of ourselves, can’t we? It was really hard to adapt to that. The first three weeks, for me, when we were enforced and we were all at home, was probably the best bit of it, upon reflection now, because it was very clear: we were at home; we could do loads of things all together; the whole family was at home; and everybody was in the same boat.
Then, as things have relaxed, that’s become really hard; that’s become more hard for me. I think only over the last couple of weeks have I really found the rhythm of that because seven days a week being at home – my husband’s business is really, really busy at the moment and I’m relatively early-days at starting my own business. So, we had to – for me, again, that was a difficult decision – for us to have a difficult conversation about that. He’s been very supportive in terms of, ‘Well, look, you go and have a couple of days, here and there, where we can.’ But ultimately – and that’s where it is a bit of a difficult thing – the nurturing role falls to the mother. We’ve also been having a bit of building work going on. So, our lives have just been a bit disrupted. It’s tough. Like you say, that mum guilt creeps in in everything you do: ‘Am I feeding the right food? I should really be making them something homecooked and not chicken nuggets again.’ I won’t tell you what we had for lunch today…
Clare Muscutt – host:
I can guess.
Hannah Foley:
Yeah, chicken nuggets and chips, again.
Clare Muscutt – host:
I would like to come round your house for tea.
Hannah Foley:
Monday night: chicken nuggets. Tuesday night: chicken nuggets. There is more than that, but yeah, it’s not the most imaginative.
Yeah, it just creeps in in everything. With work, I think the customer experience stuff, the work stuff, I’ve been doing that for so many years – and you learn as you grow in your career – I think I’m just learning. You’ve got to learn as you go, being a parent. You teach yourself what to do as you go. You’ve got to watch your YouTube videos, find your mum groups, find your tribes, and find your people that can give you ideas: ‘What are you guys doing with your kids today?’ ‘I’ve got a cardboard box. What the hell am I going to do with that? What can we make this into to pass an hour or three hours away today?’
It’s just learning to be kind to yourself, I think; that goes for whatever walk of life you’re in. If you’re working, you do work so hard and round-the-clock, but you’ve just got to find ways to be kind to yourself, haven’t you? And accept that we’re not always going to be on our game. I’m not always going to be on my game as a mum. I’m not always going to be on my game as wife or as a consultant or as a business owner, but you’ve just got to be kinder to yourself and go, ‘That’s okay. Step back. Reset, and go again when you’re ready.’ You have to do the same as a parent: you’ve got to go, ‘Today was a disaster. Tomorrow’s another day, and we’ll feel better tomorrow (after gin).’
Clare Muscutt – host:
It’s so true that it’s not an exclusively motherhood issue, this perfectionism or feeling like you aren’t doing enough or winning enough of the time. It’s perhaps an inherently female thing because I don’t have kids because I’m still experiencing a lot of the emotions that you just talked about, especially when it comes to work and not being something enough. It’s really difficult.
I remember another time, another lockdown conversation that you and I had, but I was in a terrible place, wasn’t I? I could see my business disappearing, and just not really knowing how to weather that, never mind bounce back at the time, just, ‘How am I going to get through to the next day without it feeling like the whole world was closing in?’
So, I think you’re right: self-care, being kind to yourself, not having so much pressure that you put entirely on yourself. Because no one else is standing there going, ‘You’re a bad mum’, or ‘You’re a bad businesswoman’, or ‘You’re being crap at being an entrepreneur today’. It all comes from within. Being able to build that skill in resilience and actually just not giving a fuck quite so much.
Hannah Foley:
Absolutely. It’s a really hard thing to – like today, I feel really positive, but there will be another day next week, where I’m like, ‘Oh! This is terrible! Woe is me!’ Because it’s hard, isn’t it? It’s difficult, especially at the moment, like life is just nuts.
We have never – and it was really nice, we were sat round the table with my mum and dad last week, and my dad was saying to Erin, my little girl, ‘Look, in my lifetime, we have never been through anything like this.’ And he’s 65 next week. So, you think, ‘Actually, this is pretty major.’ This isn’t something that is just happening. In years to come, this will be in children’s curriculums. This’ll be in the history lessons: that time that Covid struck – and hopefully, it’s just ‘That one year that Covid struck’ and not, ‘That was the first year.’ I think I saw a meme where it said, ‘That was first year that Covid struck’…
Clare Muscutt – host:
Oh, no! Don’t. I can’t stay on this corona-coaster any longer; I have to get off. I feel like I’ve just got off – you know when you have that wobbly-leg feeling because you’ve been thrown around so much – I feel like I’ve just got off the ride. I cannot get back on it straight away.
Which, I guess, leads me to our final question, really, about you mentioned you’ve got to find your tribe, you’ve got to find your community, you’ve got to get that group of people that you can bounce ideas off, support each other, work together, get ideas about cardboard boxes for kids. So, Cloud Femme is, what you say in your own words, your ‘side hustle’. Just really briefly, clarify all of that. Where did that come from?
Hannah Foley:
I guess it’s not even like hustling; it’s just a real passion project for me. It’s something I set up – I mentioned at the very beginning, I absolutely love Instagram, and I do have a love–hate relationship generally with social media, but I absolutely love Instagram. I love it as it’s evolving because people are being...
Clare Muscutt – host:
More real.
Hannah Foley:
… more authentic and real on there. I’d always had this idea of this women’s group – I’ve been to loads of networking things, women’s networking groups, and I’ve never found one that I felt really comfortable at. This wasn’t intended to be a networking thing. On my Instagram feed, there are so many inspiring women, and I’ll go walking down the street – because it’s a local group – I’ll go walking down the street in Leamington, and I’ve done it several times, I’ll be like, ‘Hi!’ And then like, ‘Oh, fuck! They don’t know me.’ I’m like an Instagram stalker of that person. They have no idea who I am. I’ve seen them on Instagram, and I follow them and watch all their stories, like some weird stalker. So, I was like I’m going to scratch an itch of my own, I was like, ‘I wonder if there’s a thing where if we get these women who have got these’… We’re not talking women who have actually scaled to the top of Everest; we’re talking normal women, who are local, but who have got some pretty inspiring stories to share. So, every month, until lockdown, we had a monthly event where a local woman would come and share her story. So, it’s bringing women out the cloud, out of Instagram…
Clare Muscutt – host:
Ah!
Hannah Foley:
… to share their story. It’s at a brilliant local restaurant, a bar, that was set up by a lady called Lou, who’s only 25 and she’s incredible. She’s set up this bar. She is the epitome of what’s it about and what being an inspiring woman is about. It’s all pink. It’s all very like her being responsible for her own destiny. She’s created it out of this vision in her head. She absolutely is just so welcoming.
They come and tell their stories. It’s a bit like beginning, middle, and end: where did you grow up? Share your background. The things that you don’t really share all the time on Instagram. What was your life like? Then, what’s your story now? What does the future look like for you?
It’s really nice. It’s lovely. There are about 40 women present, so there’s not any more than that; that’s our numbers. It’s a bit like sitting in somebody’s living room. It wasn’t designed in any way, but it’s just become this lovely group. We’ve got over 2,000 followers on Instagram now. Part of one of the things discovered was there were lots of women in business on their own who are at home running the business, and it’s quite isolating sometimes; it can be quite lonely running your own business. These might be jewellery makers; they might be marketing consultants; could be any female entrepreneurs. I found that there were loads of women in business coming out to our evenings, so it became more of a support network for local women in business. And by actually showcasing them on our Instagram, I’ve had some beautiful messages from some of the local women, especially the younger women in business that have gone, ‘Thank you very much. The Cloud Femme network has just helped me to catapult my business,’ or ‘I’ve actually managed to leave my job now, and my side hustle is now my full-time job.’ It gives me a really warm, fuzzy feeling inside. I just love it. I just love doing it. I love finding out about all these women’s stories. They’re not all rosy stories, though; some of them are really difficult to hear. But actually, those women, in sharing their stories, they’re helping to prevent some of the things that might have happened to them in their lives that have made them the women they are today, as well, which has been really incredible.
So, yeah, it’s awesome. So, if anybody wants to give us a follow on Cloud Femme, see what we’re all about.
Clare Muscutt – host:
I’ve really enjoyed, recently, because you’ve not been able to meet up, you’ve been featuring women and their stories on your Instagram. I’ve really enjoyed it. So, yeah, absolutely: ladies, do follow Cloud Femme. And what was the restaurant called? It sounds like that needs a plug, as well.
Hannah Foley:
It’s called HART + CO, Lou at HART + CO. She does these pancake stacks and things, and she’s just been incredible. The whole of lockdown – they closed the restaurant – they’d never done a delivery service before, and she’s been delivering…
Clare Muscutt – host:
The pancakes?
Hannah Foley:
… roast dinners. The pancakes! You cannot imagine some of the burger fillings, as well. They’ve got a Biscoff burger. It’s incredible. She’s brilliant and constantly coming out with these incredible ideas.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Okay, can we go and meet up there, then, for pancakes?
Hannah Foley:
Yes. Definitely.
Clare Muscutt – host:
It sounds like we probably could now, couldn’t we? I’ll scoot up to Leamington. I know we’ve got some friends in common up there. We’ll try to twin it with a TEDx event or something. But, yeah, I want a Biscoff burger and pancakes.
Hannah Foley:
Definitely.
Clare Muscutt – host:
Thank you so much for coming on the show today. I think your work as an inspiring woman in CX, as an unsung working mum, and as the leader of the Cloud Femme community is truly inspiring. So, thank you for joining us today.
Hannah Foley:
Thank you so much for having me. I’ve loved it. It’s been really nice. Thank you. And thank you for setting up this podcast series because they’re incredible and I’m blown away by some of the women already, and you’ve only really scratched the surface so far with them. Can’t wait for more.
Clare Muscutt – host:
So much more awesome to come out of this community, I’m absolutely sure about it. Thank you for taking part, today. Thank you very much to the listeners. That’s it for now, Han. I’ll be seeing you for those pancakes, soon. Take care!
Hannah Foley:
Bye.
Clare Muscutt – host:
See you soon. Bye!