The Reality of Going Solo in CX: Resilience, Loss & Rebuilding a Career
Episode #905 Show Notes
Discover how Katie Stabler built a thriving CX consultancy through resilience, authentic leadership, and a human-centred approach to customer experience.
In this special edition of the Inspiring Women in CX podcast series, celebrating the winners of the Inspiring Women in CX Awards 2025, Katie Stabler joins Clare Muscutt to explore what it really takes to build a successful customer experience consultancy rooted in humanity, resilience, and authentic leadership.
Named Solopreneur of the Year 2025, Katie reflects on her journey from unexpected redundancy to running a thriving independent CX consultancy for over five years. Together, Clare and Katie unpack the realities of solopreneurship, navigating personal adversity, and maintaining a human-centred CX philosophy in an increasingly AI-driven world.
The conversation also dives into Katie’s book, CXism, which challenges traditional views of customer experience by reframing CX as a cultural belief system rather than simply a business function.
Whether you're a CX consultant, leader, founder, or someone navigating the future of customer experience in the age of AI, this episode offers honest insights into resilience, leadership, and building a values-led business.
Key Insights:
Building a customer experience consultancy in an AI-driven world requires more human connection – not less.
Resilience in business is often about continuing to show up through uncertainty and personal adversity.
Human-centred CX creates stronger long-term customer relationships built on trust and empathy.
Solopreneurship can feel isolating, but it also creates freedom, adaptability, and authenticity.
Visibility, relationships, and reputation can become more powerful than traditional marketing strategies.
CXism reframes customer experience as a mindset and cultural philosophy rather than a department or process.
Timestamps:
02:07: Career Inspiration & Human-Centred CX Leadership
05:48: Staying Human in an AI-Driven Customer Experience Industry
10:03: Why Women in CX Technology Matter More Than Ever
12:19: Starting a CX Consultancy During the Pandemic
19:42: Burnout, Grief & Building Resilience as a Solo Entrepreneur
29:19: Writing “CXism” & Growing a Global CX Brand
37:17: Advice for Women Starting a Business in Customer Experience
About Katie:
Katie Stabler is an award-winning customer experience consultant, speaker, and author of CXism. As the Inspiring Women in CX Awards 2025 Solopreneur of the Year winner, Katie is passionate about helping organisations create more human-centred customer experiences through culture, empathy, and authentic leadership.
Resources & Links:
Explore the Women in CX Community
Learn more about the Inspiring Women in CX Awards
Discover upcoming Women in CX Events
Listen to more Inspiring Women in CX Podcast Episodes
Connect with Katie Stabler on LinkedIn
Transcript:
Clare
Welcome to this special edition of the Inspiring Women in CX podcast! A series dedicated to real-talk conversations between women in customer experience and technology.
This season, we’re spotlighting the winners of the Inspiring Women in CX Awards 2025 – trailblazing women transforming customer and employee experience around the globe.
I’m your host, Clare Muscutt, and today I’m chatting with our Solopreneur of the Year 2025 award winner.
Her journey begins with unexpected redundancy, but what follows is a powerful story of resilience and reinvention. Now an award-winning CX consultant, speaker, and author, she’s spent the past five years building a thriving consultancy grounded in human-centred customer experience strategy, authenticity, and real-world impact. She challenges traditional thinking, helping organisations rethink CX leadership in the age of AI through culture, empathy, and belief – not just process.
Allow me to introduce you to today’s inspiring guest, Katie Stabler!
Clare
Hey Katie, welcome to the Inspiring Women in CX Award winners podcast. How are you doing?
Katie
Well, great, thank you. I'm really happy to be here on what is a miserable morning outside, but pleasure to be here.
Clare
Yeah, we can bring some sunshine through this podcast. So I think we should definitely start with huge congratulations, Katie. How did it feel to be named Inspiring Women in CX Solopreneur of the year 2025?
Katie
Yeah, crazy, I don't think it's settled in yet. I've never won an award, I don't think, and especially not something which really means so much to me. I'm five years in to be recognised for the achievements, it's really hard to say, isn't it, to congratulate yourself, but yeah, it was pretty awesome.
Clare
No way, I'm so surprised that this is the first award you've ever won, Katie. In my eyes, you are definitely an award winner. So, have you got your award there? I think I can see it in the background. Oh, gorgeous. Yeah, huge congratulations.
Katie
It is so pretty, it's beautiful. And it was a surprise to get, as well, actually, a physical award. I was so happy when it came through the post.
Clare
Yeah, well, I hope it has pride of place in your office. You definitely deserve to look at that every day and reflect on those incredible five years of achievement, which we're definitely going to dig into now. So, obviously, Katie, you know you're a big inspiration to a lot of women and men and people in CX more generally on LinkedIn. And, your name is always being mentioned in these lists and stuff. I think I saw you in another top 50 just this week. I was wondering if you'd like to share who has inspired you personally? And that can be in CX and beyond. Tell us about your inspiring others.
Katie
I think this list could go on and on, and it's one of those things that when you talk about who inspires you for what reason, then it's like, “Oh, and then there's this person, and then there's this person.” But I think if we maybe start in the world of CX, my first actual titled CX role, and I do that because I think a lot of my roles previously were CX, you just didn't have CX in front of them, was a woman named Sarah Sargent, who is still a CXer in the world today. And yes, Sarah.
Clare
Love Sarah, she's wonderful.
Katie
And she is, she's amazing. And the reason that she was so inspiring is, I worked for Europe's largest credit management company, which is Debt Collection. So we're in an incredibly hard environment, never mind hard for CX. I mean, putting CX and Debt Collection together is interesting, but she was the first CX director there. She really led an amazing ambition.
She was one of the only senior women in the directorship, so she had that to contend with as well, and obviously, I mean, CX still gets this fluffy persona, and she was managing this fluffy department in a very male finance-oriented company. She was just a real inspiration, and she led with just grace and intelligence and passion, and yeah, I don't think I have a bad word to say about Sarah, so she was an amazing inspiration.
Clare
We also have a podcast episode featuring Sarah Sargent. So listeners, if you want to go back into the Spotify playlist, you can hear all about her story, too.
Katie
And I've had the pleasure of working with Sarah since, in my consultancy, when she was working for a housing association. So it's been lovely to continue that journey with her.
Clare
Nice. So she would be a number one. Anyone else inspired you?
Katie
Yeah, you know, I also worked for, and again, it seems to be the senior people who are in this list, but there was a gent named Nicholas Wollstone Pearson, quite a name. And he was actually pre my world of CX. So he was the Founder of a charity that I worked for, the Debt Collectors Association. And he was a, just again, a real leader in change in the world of finance and debt, which I worked in for a long time. But what I particularly enjoyed about Nick and what I found really inspiring is again, he was just, he always faced such challenge.
As a small charity, we were always under massive pressure for budget, but he was just there in this tiny little office – I mean, there was like six of us working in this tiny office. He was there day in, day out, like a bit of a Del Boy, almost just slogging away, trying to get funding. And I think his ability to never look like he was fazed, even under incredibly challenging times, and just be so human in his approach to everything that we did was also very inspiring.
Clare
He sounds great. Two super people there.
Katie
He is great. He's run off now. He's retired, and he lives in a little cottage in the Welsh countryside with his dogs, and he's off running, and he's stopped smoking, he's stopped drinking, he's turned his life around, he's very healthy, and he's living his best life.
Clare
Oh, that sounds idyllic. So just thinking back to your LinkedIn announcement post when you shared that you'd won the award, you said, you know, it means a lot to you. But you actually said, “Because it recognises the power of staying human and authentic in a world that often tells us to scale, hustle and automate everything”. So I was just wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about that ethos, and how it shaped your business to kind of go against the grain of that.
Katie
Yeah, and I think this is hopefully something that people recognise in me when they work with me and just in life in general, especially right now. I mean, you know this, Clare, the world is so digital, and the world of CX, gosh, we're just constantly talking about technology and AI, and we have to embrace it, right? But also, we could easily go down that route. We could tag AI on the front of our business names, and we could, no doubt, drum up a load of interest very quickly because that's what people are focusing on. But I refuse to do that.
So while I'm happy to support conversations around AI and technology, I fundamentally believe that in the world of CX, what we are doing is working with humans, whether that be people or customers, and we cannot step away from that human experience. And I know I'm not the only person banging at this drum, but I will continue to bang this drum. And I'm going to stay really firm in that psychology of customer experience and the true depth of what it is, what it means to companies and how companies can truly transform it with the help of technology, no doubt, but that's absolutely a supporting tool and not the focus. And I think no matter how I work with companies, that's the ethos, that's the basics, the foundation.
Everything is bespoke, much to my detriment. I don't go in with particular frameworks. I don't fit people into my model. I fit my model around people. And I think for the last five years that's worked for me, and I hope that it continues to work for another five years. And yeah, that's what I'm very passionate about, and I hope that comes through in the work that I deliver.
Clare
Yeah, 100%. I was just thinking of kind of my reflections on that. I was in the same camp initially, like there's just so much noise about AI, it seems to be dominating every conversation, and people are changing, even their consultancy titles or their focus, like suddenly becoming experts in AI in CX, where how can you even be an expert? It's been around five minutes.
But I think, for us as women in CX, we've kind of taken this position of leading conversations that bring it back to humanity. And like you say, start with people, starting with the problem that we're trying to solve. Because, for me, I think now, kind of having been involved in conversations pretty consistently about it for the last 18 months, the real danger is about just shiny technology solutions being fitted into part of a tech stack, and that becoming the customer experience.
So I know that you're big into the design side of experience, the same way I am. I'm really advocating for the customer experience design coming first and the technology selections coming second. But that is a huge shift because of this gold rush, particularly for corporate internal teams that are taking that…kind of led by technology. They're even saying we're AI first. You know, it used to be with digital first, or now it's AI first.
Katie
Yeah.
Clare
No, we need to be people first, human first. So I'm totally with you on that one.
Clare
And yeah, we'll continue to be banging our version of that drum in hosting conversations that do talk about the realm of technology and customer experience, but really shifting it away from the technology and into the human aspects and how we create case studies and examples of businesses actually doing it the right way around. And women are absolutely leading this, but anyway, we'll stop chatting about AI and carry on chatting about you so...
Katie
No, but you know what's so important, what you just said about women being leaders, I agree wholeheartedly. But I was at four events in November that were fantastic events, but they were all tech-led, and the amount of women in those rooms was shockingly low. So whilst I absolutely agree that women are leaders in CX, I think we need to be getting more women in that CX tech space because, well, I mean, I'm not saying men can't do the job, but I think we need that influence, and we need that. We need to…exactly what you were just saying: keep human first. And I'm actually, well, you know this just as well as I, but I'm seeing women really poorly represented at the moment.
Clare
Yeah, my experience as a keynote speaker was the same. I'd be the only woman, a token woman, sat on a man-el and the audience I'd be looking at were majority male. This hasn't been since, you know, the AI evolution. This has been generally when it comes to any kind of technology conversation in customer experience.
So, a big shift for us was working with vendors and sponsors to run events for women in CX and technology to have those conversations, just rooms of women, but featuring speakers who are women. And seeing those women now being invited to the events that were pretty much exclusively male speakers, their company's actually recognising these women have something to say, putting them forward in their own conversations when they're doing their events and actually more women feeling like they can attend those kinds of events by sometimes even doing pop-ups at other conferences.
So saying, you know, here's a big tech event. We're going to run a Women in CX breakfast the morning of, or the day before.
Katie
That's cool.
Clare
And yeah, kind of trying to facilitate those spaces. You're really clear about what you stand for. Really clear that actually it's not going with the flow of what's popular right now or emerging to be something that people are jumping on the bandwagon of, I suppose it would be the way to describe it, wouldn't it?
I wanted to focus in a little bit more now on your decision to go solo originally because I did it when I had my consultancy before Women in CX, and it is so hard, going solo isn't easy. It's not even scratching the surface of how bloody hard it actually is, but it's even harder to stick it out. And you're five years in now, it's a great success story, and I'm sure our listeners would love to hear a little bit more about what you did or that decision-making time, and what you really believe makes a successful solopreneur business in this crazy, now AI-obsessed CX space?
Katie
Yeah, gosh, I thank my lucky stars when it comes to my business origin story because I think I was in a, well, I know I was in a really fortunate…
Clare
Fortuetous? Fortunate?
Katie
…position, fortunate, fortuitous, I think, yeah. I suppose compared to a lot of other people, I know I was super lucky.
So basically, I didn't have an ambition to set up my own business. I don't know why, my parents had always had their own business. It wasn't like I didn't grow up around it. I think I was just very stuck on that whole corporate ladder, growth, growth, growth, growth, growth. I hadn't widened my view to what could be possible.
But I was made redundant, and it was just before the pandemic. And a woman who I met once, who I worked with so fleetingly, recommended me, Laura Bartlett. I'll call her out because she's an absolute game-changer in my life. She recommended me to a new client that she was going to have, who needed a CX professional but wanted them in a self-employed position. So it meant that I had this great opportunity in front of me, but I had to set up my own business in order to do it. And quite honestly, I didn't think too much about it. I pretty much jumped straight in. I remember getting on phone call with you, Clare, talking about it.
Clare
Yeah, I remember that!
Katie
Yeah, how do I even set it up? And we talked about limited companies and all the fun gubbins of starting it. But I got straight in, and I had –and this is why I feel so lucky – so I had a retainer contract three days a week for a year.
Clare
Dream.
Katie
So not many people get that when they start a business. And I got that again, just through networking, a recommendation or a referral of someone I kind of knew, and when I talk about business success to anybody, I think that's ultimately the crux. Or it certainly has been for me. It's been getting yourself out there, talking to people, getting people to know you. You know, usually these conversations don't have a quick turnaround, and it's not like you meet someone, you've got a contract tomorrow, but you never know which conversation leads to what door opening and a friendship that can be six months down the line can one day turn into work.
So for me, hands down, my business success over the last five years, which has been absolutely ups and downs, might I say, it's not been smooth sailing, but my success, I definitely accredit largely to my network, the people that I meet, the places that I go, the conversations that we have and the work that that maybe turns into one day. In fact, I'm not sure of the exact percentage, but bar one client over five years, which was a tender application, the rest have all been referrals and recommendations, which I think just shows you how important relationships really are.
Clare
Oh yeah, 100%. That's the goal as well, isn't it? Inbound leads coming in. You don't have to market yourself, like the marketing, or just being…
Katie
No, and they're risky. You've got no control over them, but it's always the nice place to be.
Clare
But also, what I love about you is… because LinkedIn is a great channel, isn't it, for I think raising your profile more broadly. So you know, just kind of showing up every day, talking about yourself, what you do, the story behind why you do it. And yeah, not having to overly invest in highly engineered marketing campaigns or lead gen tactics, or email lists and stuff like that. That is a really fortunate position to be in.
And it just sprung to mind, actually, I have a great example. I had a big client that came from somebody who I went to high school with, who carried on following me on LinkedIn. And 20-odd years later, was thinking, “We need to do something about customer experience. I know who I'm going to get in touch with, Clare Muscutt.”
Katie
Exactly.
Clare
That's got to be the longest lead time ever, right? 20 odd years.
Katie
But that is the power of it, isn't it? I know it can be really frustrating, social media marketing, because you don't always know where your messages are landing, if they're landing, who they're landing with. But if you…you've got to have a little bit of faith in these.
And yeah, just, just like that. I had a client who came from, again, somebody who I worked with at the Debt Collection Company. But when I say worked with, gosh, I hope they're not listening. I don't remember them. I don't; I might have met them once. I mean, it was a big company. I don't remember them, but they remembered me. And because they'd seen me constantly on LinkedIn, just like your friend, they thought they’d come to me. So, I don't think you can underestimate the power of that kind of marketing, and I don't have a huge following. I'm around nearly 6,000, so compared to others, you know it's not massive, but it has certainly been enough to keep me in the forefront of people's minds when they need a CX-er.
Clare
Yeah, thinking about marketing, that's mental availability. You might not have the need for the product or the service at the time, but if you've got mental availability, being the person that people will come to, that is super powerful stuff.
Katie
Yep.
Clare
So, in terms of your own entry, the judges were particularly impressed by your resilience in the face of challenges, and obviously, I've known you for a number of years and kind of witnessed in the background some of these things first-hand, you just gave a great example of turning being made redundant into starting your own business. So, would you mind sharing a little bit more with our audience about the challenges you faced, how you've built that kind of resilience, and the difference that having that kind of resilience has made to your journey as a solopreneur?
Katie
You've got to have resilience as a solopreneur, I mean, I've said I had that really fortuitous first year. The following years had not been quite so fortuitous. And you know you have ups and downs. And I think, first of all, the most common challenge that we all face from a business perspective as an entrepreneur is not every opportunity turns into something. And you can spend, I mean, gosh, you know yourself, on proposals, you can spend weeks of time and effort. And despite being sensible about it, if it's an opportunity that you're excited about and passionate about, you get so built up for it. And if that doesn't come to fruition, I mean, that can just be really devastating on a personal level. Never mind on a financial level or on a security level, on a personal level, it can be super challenging.
So, even just the obvious challenges that we all face in business. The challenges of learning how to run a business, the finance side of it, the marketing side of it, that every single hat, I mean, that's a challenge. But quite honestly, the biggest challenge that I faced, and I think, again, as women, as people, we have our personal challenges that we face, families that we run. I had a 20-year relationship, which broke down two years into my business, and that was obviously devastating. We were married, together for 20 years. It was an absolute surprise to me. I wasn't – I didn't see it coming at all. I was very, very blind to it. And gosh, all I wanted to do was curl up and not see the world for quite a long time. And I'm two years past this now, so I can talk about it a little bit more comfortably. But if we were talking about this two years ago, I certainly wouldn't have been smiling. The amazing thing, actually, is that I did have a business because I had no one to rely on. I couldn't call in sick. I needed to deliver on the promises and commitments I've given to my clients. I couldn't just say, “I need a few weeks off now, folks. So forget about the things that I said I would deliver.” And that made me get up.
And actually, one of the things that really helped me through that time is about two weeks after I'd had the awful news, Awards International asked me to be their host for the UK customer experience awards. And for me, that was a goal, an absolutely massive ambition that I'd had. And I didn't see that coming either. So it was just a really beautiful bit of shiny, sparkly light in a time that was quite dark for me. And it gave me something to look forward to and get excited about.
And yeah, like my business, and the people around me, of course, but my business definitely carried me through. And then a couple of years later, my gorgeous dog, who was the biggest light of my life, passed away. So that was devastating. These things we all face, right? We all go through these, but to run a business whilst you're going through that turmoil, that's not easy. So you've got to recognise these challenges and be resistant in those times.
Clare
Sorry, I didn't know about your doggy. I'm so sorry for your loss. Oh gosh. Wow, Katie.
Katie
He's still with us in spirit.
Clare
You've been through so much. And yeah, I think it really resonated with me that kind of like feast and famine feeling. Sometimes you're on cloud nine, and everything seems to be going the right way. And then all of a sudden you hit a drought. So having to kind of build those reserves in the bank to be able to keep going sometimes.
Also, that, oh my God. The proposal thing, like building these amazing things you spend weeks and then it ends up just turning into nothing or then picking someone else or the worst thing that happened to me, taking the proposal and actually delivering it internally because I had to give them so much. These days, I only do, like, an email-like draft and say, if you actually want to work with me, you have to commit to at least stage one, and I'll tell you the next part after that. But I just don't do it anymore, and I don't know whether that builds more respect, actually, from potential clients, but they kind of have to be invested in working with you already.
So I think that's kind of back to relationship, isn't it? Which you've mentioned quite a few times, actually getting to know someone on a human level, so they feel they know and trust you. And social media is great at kind of providing a window to that. If they've seen you for the last five years, they're one of your 5,000 followers, or however many followers, you've built that kind of credibility and trust from a distance.
And how difficult going into either cold pitch or competitive proposal submissions, as particularly as a solopreneur, where you have an RFP, and nobody knows you, it's just the procurement department evaluating a set of criteria. For me, I would say, as a solopreneur, just stay away from those ones. Going after, it's not even really going after, is it? It's like being in touch with your network, listening to understand what kind of problems people are encountering and having more of those gap conversations. Tell me where you are today, tell me where you want to be.
Katie
Yeah.
Clare
Let's talk about how you close that gap. For me, when I was a solopreneur definitely was the most. I was an efficient is probably not the word higher success rate, but I still think it's, you know, a number of leads at the top of the funnel, might be a hundred still to get to one.
Katie
Yeah, absolutely.
Clare
And yeah, that is, I think, like you said, the resilient part and God, yeah, just trying to keep going when it feels like your whole personal life is falling to pieces or some of the things that you mentioned that you've gone through. It's so goddamn hard. But I, like you, especially these days, with Women in CX, know that no matter what, I've still got this reason to get up in the morning and to keep going as well. So, you know, thank you so much for sharing with such vulnerability, there Katie. It really means a lot that you felt safe to do that.
Katie
Well, I think that's the benefit of having a business that you're passionate in though, is that actually when times are tough and when you are facing, like, really sucky challenges, at least even if what you do is hard, at least you love it.
Clare
Yeah.
Katie
And at least it's a good reason to get up. I mean, obviously, there's people who are very, very happy in nine-to-five jobs. And I hope that if they go through difficult times, they're still happy to get up and to work. But when you have a business that you are passionate about, and you just enjoy every moment of, actually, when times are really tough, it helps.
Clare
Yeah, yeah. And I don't know about you, I think that that kind of, again, because I was in corporate for a very long time before I did the initial solopreneur thing, and going freelance, and mine grew into an agency in the end before it all collapsed in the pandemic, and Women in CX began.
It's just that kind of difference in “I'm getting up, and I'm working for myself.” It isn't that kind of nameless shareholder at the end of the track that I'm delivering results for, or that kind of ungrateful boss that gives me a lot of headaches most of the time. What I'm doing is directly benefiting me, my growth, my mini empire that I'm building. And for me, I could just never go back now, I don't think. I think I'm pretty much unemployable. I don't think I could work for a corporate or anyone else ever again. Is that a similar thing for you?
Katie
Oh gosh, yeah. And in fact, so I'm really lucky, I think another thing that I would definitely advise solopreneurs to do is surround yourself with other entrepreneurs. And I'm really lucky that I've got a close group of friends who do all run their own businesses, and are very not the same industry to me, but similar to me in size and the way we work. And when time's are tough, when perhaps that lead pipeline is slower than you want it to be, and the opportunities are less and you have that fleeting moment of, “My gosh, maybe I might have to go back to a proper job.” The dread that fills me with, because I mean, there's a million awesome companies out there, which I'm sure I would enjoy working with, but the thought of not working for myself and the thought of not doing what I do every day just is scary.
Clare
Scary.
Katie
It's enough to make me keep going.
Clare
Yeah, yeah. Once you've had it, it's hard to go back, I think, isn't it? Yeah, I think what you mentioned, that community network, having a group of people around you that really get it, really understands those challenges. I know talking to lot of women in our community, before they discover WiCX, or maybe they don't have the network that you already had.
So, you know, try to explain customer experience to my partner, my friends, or my family. They just never get it. And then women that then go on to start their own businesses, but they're the only one. And again, not having that kind of space to be able to talk to other people that just really understand it is such a powerful thing.
Katie
Yeah.
Clare
So yeah, it's definitely surrounding yourself with people that understand is definitely an important one. And before, we're kind of getting to the close now of this podcast, but another huge thing that you did this year was your first book. It was your first, wasn't it? Publishing your first one.
Katie
Yeah, so I co-authored a book before, but that was a little chapter in a book, which I'm still proud of.
Clare
Yeah.
Katie
But yes, I published my first solo book this year, March, I think. Thank you. Yeah, it was amazing. Gosh, I actually took half of November, December, and half of January off last year just to write it.
Clare
To write it, yeah.
Katie
And I'd been thinking about it for a couple of years, to be honest, and it's gone through a few iterations, and I've had reels and reels of notes that I wanted to put into it. And I'm glad that I waited to when I did, because there's no end of great customer experience books out there. And I didn't want to do something which is the same as all the others. So I don't think this is, it's my philosophy of customer experience. It's really around the psychology and the neuroscience and the depth of understanding, which I think a lot of companies just graze over, they don't look at.
And the first 20,000 words were easy to write. The second 20,000 words were not so easy to write, but it was absolutely a labour of love. And gosh, if anybody's thinking about writing a book, going back to what we were talking about, like marketing and positioning yourself in the industry, it is a brilliant promotional tool. I mean, obviously, you've got to put the effort into promoting it, but it really is. It's taken me all around the world this year. I went to South Africa in August to speak as a keynote at an event, which the book undoubtedly helped me to get there. So I think if that's on your agenda to do, I'd highly, highly recommend it. It's worth the effort.
Clare
Yeah, 100% and the book's called CXism, is that right? Yeah!
Katie
Yes, yes, ism. And “ism” is a philosophy basically. So yeah, this is my philosophy of customer experience.
Clare
I have to pause for second there to say how well coordinated is your top and your background with your book?
Katie
I'm very on brand always. In fact, at the events that I was speaking at in November, I wore an outfit which, unintendedly was exactly the same colours as this book.
Clare
Love it.
Katie
So every time I showed the book, it looked like I'd come dressed as my book.
Clare
I absolutely love it. I love it.
So, thinking about your philosophy of CX-ism, I know that it's really about challenging those outdated perceptions around customer experience as a tactical function. And what you're trying to do is really reframe it as a cultural movement. I know you've talked a little bit about the book and the writing process and how useful it's been, but could you tell us a little bit more about what your CX-ism is all about?
Katie
So it really is that, it's about how… so typically what we see is customer experience is a project, an initiative, a tactic. If we're lucky, there's a strategy. If we're lucky, there's a director or a team looking after that strategy.
Clare
It could just be a survey for a lot of companies.
Katie
Exactly. Or even now, just a piece of technology. It's not even a strategy behind it. But yeah. So, what this is, I think, and what I've seen over the last 15 years of talking to CX leaders, of working in all kinds of different companies across the world, is that unfortunately, a lot of customer experience initiatives, projects, whatever fail.
And we are constantly still going on about failure of being able to demonstrate return on investment on CX projects. And, quite honestly, I'm not surprised that we're having these conversations because they're not usually started in the right way. They're certainly not resourced well enough. They're not prioritised well enough, and they are not committed to it across the organisation.
So what my philosophy really is about is just a much deeper understanding of what CX is. just taking the word CX off a page and stopping it being a business function, but actually thinking about, again, the psychology, the neuroscience, the absolute depth that is involved in cultivating what we call customer experience and harnessing that knowledge to actually design intentful customer experience, design intentful strategies that ideally are culturally bought into, so there's a whole culture piece about it. And in the longer term, hopefully prevents us from having these conversations about failed ROI, because they're approached in the right way, they're resourced in the right way, they're committed to in the right way. And maybe one day in the very distant future, which I can't see happening in my lifetime, but actually, customer experience is just as important as HR and operations and marketing. And we don't have to keep trying to raise its profile. Long story short.
Clare
Yeah, that's super interesting. That triggered about a million thoughts in my mind. And it's easy to then layer over this kind of technology challenge now, where that's becoming the driver of what an experience ends up being. It's super complicated, isn't it?
Katie
Yeah.
Clare
I know for me, the commercial side needs to be a given. I know there's been a lot of talk around ROI. There's been a keyword around ROI of CX for the last few years. So I think we're kind of moving into this new stage now, aren't we, where it's about commercial being a given, keeping it rooted in humanity and people. For me, it's what are the different skills we need as CX or human experience leaders? You know, it's going to be much more about skills and design, service design, experience design. It's going to be a lot more about digital and digital design.
Change management, I think, is more critical than ever, right? How, you know, I came across this really interesting stat when we did a WiCX webinar the other day, that when you get assessed at the end of a year, only 10% is actually based on your performance. The other 90% is a combination of your image and your exposure within an organisation. So that kind of shift from technical skill, keeping that, maintaining that, but into impact, influence, engagement, all of the stuff that kind of makes that step from being a manager into a leader.
Katie
Yeah.
Clare
So yeah, it's a great time to have a book basically.
Katie
Definitely, and you know the book barely even talks about technology
Clare
Yeah.
Katie
It's all about…really, it comes down to culture and culture change.
Clare
Fundamentals.
Katie
And the technology can be layered over the top, but that was quite deliberately so.
Clare
Yeah, because it's all based on the same foundation, right?
Katie
Yeah, totally.
Clare
Great time to have a book, great time to reset on those fundamentals. So yeah, thank you on behalf of the world for publishing your CXism.
So to bring it to a close now, Katie. It's been so lovely to see you and hang out with you. It's been a while. I know you came on the podcast originally in 2020, when I first started all of this. And if anyone wants to go back to that episode, you can really dive into Katie's journey of making that transition from debt management to being self-employed, and particularly those challenges around bringing CX to such a complex and difficult area of human interaction. But you know, seeing you five years on, glowing, living your personal brand, having gone through you know some huge and terrifying personal challenges, and to still be rising, things being, I know it's up and down, but from what I'm seeing, those opportunities, those projects, those achievements are continuing to grow, and I'm so proud that you are our Solopreneur of the Year this year.
Katie
Thank you.
Clare
If you were to sum it up for other women listening here, if their ambition is to either start or grow their own business as a solopreneur, what would you want to leave them?
Katie
Absolutely, just don't be afraid to put yourself out there. You have to be visible. You really do. So however that looks for you, be visible, talk to people, go to in-person networking groups, get on LinkedIn and Instagram and all the others. And also, don't be afraid to charge. I think, you know, we do, give away as consultants so much for free. I mean, Clare, you even mentioned about proposal stages and learn every day. So these conversations are so important, but don't be afraid to charge. If someone asks you to do something, put a price tag to it. You've got to earn a living and make a business, and they can always say no, but they can always say yes. So don't not charge.
Clare
Yeah, don't undervalue yourself. I think my final thought was around, actually, in my journey, I did have to do some stuff for free first to establish my credibility, but I did it for startup founders that were my friends. Basically, I just got loads of photos taken of me running the workshops, and I wrote kind of case studies and published on social media, the pictures of what I was doing.
So basically, I kind of felt this front of, I was already doing it. Then, when the money challenge hit, my next step was, “Okay, I need to get some money in the bank to be able to fund this continued journey of trying to build my solopreneur business.” Actually, contracting work is a really great thing to do because you're still through your limited company with a client, growing your business, and day rate jobs are really well paid. So I did six months of that, that gave me another six months to be able to start developing my pipeline. And I think speaking was one that we both shared, isn't it, as a way to be seen and be visible. And yeah, just anyone who has a book in them, get that book written early, girl.
Katie
Definitely, I cannot recommend writing a book enough for so many reasons, but it is a great promotional tool.
Clare
Yeah, so thank you so much for your time today, Katie. Again, I can't emphasise how proud I am to see you being crowned our 2025 Solopreneur of the Year. And yeah, just continued, best of luck with your endeavours as you go on.
Katie
Thank you so much.
Clare
Take care, everybody. Bye for now.
Clare
Thanks for listening to the Inspiring Women in CX Award Winners podcast with me, Clare Muscutt.
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