Clare Muscutt talks with Serena Riley about challenging gender bias for the future generation of women leaders.
Episode #409 Show Notes:
Clare:
Welcome to the ninth episode of the fourth series of the Women in CX podcast, a series dedicated to real talk conversations between women in Customer Experience. Listen in as we share our career stories, we relive the moments that shaped us and voice our opinions as loudly as we like about all manner of CX objects, I'll be your host Clare Muscutt and in today's episode, I'll be talking to one of our founding members, a seriously wonderful woman in tech from the USA. Let me introduce you to today's inspiring guest. She started her career as a computer programmer and went on to hold a number of roles in IT leadership before moving into Customer Experience in the logistics sector, developing CX for software as a service businesses. She's now the VP of Experience Management at a renewable energy company, SkySpecs. Please welcome to the show, the Empress of Empathy and Empowerment, the Emissary of Experiences and Transformations, the Advocate of Underdogs and Wellness and the Architect of Joy & Moxie, our CX Sister, Serena Riley. Hey guys, just a quick note from me here. Unfortunately my sound was terrible on this episode due to my microphone not working. So please accept my apologies for a subpar listening experience, but the conversation is amazing. So, I hope you can put up with it and listen through, Serena's well worth listening to. Thanks everyone.
Clare:
Hey Serena.
Serena:
Hey Clare.
Clare:
How are you doing?
Serena:
I'm doing fabulous. Thank you so much for having me.
Clare:
I'm so excited to have you here and welcome to everybody that's listening along as well. You're in for a treat today, girls. So, Serena, as I always do. We're going to jump right in and I'm going to ask you the question that I ask all of my guests, and that is how exactly did you find your way into CX and get to where you are today?
Serena:
Oh goodness. So we're going to rewind it about 20 years now. Cause that's how long I've been in the corporate world. I started out in IT and was going to school for software applications and programming. So, not something that a lot of women were doing 20 years ago and had started out helping out a credit union.
Serena:
So in the financial space, doing help desk and then kind of turned that more inwards and was helping with our marketing team, helping with just like internal processes and then helping do some internal web design and program reporting and things of that nature. And then moved on to a insurance billing company where I did more of that internal it support, moved over to a tech start-up and did some of that customer facing support again, as well as just starting to do more around how we could better serve our customers and making sure that they had what they needed to be successful. And about five, six years ago is when I discovered that I needed something to relight my fire and bring me some more happiness in the work that I was doing on a daily basis.
Serena:
I felt I had kind of maxed out where I was at and was trying to figure out what our organisation needed, where our gaps were and what my strengths were and how I could support them better and found this world called Customer Experience, which as a lot of us, I think, realised we had been doing it kind of all along, just not officially. So really started kind of getting into that, learning more about it, you know, networking with lots of folks, creating some good relationships and some mentorships and things of that nature. Just trying to learn as much as I could, as fast as I could so that I could deliver some value to our organisation as well as our customers. And through those years, I think, leaning on some different communities was definitely one of the value drivers for me, one of my success factors and lo and behold, about a year ago, I saw a lot of LinkedIn feeds coming through because I was subscribed to different things like women leaders and customer experience and women and CX and whatnot, and stumbled upon you, Clare.
Serena:
And I remember reaching out to you and just trying to understand a little bit about what you were creating and was super excited just by your personality and by the things that you were talking about, the things that you were bringing to LinkedIn which I think needed to be displayed more, just the women's aspect of a lot of the things that we deal with on a day to day basis in both the experience world, but also just of business, generally speaking. And I remember having that first chat with you through zoom, similar to this, and it was just, I felt immediately connected to you and knew I had to be a part of this thing that you were building and have never looked back, have just been super thrilled to be in this community and to watch it grow and to be a part of it. So thank you.
Clare:
Well, firstly, thank you. Because you've been the most wonderful Founding Member and absolutely helped us to build the culture that we've got today and I just so remember that first time we met, kind of looking at each other and being like, oh, I found my person.
Serena:
Speak the same language.
Clare:
Yeah. It was a magical conversation, wasn't it? I remember just feeling like, yeah, you've got to be part of this first group of Founding Members to help this happen. So, thank you. And I'm super excited that you said all of that nice stuff as well. I'll give you the twenty dollars later.
Serena:
Well it is forever recorded for you to go back to.
Clare:
So, this incredible career journey. So, the VP of Customer Experience now at SkySpecs, what exactly does your job entail now?
Serena:
Yeah, so, SkySpecs is another start-up here in the US focused on renewable energy. So we're a B2B company looking to help our customers optimise and do more with less. And so we are helping them to do different inspections of their wind turbines to understand what the actual assets are that they're managing, how they're performing, where they need to be doing repairs and whatnot. But we're also building some software and some solutions to help them better drive their business forward and create new strategies and planning and optimising those assets. And so a lot of what I'm doing, you know, is helping to create the customer support team. That's going to, you know, that's our first hand and first response team to our customers. Whenever they have questions, we're building the customer success management team to make sure that our customers are getting the value that they need, that they have the support that they need to continue growing themselves as well as us continuing to grow with them.
Serena:
And then also just looking over the general customer experience as a whole, and also doing some internal, business operations, revenue operations side of things. So, how do we take and stand up the voice of customer and understand how we can take that and influence the rest of the business to be able to morph and to grow and transform into who we need to be for the future of our customers too. So a lot of things is what experience management means right now for me. But it's a lot of exciting opportunities for growth, both for me personally and professionally, as well as our organisation. And I think that's what's most exciting about this role is just being able to help people achieve greatness.
Clare:
Oh, I love that. And obviously running a start-up myself now, knowing that kind of start-up, scale-up, everything having to be built from the ground up and from scratch. And that you're kinda in the scale up zone now, aren't you? That being turbo powered with resources and a team, I hope one day we get to that.
Serena:
You will.
Clare:
Incredibly exciting role in a really interesting space, renewable energy being something that's going to make a difference to the world. So, great to see you applying yourself in such a wonderful way. So, you know, there must have been some challenges that you've experienced on your way to greatness yourself. What was one of the biggest challenges you've had to overcome to become the woman you are today?
Serena:
I think for me generally speaking, I've always been a people pleaser. I've always been kind of a perfectionist and those things can get in the way of your own progression and your own advancement. And I think I was one of those people that was definitely like, I always gave 110%. I always wanted to make sure I was doing a fantastic job, that people were seeing the value that I could bring, and I never got any, you know, comments or suggestions, otherwise. But what I realised was that I was waiting for others to tell me when I was ready to move up or when I was ready for the next step in my career. And the minute that I realised that I could take the reins and decide that for myself and actually be that person that I wanted to be and tell people that's who I was and where I was going, everything changed for me. The energy that I had changed in that I was going to just go do the thing.
Serena:
I'd always, you know, kind of been the person, see a need, fill a need. Like I would always help others with things that they needed to accomplish, but I don't think I ever stepped back to do that for myself. So really taking upon that mindset for just like, if that's the person I want to be, or if that's the thing that I want to become, then I'm going to go do the thing that allows me to become that person. And I think that has been kind of the biggest game-changer for me. And it's a bit sentimental for me because it all started when I had my daughter and she was kind of the person that made me think about my future and what I was trying to accomplish. I have two older boys as well, but for some reason when I had that baby girl, I knew I had to be the role model for her, and I wanted her to get to where I am faster and easier. I knew that I had to change how I was thinking and what I was doing and be a stronger person so that she could see how you can accomplish that and how you can move those roadblocks out of your way.
Clare:
So much in that to unpick. Nodding, pointing at myself, going 'yeah'... and just how that natural kind of value of excellence and delivering, you know, doing a really good job and wanting to do your best, over time, particularly in the corporate environment, can turn into this really unhealthy perfectionism that holds you back. And just picking out a couple of things that you mentioned there, you know, waiting for praise and approval, waiting to be told, 'oh, good girl, you've done a great job there' or something and not really ever receiving it. I think maybe just continue to work even harder and be even more kind of punishing on myself as to these unrealistic standards that I equally actually regret, I think as a leader when I was on the business side, held my team to an unrealistic standard as well, it affected my leadership style. For sure. But, witnessing so many other women struggling with similar experiences and challenges and this sense of perfectionism, I just really have to question, where does this come from? If it affects so many of us, and I don't think it's entirely internal.
Serena:
Oh, no, it isn't.
Clare:
It's a systemic thing. That triggers it in so many of us. But what are your thoughts on that? Like where does this come from? How do we end up with perfectionism that holds us back? And like you said, another thing that I just pick out there was, you know, waiting for somebody to give you the step up rather than thinking actually 'if I want that', I'm going to go do that thing and go get that thing. And these days I do too. But when I was young, when I was in my twenties, I was just constantly waiting for the approval, the nod, the tap on the shoulder, ready to progress and go through traditional kind of performance management, not management performance process, their PDPs and the annual review and just waiting for promotion to come to me, rather than going out there and saying 'I'm ready'. It might not be at this company but I'm going to go and get that next thing.
Clare:
Tell me, what's your view on where does this all come from?
Serena:
So, yeah. I read an article, and forgive me, I'm not remembering who wrote it or where it came from, but there was this piece that I was reading that kind of, it starts at a young childhood age and the way in which parents raise girls versus boys is very different. Girls like, keep yourself clean. You need to be neat and tidy. You need to sit properly or whatever it is, you know, all of those, you know, I don't even know what to call them. Just generalisms that you end up doing without thinking, because that's how you were taught versus the boys where it's like, they can just go climb the things, oh, boys will be boys. They're just going to go, you know, wrestle and roughhouse with each other and things of that nature. And they just become what that ends up teaching them or what it ends up enabling for them is that boys just go do things.
Serena:
They just try things. They fall, they fail, they just get up. They go again. Were girls, we hold back more. We've been kind of taught, just instilled in us that you've got to do it right the first time, you got to be, you know, in line with, I don't know, our family values and whatnot, and don't step too much out of those lines. And so I think that that's why also it kind of triggered for me when I started raising a girl, of course I let the boys be the boys. I didn't really think anything different, but as soon as I had a girl, I would find myself starting to say, 'Hey, don't do that'. Don't just stop. Just wait. You know, don't do it that way or whatever. And I would catch myself and realise like, no, let her go try it.
Serena:
Let her see what happens when she tries these things on her own. And she either fails or succeeds one way or another. And I think that ends up creating some of the personalities that we end up having. And why so many of us women struggle with these different things around perfectionism too. And then we end up setting these, to your point, these unrealistic expectations for ourselves, or we set the bar of like, this is where we're going to be constantly. And then when we fall from that bar, we end up being our own worst critics about it too. And it just, you know, it can be deflating to our own personalities too.
Clare:
Oh, again, so much in there that resonated with me. I was just thinking of examples like girls and young women. It's always 'be careful', isn't it? 'Be safe'. You step out the house, you're warned about all the bad things that could happen to you because of your gender and, to some extent, that's true, but men, boys don't get raised to be afraid of being raped and murdered the way that girls do. And this is quite a far distance from work here, but the need to protect ourselves and keep ourselves safe. I think that you're right. There's definitely something that gets drilled into us that as children might kind make some connections with in our brain that aren't quite rational as to how that applies in later life. But also kind of thinking about what girls are valued for over boys.
Clare:
So, you know, you said, go experiment, try it out, roughhouse play. But whereas with girls, it's more, you need to get it right or do ballet or dancing or something more sporting and feminine. But the conditioning I think we receive about where a woman's value is, also happens at a really young age and a lot of it is to do with our appearance and therefore our attractiveness to the opposite gender. And I noticed this with the way that people talk to little girls. Oh, aren't you beautiful? Aren't you pretty, aren't you cute? And they don't say that to boys, they don't say 'aren't you a good looking little boy'. It's 'you're strapping lad, you're strong', you're this, you're that. That, you know and I'm like super conscious, not that I have children or raising a daughter or anything like that... Even though there's still a little desire in me to tell them how pretty they look in that cute dress, not to do that and not make a comment about appearance or, you know, kind of to talk about character. But then, yeah, seeing in the media constantly, even though there's some change happening from a branding point of view that it's good not to label girls as having to be pink and cute. There's an awareness of, it’s very much inherent. I really do agree with you there.
Serena:
And obviously that's, you know, that's a very broad generalisation, obviously that doesn't apply to everyone and everywhere, but it's certainly something that resonated with me after I read that study, for sure.
Clare:
Yeah. But I think where I'm going with this, is that kind more my own recognition of my own bias. I am female and I have stereotypes and gender bias, or I have less now, because obviously I'm dedicated to the role of amplifying women's voices and helping us all to raise up. But when I look back and think of some of the things that I've done and said that are so antifeminist, Because subscribing to what kind of traditional gender roles or expectation of what my value is, you know, it shocks me now and anyone who's listening, you should really read Women Don't Owe You Pretty, it's a wonderful book and it'll help you explore your own feminism.
Clare:
Yeah, your life will be changed forever after it. Cause you'll be like, oh my God. 'Yeah, totally have those patterns in my behaviour'. So, how did you get this confidence then to be like, I'm going to go do that thing. You talked about recognising, if I'm going to be a role model for my daughter, but how did you change? How did you make that happen? So, I know even in the last year watching you in the community, having something similar right. In the last year of going, 'hi, this is the role I want. I'm going to go get it to myself.' How could other women embrace that confidence and take some practical steps around going and getting what they deserve, asking for their job.
Serena:
Well, I think the first thing that I thought, this is also, I think, again, another thing that females tend to do, but males don't is like, well, if I'm going to prove that I should be that person, I’ve got to go get certified. I have to have that piece of paper that shows it or whatever. Or I have to really know what I'm talking about. So of course the first thing that I did to kind of advance my own career was throw myself into a lot of educational things. I did end up taking the CCXP certification and ended up getting certified in that, because again, I felt like I needed to have something that proved that I knew my stuff that I could show to others and to get that sense of respect now, looking back, and this is not to discredit the CXPA at all or the certification.
Serena:
Like I still have that certification and continue to renew it. But perhaps, you know, the way in which I think about that is also a problem. You don't see always men going out and getting that piece of paper to verify that they're that person for the job. So I'm even questioning some other ways in which I got here now, but that's regardless, you live and learn. But I think, yeah, just really starting to network with a lot of folks that are doing similar things, just sharing my ideas, creating thought leadership around different areas that I'm passionate about and, you know, taking the criticism with the good on those things and continuing to expand on it, having that growth mindset, not tying my success to one thing that was either a success or failure and just constantly being a person of learning, never closing that door to being open, to learning something or growing or developing a new skillset or whatever it is.
Serena:
I think that's definitely been kind of, I'm not saying that I wasn't a learner before, but I threw myself, you know, headfirst into all of that really starting to try and just feel more competent in what it was that I was talking about and then joining communities like this, where you can have open honest conversations about the challenges that you're seeing in your business or in your personal life and how they all connect with one another and how you are not alone in feeling these things and other businesses are struggling and not having to reinvent the wheel every single time. It doesn't have to be an original idea to be a good idea. You can take in, you know, other people's learnings and apply them so that you can get there and grow faster too. So, I think that's definitely been something that... I'm a super creative person and I love creating different things. And I love having, you know, crazy ideas and creating these fun experiences and whatnot, but there's also key to just doing something quickly to show what it could be in the future, creating that first, you know, MVP product or, or whatever it is, and not striving for the version 52 when version five will work right now.
Clare:
Totally agree with you. And that's the perfectionism again, isn't it. I remember trying to architect really complete strategies and propositions and perfect journeys to what brilliant would look like. And it was just never going to be accepted by anybody never mind the business or get the level of investment it needed. So when I finally figured out yeah, say MVP, and what's the first step towards demonstrating the value that doing this kind of thing could do. And I had no option other than to do that, but then I discovered how much more easy it was for stakeholders to buy into if you had evidence you could create business cases, you could predict results or likely returns on investment and building something piece by piece, what's achievable by the compound effect of those small movements is can be incredible within the space of a year. But going with the big strategy, the VoC program, the CX design team, to architect all of that before you even do anything now I would definitely do things differently on the business side having done it this way in a start-up, but just to pick up on a couple of your points there, because I think it's the most frequently asked question...
Clare:
I get asked by new women who are joining the community about which certificate should I get. And I personally never did any formal CX certification, everything I learned was on the job by trial and error, experimentation and figuring out how to make it work. So it was always a bit of a surprise to me why people would ask me which is the right course to go on, or which certificate should I get. But now, spending so much time with so many women, it is a very frequently asked question and I think you're right. Not having the self-belief that we are enough, or our experience is enough and that somehow having a certificate will make up for that sense of not being enough. And it does worry me, how much some of these, not naming any names, I don't have a problem with anybody, particularly as an organisation, but how much it kind of prays on that insecurity of needing validation and justification when, does it necessarily, any of the qualification out there, do they necessarily make you better able to practice Customer Experience? When, as I said, you know, 15 years working for corporate organisations doing the job, that's proof enough. So yeah, it's interesting and I do see it, no men ever ask me 'which certificate should I get, Clare?' They never ask me that question, ever. So, yeah, I think you're right there.
Clare:
We have to talk about Joy & Moxie, you haven't mentioned Joy & Moxie. My perspective, this personal brand you built over on Instagram and I see on LinkedIn, the joy that even just reading your posts and seeing your authenticity and your perspective coming through so strongly, it really stands out to me. And again, one of the things I love about you. So, tell us more about Joy & Moxie. What's that all about?
Serena:
Yeah. So I think for me, that's my future. That's where I am growing and going with my life. And it's all about, you know, my passion to take these things that we have learned as CX professionals, how to design for the future that you want, how to, you know, create the perception that you are, that you want to become and all of those things and using that to empower specifically women, just because that's my own personal story that I can help tell and share experiences with how to help women understand they can design their future for what they want it to be. And they can start now and they don't have to wait for that piece of paper. They don't have to wait for that boss to tell them that they are ready for that promotion, that they can take and start doing the things they need now to grow into that.
Serena:
And I don't know if it's because there just, haven't been a lot of women in the organisations that I've worked with, but there are, I see it less now, but there was definitely a competition piece to working in organisations that are definitely more male-driven and being only the few women within that org and trying to go after that promotion or trying to go after another position within the organisation pitting each other against one another. It doesn't need to be that, using each other's experiences to help one another, to get there faster, to pull the next person up behind you to, to instill confidence and empower the next group that you're helping to lead to become those strong independent, confident women. It's so I... It gets me at my core just to be able to share and to really let women realise that they hold the power to be the Queens of their kingdom or their queendom in our case. Everybody's got a crown, you don't have to show it. You don't have to flaunt it, but it's there. Mine's really high today, apparently. But, it is there and we have the rights and the capabilities to make the decisions that will empower us and push us forward to where we want to be and it doesn't rely on anyone else to make that happen. It all can be done with the decisions we make.
Serena:
Joy, joy, and moxie, being grateful having, you know, just the energy, the fire, the passion, and the moxie, having the confidence, the authenticity, be you for who you are and who you want to be and don't let anybody else get in the way. Those two words for me are just drivers of my own personal kind of philosophy of how I'm trying to move myself forward too. So I'm hoping that I can bring the same to others as well.
Clare:
Well, I absolutely love that and you're so right. And I think, you know, kind of that meeting of minds we had right back in February of 2021 when we started talking about all of this stuff and women supporting one another, lifting each other up, giving a hand down to the person behind you, versus our own experience of having felt... Competition, especially in male-dominated environments, with our experience and the role models that we didn't have or it seeming like there was only ever going to be one seat at the table for a woman, probably in HR or Marketing, and actually she would defend that with her life. Like the hangover, I think, of precariousness that women feel around particularly senior leadership positions and why perhaps that leads to this behaviour of women...
Clare:
...Some women supporting one another relentlessly. And I had some incredible women leaders who didn't see me as competition, who saw me as potential and did everything that they could to give me a hand up. But I came across 10 times as many women who would put me down, make me feel small, tried to upset me, literally sometimes get me in a room and shout at me because they would perceive me as challenging them when I wasn't, I was just coming up with ideas, how things could be better, but they would perceive me, me challenging them and that wasn't ever, ever the case. And I guess I think I love the community so much because, on a day to day basis, we're demonstrating this collaboration over competition, lifting one another up, finding opportunities for each other, like you said, at the beginning, you know, someone posts something about something that they're finding difficult and literally 20 women are coming and going...
Clare:
'I had that problem too, here's what I did about it. Let's jump on a Zoom with you. I can coach you through this.' And I just haven't ever existed in a space where women proactively are fiercely supporting one another and championing each other for success. So, thanks for the reminders of all of those. And I just love the concept of Joy & Moxie. Got to have a bit of both! Joy, the kind of gratefulness, the abundance, the lust for life, that authenticity, courageousness and determination that is your power. And you can stand up and go and take what you want, but in a way that is grateful and joyful, it doesn't have to be dominant, aggressive, or stereotypically the way a man would do it. We can be feminine in our power and go and get what we want and craft our own future. And I fundamentally agree, you know, like we've got a job to do to raise the next generation of young women. And it's only by leading by example, in whatever way, you know, whether that's as parents or as women on social media, that is gonna be the challenge to that.
Clare:
So yeah. What should we be doing differently? I think we need to talk about, you know, your daughter's five now, right?
Serena:
Yes. Yep.
Clare:
So you already spotted kind of this zero to five years, how parenting girls and boys differently can influence how they grow up and you don't want to create any challenges for her through the programming that she might receive. What are you worrying about in the future for your daughters? Because I know the difference experience for 15 year old girl, I had to phone people's houses, I had to knock on their doors to go and play with them. Social media didn't exist until I was in my twenties. What does the future look like for you? And what can we do to make sure it's a better, safer space for women?
Serena:
I think honestly, well, honestly, honesty is the thing that we need more of, we need more vulnerability, we need more truth-seeking, truth-speaking, type of sharing, on social media and whatnot. And I see a lot of creators doing more and more of that. I see our community members doing more and more of that, of just being bold enough to say the thing that would've been so faux pas in the past to say, and I know that there are definitely instances where that comes back and immediately, you know, people are like, that's not appropriate. You shouldn't be talking about that. Well, I'm not really sure that's up for you to decide anymore, but that also is the, I think the key to why some of us struggle with some of the things, because we felt like we had to solve the problems all on our own and that there weren't others that we could turn to other than the women in our life, maybe, perhaps, but really being open and honest about some of the struggles that we have, the lessons that we've learned, the failing forward, not seeing things as complete failures, but lessons learned is only going to just maximise the impact that the next generation can have even quicker and be able to take things and grow things so much faster than what we ever were able to.
Serena:
Because I really think that it's like our generation and perhaps, you know, generally speaking, whatever this generation of businesswomen is now, that's really seeing it as the ‘we're starting this now for the next group’. And the next group is going to have such a bigger advantage to coming into these environments and being able to state what their worth is, not question it, state it and be able to go after the things that might have held us back previously. And I just, I think the more that we can talk about our truths and be genuine and be, you know, honest about the struggles, the wins are absolutely important and we need to be grateful and recognise those too. But I think the most things that you learn or the most growth you have is from the failures, from the challenges. So the more that we can talk about how we address those and how they actually created where we are today, I think it's just proof that like, try things, experiment, just go do and be that light and lead with love and kindness obviously, but go do the things that you need to, to stumble into, or to roll into exactly where it is that you want to go.
Clare:
I love it. Yes. A hundred percent agree with you. And, yeah. Trying to paint a perfect picture all the time, whether it's on social media or just not being kind of really, truly honest about your truth is depriving yourself and others of an experience of vulnerability and authenticity that will enable you to break away from shame.
Clare:
I remember my foray into LinkedIn and my amazing coach, Lea Turner. I couldn't talk about the difficulties that I'm experiencing on LinkedIn, where people are potentially going to give me jobs as a consultant. And she's like, 'why the hell not?' Like people I know and can trust, people that they can relate to and resonate with. And some of the stuff I'm comfortable sharing now on LinkedIn. And I never have any questions there, but the fact that women have reached out to me in my DMs and been like, 'oh my God, I'm so glad I read that today. Cause it actually helps me not feel bad about this thing I've been worrying about', or the podcast episodes, like doing this right now, you know, talking about our own struggles, what we're worried about for the future of girls and women everywhere.
Clare:
So it's good to talk about these things and the more we normalise having conversations about fears and disappointments and character flaws that we still deal with and battle with all our demons, only good stuff, more light can come from there. And yeah. I absolutely agree with you just being yourself wherever you are, whether it's in an organisation, on social media, with your friends, with your family, there's no substitute for it. And the happiness that you'll feel when you stop trying to be someone else or be something else, what other people expect you to be, yeah, it shines out and I see this light all the time in you and yeah, it's been a wonderful opportunity to chat. I just noticed the time I could have gone...
Clare:
But super excited to see your masterclass in the community this week! WiCX Wonder Women.
Serena:
Right. Get the power poses.
Clare:
Yeah, get the power poses out and yeah, for anyone who's listening that's not yet a member of the community. You must come and join us soon to find out more about what we're getting up to. So that's it, Serena. Thank you so much for being a wonderful guest. Before we depart, would you like to leave Women in CX with one piece of advice to take away?
Serena:
Oh man, I think, and it matches directly to the values that we have within Women in CX too. I think the most important thing you can be is yourself. And I think regardless of who you've been today or who you're trying to be tomorrow, be who you are right in this moment, don't miss out on the experiences that are happening around you because you're trying to fit yourself into a box of what you think is the right way or person to be. And I think the more, again, the more just authentic you are and express your general energy and the general aura about you, the more you're going to attract the success that you're looking for too. So just be you.
Clare:
Yeah. Be you. And if you find yourself, my additional piece of advice, so if you're being yourself and the organisation you're working in, or a friendship group or a partner you're with don't like that, then that's just ignore that, you're not in the right place because there is the right place for you to be you and the right people to be around and not to make yourself miserable by trying to be something else. I love this what a wonderful moment to end on. So, thank you so much, Serena. Thank you for joining us today and thank you to everybody for listening along at home as well. Join us again next week for another amazing episode of the inspiring Women in CX podcast. I'll see you all next time. Bye for now, bye Serena!
Clare:
Thanks for listening to the Women in CX podcast with me, Clare Muscutt. If you enjoyed the show, please drop us a like, subscribe and leave a review on whichever platform you're listening or watching on. And if you want to know more about joining the world's first online membership community for women in Customer Experience, please check out womenincx.community and follow the Women in CX page on LinkedIn. Join us again next week where I'll be talking to another amazing community member about founding an all-female CX agency in the Caribbean.
