How do women business owners define success with Dr Hayley Lewis

Women In Confidence with Dr. Hayley Lewis

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I introduce you to amazing women who have interesting stories to tell about confidence through their stories,

insights, hints, and tips. You realize that lack of self-belief or low self-esteem is common and also very human, but by listening to them, you'll take away what they have done to show up confidently on the inside as well as on the outside.

organizational and business [: 00:01:20

Haley's experience has seen her leading various local government services, such as organizational development. I C T strategy, customer services, communication, and digital transformation. And that is quite an impressive list. Before this Haley spent eight years at the BBC where she was an organizational psychologists supporting leadership development and executive assessment activity.

ing high performance teams in: 2021

And I connected with Haley on LinkedIn, where I saw that she had just celebrated achieving her PhD, Haley. Hello, and welcome to women in confidence. And thank you for joining me

today.

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So I'm raring to go.

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point out where you are. And why it's the first coffee of the day. So where are you at the moment?

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[00:02:51] Vanessa: We are now I think just on seven o'clock at night here and on a very sunny day in Australia. I'm sorry to rub that one in the further so thank you for joining. And as I said before, we just, I just press the button and you are the expert in confidence. And so I'm gonna hand over to you largely, and I'll.

Occasionally ask you a question that you are an expert in all things to do with confidence and self-belief, and I'm gonna let you answer these, but let's start off with the question I ask all my guests. What does having confidence

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Disappears. So my kind of my inner thoughts turn from a constant dire tribe of negativity into almost like my own inner cheerleading squad. And so yeah, I feel like I can, I've got what it takes to do what I need to do. And there's an overlap between kind of confidence and [00:04:00] self-belief they're like two hearts at the same point.

If you like yeah. So when I'm feeling my most confident, I feel like I can do pretty much anything that I put my mind to. And it's all about me in a dialogue. Yeah.

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And mights

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[00:04:21] Vanessa: That was our sat nav. We used to call our sat. I dunno why, but anyway, there we go. Little fact, but your inner thoughts and your inner critic, has that always been there or is that just something you're

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And for many for many of us, those inner thoughts are to some degree fed by our life experiences, our upbringing, our cultural heritage, all sorts of things. And so yeah, to. To some extent they're always there and they're constantly being fed in some shape or form. I think the negative inner voice really started to come into its own when I entered the world of work properly.

compare ourselves to others. [: 00:05:20

Yeah, definitely quite self-destructive at times

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Yeah. So

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More often than not, it's not always been a deliberate thing is with women. So female managers and all the way up to kind of board level leaders. Wanting to do some one on one work and they'll show up and want to, they present an issue that they want to work on. But as many of you will know, listening to this, particularly if you work in the coaching space, when you dig away and dig away, after a few sessions, you get to the heart of what's really going on.

And [: 00:06:40

And so that's led me down to a second arm of work, which is working with women who want to leave corporate life to set their own business. And want to give themselves as good, a shot as possible in a, what can be a very competitive space, particularly if you're thinking of setting up a kind of a coaching or training business.

So hopefully that's like

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They know they wanna do it, then why do they need

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Like it was a dirty secret. I actually don't think I want to become chief executive or I don't wanna move up into the next role. I've always wanted to set up my own florist business. So I've always wanted to become a coach myself, but I don't think I can do it. And. that was happening so often that you just made me curious about what is it about these amazing women?

They've worked their way up into incredible positions. And for many of them, they're also juggling other commitments, whether it's caring for family members or other staff. So what is why they telling themselves they can't do this and. Then I thought about my own experiences as a female business owner.

preneur and just this really [: 00:09:20

And so that was like a second thing that made me curious, which is why I thought. I wanna unpick, if there's a bit of a roadmap for women, who've made that step successfully and navigated those early years. So we know a lot of businesses can shut up shop if you like within the first three years, particularly, in the UK context, for example, the average is around 60% of businesses close within the first three years.

And so I wanted to turn that on its head and explore. What does it take to keep a business going. And yeah, so that's all those things brought together, led me to doing the research that I did. And

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Haley ,

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[00:10:13] Vanessa: is quite new. And that is one of the reasons why we are talking because you were. Celebrating it on LinkedIn. And I was like, I wanna talk to this lady. She sounds amazing. So your dissertation was how do women business owners define success and what are the psychological factors that enable them to succeed?

Have I got that

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[00:10:35] Vanessa: You have? Yeah. So first of all, you've explained why but what did you uncover?

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I think there's been a real shift around small business ownership, micro business ownership, entrepreneurship in the 21st century. So I wasn't interested in anything before that. So that was the first study, which then led me to my second study of interviewing a group of women business owners in the UK.

So bringing those two things together, there's some really interesting things that came out. So one of the main issues I have is how. Success as business owners is defined, as I said earlier, a lot of it is about money. And I think that can be really operating to people. It's not that money's not important.

I'm not naive. We live in a capitalist world most of us, but it can't be the be all and end all and. Interestingly all the studies that I looked at there, they didn't, none of them defined success, but they all measured success in financial terms. So when they were researching business owners, women, and men, they were using things like size of profit growth.

in my second study I wasn't [: 00:12:00

And what was interesting is many of the women that I spoke to were the main wage earners in their families, I am. And so there was this thing around earning enough. Earning enough money for a comfortable life. So being able to pay a mortgage, being able to go on holiday, if you wanted having savings for a rainy day, but there certainly wasn't anything about this grandiose, I want a six or 7 million, six or 7 million, six or seven figure turnover.

7 million would be nice, six or seven figure turnover, or I want a hundred employees. There was none of that. It was about earning enough to live a good life. And then the four other kind of definitions were much more about how the woman felt about herself amongst other things. So for many of the women, they talked about wanting a great reputation.

which then led to the second [: 00:13:20

And then two really, it's all interesting to me, I'm a bit of a geek, but there were two really interesting things. So the fourth was, I, it probably isn't a surprise to some of your listeners was this thing around freedom and autonomy. That was a mark of success. Being able to go, do you know what?

I don't feel like working today. I'm gonna go out for a bike ride or I'm, I've got this thing I need to, I've gotta look after a family member and I can do that without worrying that I'm gonna get in trouble or I'm gonna have to eat into my holiday leave or, and that freedom and autonomy.

f thriving at work. It's from: 2005

If you can have a favorite study, that's one of my favorites. I need to get out more. But it hadn't really been applied in a, in an entrepreneurial context. And what came out loud and clear in conversations with the women is through the language they used through the stories they shared is they were all thriving, [00:14:40] not just surviving.

And when we thrive in a work context, we're learning all the time and we get energy and vitality from our. And there was one of the women I spoke to, she said, I am in love with my business. She used the kind of the phraseology, the metaphor of love. She was absolutely in love, almost giddy with that kind of first flush of love with business.

And that to me was such a powerful example of somebody who's thriving as a result of setting up their own business. So that's just the kind of the definitions. Of success really different from what most studies have. None of the studies have told us how to define it. They've told us how to measure it.

And I just think that's really interesting and it means that we can start to tell a different story. to women and potentially men who want to make that step money is important, but here are all the other things that could make a difference for you.

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So how are they got their freedom? How are they made an impact? Cetera. Yeah. So

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So in terms of kind of those kind of core competencies, it was really interesting because again, much of the literature. Has told us women are women. Business owners tend to be really strong at the soft stuff and not so much at the hard competencies, like planning my study, particularly the second one, turn that on its head.

So there were two soft competencies let's call them that absolutely came out loud and clear. So every single woman talked about the importance of her, of relationships. And that ability to build and nurture and maintain relationships. Many of them talked about their network, the professional network, their personal network.

e about how you are learning [: 00:17:20

So many of the women had invested in that reading books, just learning stuff in different ways every day, in terms of the, the hard technical competencies, there were three. So actually there were more that came out. Every single woman talked about the importance of business planning. So that's everything from your business plan, but also how you plan and organize your day.

And lots of them talks about the importance of that, which I'll come to in a minute. When we talk about personality, this idea that you don't just walk into your business and hope for the best, which actually so many of us do I can hold my hands up. I didn't do a business plan. When I left a very highly paid corporate row and set my business, I fell into that trap of focusing on my colors.

And my brand logo. And then wondered why I didn't have a lot of work in the first couple of months. So the women I spoke to didn't do that they absolutely did planning. And then the second was around deep understanding and paying attention to the market. So what I call market sector awareness.

u paying attention to trends [: 00:18:40

Having a crystal clear pricing strategy and having researched that, which leads to the previous competency, being prepared and being really savvy about how you negotiate with clients on costs. So having some real strategy, almost like a game of chess around that. So maybe taking a financial.

For a first piece of work because you're gonna be working with them in the longer term and actually it's gonna be a long burn and you could potentially earn more money just by getting your foot in the door. Yeah, lots of, anecdotes around that. So tho those were the, the main competences, in terms of personality I won't go through all of them, but two of the main ones that came up, so I used what's called the big five personality.

Factors it's the most commonly and most trusted personality framework. Who's by psychologists. One of the ones that came out loud and clear from that was conscientiousness. And so conscientiousness is about doing what you need to do, having routines to get you to do. And just that kind of reliability, if you like.

he importance of routine and [: 00:20:00

Many of the women felt it was fundamental to their success, particularly in terms of navigating what can be a really tough first few years when you're trying to build. Your business. And interestingly, a couple of my participants were late diagnosis ADHD. Cause I can imagine some listeners who might be diagnosed with ADHD would go well, that's all very well Haley, I struggle with that.

And the two women who told me they were diagnosed with ADHD. They said it was even more important. They put in place routines as a business owner, so that conscientious, they had to work harder at it, but it didn't mean they couldn't do that stuff. And then the second aspect of personality was self-efficacy, which you and I talked about when we met originally, Vanessa.

ngle conversation I had with [: 00:21:20

So role models can be really helpful for us with our self belief. Remembering tough times that you'd had where you'd got through, you'd learnt something new. You'd done it successfully. So drawing on kind of past and visualizing. So a lot of the women talked about visualizing where they wanted their business to go, and that helped them map out how they were gonna get there.

So that's just a couple of. Personality aspects.

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[00:22:07] Hayley: am I doing here?

Hell yeah. I thought, oh, so I need to get better at the business planning clearly. My business is successful but it could potentially be even more successful if I wanted it to be so yeah, there were, it wasn't so much about that in myself, but it just, I think more than anything, Vanessa, it helped me make sense of my own journey over the last kind of six years.

, what came out to potential [: 00:22:40

So revenue and customs course. So you can do all sorts of online courses. So there were kind of strategies. So the women knew this was something that none of them liked. None of them felt hugely confident about, but they'd put in place strategy. So I really identified with that. My accountants great, by the way.

And the second was a discomfort with the hard sell. You know what I'm talking about? Those people have slide into your DMS, you've just connected with them and in a nanosecond they're like, would you like to buy? No, I wouldn't. But it seems that is what is being perpetuated and told we're told is how you get business is doing that.

there was a discomfort with [: 00:24:00

Very few. If any of them have to do the hard, sell people, either come to them or reach out to them on the back of maybe content they've put out. And that, again, that resonated with me, cuz I have never and never intend to do the hard. I don't have to because my focus is on putting helpful quality information out there, which keeps people's interests, meaning when they come to me.

So that's what resonated more than anything is it? I think it helped me make sense of my own journey and

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Yeah. They're going into a room with a business card and you have to SP it for, five minutes or whatever. Try and I dunno, bring in some business is what was coming up for. The people you interviewed and cuz networking that you described was very

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It's stay away from me unless you're in a hazmat absolute but yeah, that kind of icky, [00:25:20] very fake feeling. This is about deep relationships. This is about community, which also came up as a value. So there were three really crystal clear values that came out from the women's stories, the things that they're the things that were core to them, and one of them was being community oriented.

So there's an overlap. There's a relationship, I think, between having this value about being community oriented and this overlap with building and nurturing relationships. One of the women I spoke to, she had been a highly successful award winning HR director and stepping into, she was a fairly new business owner.

She was. First year out of the three years. And she said it was an incredibly humbling experience about the community that wrapped itself around her. So the many women who either she reached out to, to ask for advice who readily gave her advice and help. Or who proactively reached out to her when they saw that she'd left and gone independent.

a lot of women talked about [: 00:26:40

She said, I want to give back. I now always want to give back. I didn't so much in my kind of corporate role, but now as a business owner and that I heard lots of stories like that, but that's the one that really resonated. And yeah. So how values can, when we are living to our values, the difference it can make.

For us, for our loved ones for our businesses is monumental. And so the second value was around authenticity. Every single woman said I can finally be who I am. I've been pretending to be someone else or I've conformed to fit what was expected of me in corporate life. And now I can be who I am.

I can live life on my own terms. My business can reflect me. And my personality and I love that. Yeah. So those were two of the main values that come yeah. This sense of community, which I think offsets. The icky feel we can get around networking

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So generously, I can totally say I felt the benefits of that because of this podcast. I reached out to a few people and we didn't know each other and I reached out to you on LinkedIn and we are now here talking and you've even [00:28:00] referred me to, is it Dr. Anna Cain? So yeah.

And many of the people who now come on this podcast are people that have been referred to me or recommended to me. Just this podcast alone, I'm feeling the power of that community and that network and you're so right. Women give so generously expect nothing in return at all. Thank you for bringing that point out.

But the other one other thing I want to talk about is because you said about authenticity, people have been pretending. to be someone else at work. I can relate to that. I'm absolutely, I'm nodding when you were talking. why do we do that to ourselves?

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But if I take. Our context, you are from the UK originally, Vanessa for me personally, being child of the seventies and eighties, we were brought up in a certain way. You go to school, you get good grades, you go to university. Certainly that was, I'm a first gen going to university.

mom put all that frustration [: 00:29:20

I didn't question going to university. I didn't question this idea of, and then you get a good job maybe in the civil service or something like that. And then you worked your way up and how many of us. Particularly generation X, which I am, have ended up in roles that maybe aren't for us, because we were just on this almost fast track, tenure track, whatever.

Get your education, get a good job, work your way up. Maybe have family. If that's what you want. I don't have children, but yeah. And I think that's why so many of us end up in positions. And then on top of that, organizations restructure. So I think I said to you when we had our initial meeting my last role, so I, I worked in the public sector and.

I ended up my last role before I set up halo psychology. I was head of communications and engagement. So I was responsible for. Communications PR digital transformation, media relations, alls massive stuff. It was a really high profile role. I ended up in that role because of a series of restructures and that role felt really uncomfortable.

air of shoes that were three [: 00:30:40

And I think your body and mind find a way of pushing back at that. But then I made it work and that ironically, that was the role I had longest in that organization. But yeah I think there are a number of reasons why so many of us end up in roles that we never, I certainly, as a four year old, never dreamt.

One day I wanna be head of communications for large public sector organization. I want it to be a ballerina slash police officer. still time. There is still time. Not with the way my joint. So at the moment I think there is a whole variety of reasons, but those are probably the core ones that stand out for me.

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And I think. I just wonder when it's all gonna end and I'm not gonna ask that massive [00:32:00] question to you, but it's

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[00:32:06] Vanessa: Yeah. But I just get frustrated that I'm not sure the cycle that has really changed that much in terms of the

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I agree. And it's really easy. I feel to trap social media, for example, see Instagram, your tip, TikTok, all that stuff. I think it's a bit of an echo chain, but I don't think it's always, I think we sometimes tell ourselves it's representative of the world and representative of different generations. I'm not sure, sure it is.

I think it's. A bit of an echo chamber. And so it's really interesting what you're saying, Vanessa, drawing on your experience with your 12 year old daughter that actually education systems haven't fundamentally changed. Even societally. We haven't changed again. I can't talk about other countries, but if I think about the UK, the more things change, the more things stay the same.

In fact, I feel like we're going backwards sometimes with women's empowerment. Yeah. I feel as frustrated and she and I think again, It was one of the, it was one of the conversations I had with my examiners when I was defending my thesis. If I can make even just a tiny little dent in the lives of a few women and give them the belief that they can step out and be who they do, what they always wanted to do then.

I feel that's a life [: 00:33:20

And two of my closest friends in the world are educators. They're teachers, one in secondary. One is primary and they are making changes in their own little part of the sector and in their own little parts of the world. And if there are more of us women doing that, I think the world would be a better place.

I

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And maybe this was my little contribution is this podcast, but I'm certainly an optimist. I just think the pace is just too slow for my liking. Yeah. I love that.

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It doesn't matter if it's like a tiny look pigeon step, it's a step in the right direction. And that's all we can hope for. And we, when I do culture change [00:34:40] work, which is the work I do with ha when I'm doing culture change. Now I say, I sit in front of a chief exec and then I want to change the culture by next week.

And I have to say to we're talking a few years, particularly for large organizations. If you translate that to, to societies and global economies, Then is gonna feel, but as I say, a step forward is a step forward. That's the thing that matters well, definitely means is to go this deep.

I know it's sorting out world issues now.

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Where can they

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For folk. So yeah, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, but LinkedIn's the go to, and I've got a website, but that, as I say, the link to that will be in show notes. And your

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[00:36:00] To the point

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And I speak from my own experience. Having worked for some awful little managers during my career. And it's really interesting cuz I I often get unsolicited when I'm feeling generous. I think it's well, meaning I D always think it's well, meaning. For the most part, it form me advice into my LinkedIn DMS of you should sell your eBooks.

You should monetize. And I give those people short shift because it's a very deliberate strategy on my part. First and foremost, it attached into my values for as many middle managers that can afford to work with someone like me. There are hundreds who will never, ever be able to work with me because.

ly. And the second is from a [: 00:37:20

I saw this, that you shared on LinkedIn, or I downloaded this thing or I read this blog post. Can I have a chat with you? Because we've got this issue going on and I'd like you to do some work with us. So there's two very clearly thought through reasons why I give so freely to use your phrase.

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[00:37:56] Hayley: Yeah. Yeah. It, yeah, it feels a bit weird still. I've been doing them for five years and I tell you what I've done a lot of podcasts over the years and covering all sorts of.

So people with slightly different takes on working life. Every single podcast interviewer at some point will ask me about sketch notes. I, so to conform, no, don't please. Don't I talk about them. I talk about, cause I, I sometimes still don't get it. I'm like, they're literally stick vagues with a bit of bubble writing.

of the strengths that would [: 00:38:40

So that's always been core to who I am. And when I started my, when I started TA psychology enough, think I mentioned I didn't have any work for the first few months. And seeing our savings go down was terrifying. I thought I need to do something different. I'm not marketing enough. I'm putting the old blog post out.

And then wondering why no, one's interested. How dare they? One day I happened to be on Twitter and I came across this one page drawing and it was like drawings and words, some talking about some aspect of leadership by a guy called tan Maura. If you don't follow tan, ma you should, he's on Twitter and LinkedIn and his sketch out are sublime.

He uses an iPad pro and he's just so clever. And it really spoke to me and I thought, oh, I like that. It just really, it was. Scene in Wayne's world. It's oh, like a, like an angelic choir. So I thought I'll give it a go. So I did some kind of free email course. And then really, I just talked myself. I looked on Google and YouTube, my first one.

axing. I found it really, it [: 00:40:00

Taps into our inner child. And but more fundamentally it helps anchor my understanding of research and concepts. And yes, I started putting out there and I got a little bit of interest and then there was one I shared in 2017 about leadership and I couldn't keep up. It literally. It was like my own little version of going viral and I had to come offline for a couple of days.

Cause I felt so overwhelmed. And then yeah, it really took off from there. So I have sketch note Monday. So anyone who follows me on LinkedIn or Twitter, this sketch note Monday. So every Monday I share a brand new sketch note and the ideas behind it. And I cover all sorts of things like leadership, culture, teams, confidence, all sorts of things from a research base.

I thought it was a spam . I [: 00:41:20

And nearly lost out on one of the biggest opportunities of my life. Thank the Lord. So I actually ignored the email from the editor three times. And it was only on the, kind of the tenacity of the editor, the editing team at penguin random house and Vik that I went, oh, maybe Israel. Yeah, the people love the sketch notes and I've gotta keep feeding the beast now.

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[00:41:48] Hayley: Uhhuh .

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So what's your one piece of advice that you'd say to somebody who's listening to go and how they're gonna go and get some confidence or how they're gonna maintain their confidence.

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Because I think as I said, right at the start of this conversation, so it's, it is a nice bookend. [00:42:40] It can be, it become, it can become intoxicating and then a self-fulfilling prophecy to engage in that negative talk. It can become, it can very quickly become a spiral and impact your confidence. And so as soon as you notice that happening, think about how you can get out of your head and head that stuff off at the past.

And as I say more often than not, it's about talking it through with someone who that person is, you have to trust them, but yeah. Get out of your

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Absolutely head over to her website and her Twitter and her LinkedIn profile. So Haley thank you so much for being on and for sharing all your thoughts and all your research around self-efficacy and confidence and success for women business owners. So thank you for being on the show.

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Thank you for having me.

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That's contact@vanessa-murphy.com until next time.[00:44:00]