How I Changed Careers in Motherhood (And How You Can Too)

0:08Zoe:Hello, my lovelies. Welcome back to Motherkind. I am so happy you are here. Let me tell you, this is exactly where you need to be. If you're a woman with children in the early-ish years, and like me, you are done with the generic bro advice where everyone apparently has the same 24 hours. Thank you very much. This is a podcast that actually works for your life now. Now this topic is a new one for me to talk about, but we had Francesca Amber on the podcast. I'll link it below who wrote manifest like a mother. And we had such an incredible response and so many questions that for the first time ever, I thought, why don't I talk about how I manifested this, my dream career.

0:55Zoe:Okay, shall we dive into it?

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2:30Zoe:First thing to say is that manifestation is a loaded word. And for me, it is not about thinking, dreaming, wishing about something, and then it magically happening. If that was the case, we all would have won the lottery by now, right? No. Manifesting for me is really about how do you create change in your life? And I think it's about three things. Knowing what you want, taking brave, scary, small steps to get there, and trusting the process as it unfolds. I'll explain what that means to me in a minute. So knowing what you want, let's talk about that first step. Let me take you to a little story time.

3:08Zoe:Before I had my first daughter, I worked in marketing, firstly for big corporates, and then I consulted in marketing for about a year before I had my eldest. But I knew I didn't want to carry on in marketing. And I wonder if some of you will relate to this where you're in a career and it's okay, but you kind of know this isn't the thing that is lighting my soul on fire. It didn't fire me up. I wouldn't lie in bed at night dreaming about becoming a CMO. And so this is a really important first step. It's knowing what you don't want. If you know what you don't want, then congratulations because I think you're closer to knowing what you do want.

3:47Zoe:So I knew I was like I'm okay at this marketing thing but I know it is not what I want to do forever and around this time I was obsessed with personal development. I mean completely obsessed looking back it's a bit embarrassing but I was going to Hay House workshops nearly every weekend. I was inhaling personal developments books. I was doing my training and coaching and meditation. And I started to get those sort of ideas bubble up about maybe I could have a career in this space. So I started by writing a wouldn't it be cool if dot dot dot list. And this is such a good place to start. You've got to let go of all those limiting beliefs, all those fears, that voice that says, what the hell, you're crazy.

4:31Zoe:Who do you think you are? That would never work. Put all that to one side, even just for 10 minutes, grab a blank piece of paper and write at the top, wouldn't it be cool if dot, dot, dot. And I did this and I started writing things like, wouldn't it be cool if I could speak on stages and help people? Wouldn't it be cool if I coached women? Wouldn't it be cool if I surrounded myself with inspiring women? Wouldn't it be cool if I had a podcast, if I had a community of women around me and perhaps I could help them? And I always knew it was women that I wanted to help. So I just kept adding and adding to this list, even though absolutely that voice was there like this will never happen.

5:08Zoe:What the hell are you talking about? But through that list, I kept adding to it the first year of motherhood, going through my matrescence. And, you know, I found it so hard because I didn't know about that word matrescence. Through that first year, while I was on maternity, it became really clear to me that it was mothers I was meant to help. And at the time I was doing a lot of work reprogramming my mind because everything starts in the mind. If you don't believe you can do it, you just will never try. That's just as simple as. So I was working every day on rewiring my beliefs. I had a big one that I'd be laughed at, that I'd be mocked from people from my ex-corporate jobs.

5:53Zoe:That did happen. that I would fail, that I wouldn't handle it if I was successful. That's a big one. I kept thinking, but I hate having my photo taken, let alone having my face on the internet. There's just no way that this is going to happen. And so I was writing down all those fears and I was working on them. I wasn't trying to ignore them. This is a mistake that lots of people make. You've got to face them and then think, so what? So, you know, I wrote down, I'm going to be mocked by people that I used to work with in corporate. And I wrote down, so what? What's the worst thing that can happen.

6:24Zoe:And that is a really, really powerful way to start to shift those fears out the way, which is this worst case scenario planning, where you take a fear and you take it to its absolute worst case. So for me, it would be I'm going to get marked. No one's going to listen to a podcast about motherhood. Everyone's going to think I've gone crazy. The absolute worst case scenario is that it completely flops. I'm mortified and I have to go back and get a consulting job or another corporate job. I thought, you know what, that's not actually that bad. I reckon I could handle this. And I just kept doing that fear by fear.

7:01Zoe:So this dream that I had of working in this space, doing something like I'm doing now, went from being this sort of mental idea to seeming totally possible. And actually, this isn't that big a risk. So I started to believe and even have a bit of a vision that this new career could be possible for me. Yes, I made the vision boards and I visualized, but the real work is in believing it's possible for you. So let's recap. If you don't know what you want, but you know it's not where you are now, start a wouldn't it be cool list. Start staring down your fears and see if they're really true. Figure out the worst case scenario and realize you'd handle it, my love.

7:46Zoe:You could handle that. Okay, so now we've got a bit of a vision. Hopefully we've shifted some of those fears out the way. The next thing I did, and I think this is the next step in creating any change or creating anything in your life, is taking tiny, brave actions. And actually, this is it's not easy, but it is quite simple because once you have the vision of where you want to get to, you then make it real by mapping out the steps you're going to take. So for me, I was like, I've got this vision and I want to start a podcast, but I literally had zero clue. I'm not one of these people who had like, you know, a husband that worked in production or had a friend who owned a podcast.

8:26Zoe:I knew no one in podcasting. I'd never interviewed anyone. I had never even owned anything like a microphone. When I tell you I knew nothing, I am not exaggerating, but I figured it out, right? I was like, okay, well, I probably need some guests. I probably need to get a microphone. And I remember going down to Curry's, my local Curry's in Wandsworth, where I used to live, and buying a 50 pound microphone. That was that. That was fine. I knew I needed a brand and a logo that I did actually get someone in my family to design. So all simple steps. That is the next step is take this big vision and break it down into tiny, tiny, tiny steps.

9:05Zoe:So if you know, OK, I want to retrain. Say I want to retrain as a coach, which is something that lots of people talk to me about because that's what I did. You think, right, OK, the first step is not to enroll to coach training. Break it down much, much, much smaller. Say I'm going to reach out to three people that I know have done this and ask them who they trained with and did they have a good experience. that could be your action for the day or the week right depending on how much free time you've got so just take some small action that is going to nudge you further and let's be real not having much child care forces you to take a bit of action right if you want to do this and you're like i've got an hour of child care just try and force yourself to to do it right make sure that you do it because sat here now with sitting in this job it doesn't feel like a job if i'm honest but sitting kind of doing this work I am so grateful to the Zoe of nine years ago that had no clue but just kept bloody doing it day after day step by step and I know that if you start today or you're already on the path just keep going because in a few years you are going to look back and you are going to be so happy that you did it.

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11:36Zoe:Now, a really important side note here because it just annoys me when people make it look like you just click your fingers and you're out of one career and you're into another one. And I think social media makes it look like that. And certain books that I've read makes it look like that. Most people I know who switch careers or start a business of some sort do paralleling first. Okay. It's rarely a full switch moment. It's more of a sliding scale. So most people slide into their new career while somehow using the existing skills or consulting or job that they had to fund it. So when I started Mother Kind and actually for the first three years, I think it was, I kept one or two marketing consultant clients.

12:20Zoe:I kept income coming in whilst I learned. And that safety net enabled me to keep going, keep testing whether it was going to work and whether I actually really wanted to make the leap kind of completely into the space. And I think it was only in 2020, five years ago that I went all in. And this is really common and it's not talked about enough. So remember that most people parallel and think about how could I do that with this new career that I want to make happen. So keep taking small steps. And here's what's so important to know, right? These small steps, they sound simple, but the reason it's not is because by definition, if you are changing career or you're doing something new, very quickly, you're going to reach the edge of your comfort zone.

13:03Zoe:So I'd never recorded a podcast. I'd never even interviewed anyone or posted on Instagram. I had no clue what I was doing. So I spent that whole early years, the first three, four years being really uncomfortable. And this is the key is being comfortable with being uncomfortable. And I know we talk about that a lot. And in a way, motherhood is a whole exercise in that, right? You're just constantly a little bit uncomfortable because it's all so new and it changes so quick. But that is how you grow. So keep taking those small steps. And what you'll find is how quickly momentum builds. If you build on this new idea or new career switch that you want to make just 1 % a day, right?

13:47Zoe:Tiny 1 % action that compounds. And by the end of the year, you'll have grown 3 ,678 % because of compounding, which is wild. So just to sum up that step, it's just about taking those small little steps. Remember that you are going to feel uncomfortable a lot of the time. You're going to be on the edge of your comfort zone. And I think this is even harder maybe when you've got to a certain level of seniority in a career that you do know really well. It can feel wild to suddenly become a beginner in something else. I personally really like that feeling of just like being scrappy, being like, right, how do we figure this out?

14:24Zoe:So take that energy into whatever you want to create. Keep doing those 1%. All right, now step three is trust the process. You hear people talking about this a lot, don't you trust the process? And I used to think, what the hell does that actually mean? Well, what it has meant to me, for me, and as I built Motherkind, is to go where the energy flows. And I know that sounds like more trite, but let me unpack what I mean here. When I first started Motherkind, I was super nervous. I mean, when I say nervous, I just can't really explain the amount of trepidation and fear that I have. Anyway, I got invited to this dinner, God knows how, but it was like with the OG mum influencers.

15:10Zoe:And it was about nine years ago and everyone was talking around this dinner and someone there was really struggling. And I remember saying something, I can't remember exactly what, I think it was about fear and trust. And I linked it somehow to what she was going through in motherhood. And everyone around the table fell silent. and I thought oh god but actually they were kind of blown away and then Clemmie Telford who was a friend of a friend and at the time was this huge sort of mum influencer she had she actually then the next day I think it was shared what I had said on Instagram and suddenly from having done like two posts or something I got an influx of all these new followers and the reason I'm telling you that story is because that is what I mean by trust the process.

16:00Zoe:I was so nervous and I genuinely feel like there was an energy flowing, right? That that was a nudge. And I took it to mean you're going in the right direction. Keep going. And there was so, I can't tell you, that kept happening. There were a few times where I was like, this is just too, I can't do this. I'm going to quit. This is in the first year. I was like, I just can't. I'd be up until 2am I'm sometimes editing an episode and then, you know, my eldest would wake up at four and it was really difficult. And I just thought I can't do it. But something would happen every single time. Right. Where I would just get this kind of nudge or this push or like this breadcrumb to keep going that what I was trying to build mattered.

16:44Zoe:And it was needed like a random meeting somewhere. And I got this huge piece in the telegraph out of nowhere. and I was like, wow, okay, this is actually, this is what's meant for me. The opposite also happens. I think when you're pushing and you're trying to make things happen, I can now see we're totally wrong for me. It just didn't flow. So I trusted that. And it's so true. You know, rejection is protection. So if you're continually like bashing against a brick wall or you're getting rejected a lot, I would take that as a sign. Okay. There's something not flowing here. Switch direction. look at where it feels easy look at where there's some flow and for me that was always around the podcast always so if a door opens for you I want you to bloody jump through it and trust it that is what I mean by trust the process I think we have these plans and these ideas and these visions yes but also there's something really powerful in just thinking okay this is going to happen how it's going to happen and if it's meant for me then it's going to start flowing that's been my experience.

17:47Zoe:So that is my simple take on manifesting. I think you've got to know what you want. You've got to take tiny brave steps and trust that process. You've got to listen to yourself and go where it feels easier. Was this useful? Tell me in the comments. Let me know if you want to follow up. I've got loads of stories about how I've built Motherkind and just tons of stories. I can share more, but this is definitely a new thing for me to be sharing about, talk about. So let me know, do you want more topics like this? And I will see you next time.

18:26Zoe:What an incredible episode. I hope you loved it too. If you've got this far, then I am guessing that you did. So make sure that you share it with a friend and subscribe so you never miss an episode and I will see you Thursday for more. See you next time.