Steven Bartlett’s CEO: How to Navigate Career and Motherhood Without Losing Yourself

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1:29We also talk about why working motherhood can feel impossible because before having children she reveals she thought it was a practical equation you know about child care and time management and actually in motherhood she's realized it is far more complex than that because of love. The overwhelming desire to be the person who is there with your child. It really is a conundrum that can't be solved and I hope that this clip helps you feel validated. I hope it makes you feel seen. And I hope on this Monday morning, you feel a little bit more understood in that absolute tension that we all experience.

2:09Here it is.

2:13What I find so fascinating and why I really wanted to chat to you is because you took this huge job. I mean, you've always had big jobs, right? You've had an amazing career trajectory, and you took a really big job with Stephen Barlett at six months pregnant. And that is known to be a culture to be, you know, work very hard, also play very hard. And I really want to understand your career decision and how you did that, because so many of my listeners have those opportunities, right? The dream job comes or the moment comes, but it's like there's a tension and there's sometimes that conflict with family.

2:47Often there's a conflict with family. And I would really love you to unpack. This is how I decided step by step that this was going to work for my family and go for it. I would love to be able to give you a formula, some sort of list, some sort of scorecard. And actually, you know, in my jobs and in my roles, you know, there has to be process and there has to be scorecards and investment decisions and all that stuff. but at the heart of it all is is gut and I've always been a kind of I guess a vibes player like right from when I was young just like does it feel right also optimistic my husband says to the point of negligence so I just like I'll make it work sometimes that means you take the opportunity and sometimes that means you don't take the opportunity I think what I've really gained from having kids is almost like a two a two-way conversation with my body like I think you it becomes this instrument that has made life and keep keeps people alive and I think you spend a lot of I spent a lot of my 20s ignoring my body you just run through it drink through it party through it go again sleep less do more um and I think your body becomes so important and listening to it and all the little things like the kicks and the you know the the breast everything breastfeeding you know I think as I as I get older I feel it I feel if something's right um so yeah I don't know if that how do you tune into that I think it's hard to tune out I think yeah that that balance between making the lists and you know giving the score and understanding the pros and cons and then in my case just probably fucking doing it anyway because it just feels right yeah I think Stephen's reaction helped when I because when we first started talking I wasn't pregnant um or I didn't know yet you already had two kids right I'd already had two kids I was on gardening leave wondering what to do next if to do anything next got a got a message from steven out of the blue pretty much went to meet him and just kind of like just really liked him which doesn't sound important but it's so important to me i think you know when you're making any career decision can are you excited about it can you add value and do you like the people that you're going to be working with or the environment you're going to be in and then number four is does it fit with your life can it fit with your life yeah I just really liked him and we were talking for quite a long time then I found out I was pregnant were you nervous to say yeah I was nervous because I was basically going to sort of take myself out of the conversation why were you going to do that by number three you know what's going to happen you haven't got that naivety anymore no you know exactly how hard it's going to be it was you know I thought about three but my youngest was had just turned one so yeah it was it was a lot and he got to the point where he wanted me to meet a whole load of the other execs um in his in his team so I went I was like look before I do this I don't think it's fair I've just found I'm pregnant so perhaps we put this conversation on the back burner and he was like why um it was he was just so unfazed by it and I thought oh you I have no idea.

6:24I was going to say, is that because he might not have any idea? But no, and he's always been really great, really supportive and actually really interested because he knows it's a phase he's going to go through. Yeah. And yeah, so it felt possible, which is as much you can hope for with, you know, as a working mum.

6:48I found you through your writing which is like phenomenal the way that you write I'll put your linkedin link in the show notes because the way that you write is is is so beautiful and I found this post this viral post that you'd written I was like I have to speak to this woman because you talk about let's stop saying have it all you know there's a lot of conversation about that but let's also stop kind of maybe pretending to ourselves that we're doing these big careers for our kids yeah and can you talk about that because that is something that I think a lot of women say to themselves right and of course some people are in that situation where you know financially they they do genuinely have to do it but not always and that's not my reality and I don't think that's your reality so tell me about how you came to that realization and what you want other people to kind of know about that I think what's interesting is like my when I write it's very much for me like I always when I was a kid I used to write as an outlet and I don't think I've ever written anything to try and tell anyone anything you know I don't need anyone to know this or that I'm not I don't have an objective I don't have like it's got nothing to do with my you're not trying to sell a coaching course and sometimes it just comes like I just I just write to get it out of me like what are these things that I'm grappling do you make sense I make sense of things through writing yeah definitely and I think the the particular post you're talking about was like when I was coming back from maternity leave just over a year ago and I just I was really struggling with like all the things I was thinking and feeling so I'm just going to write you know get the shower thoughts like get the like old like funny line or the so I'm like I'm having a conversation myself so I sort of sort of wrote it down there's not a lot you talk about I want to be the primary attachment figure and the CEO.

8:36Yeah. And, you know, we talk a lot about how hard it is to be a working mom and how the mental load isn't shared and how it is a very different reality being the working dad and the working mom. You know, me and my husband both have huge careers and definitely, and he's an unbelievable dad, but he doesn't notice the things I notice and he doesn't do the things I do. And sometimes I think if I didn't do them, they wouldn't happen. But is that OK? Like, does it matter if they don't make every birthday party and they don't have a present and they don't have new clothes ready for spring and they doesn't matter?

9:19And also, do I want him to do it? Because it's so strange because before I had kids, I was so embarrassing as a boss. um like I thought I was being understanding you know I wasn't making life hard for the mums that worked with me I was like you leave when you want whatever but I did not understand yeah didn't understand and I always assumed that when I have kids I was like oh it seems really hard you know it's really hard logistically she's got a you know her nanny leaves at this time and if she doesn't get this train and I like I kind of I understood the complexity of like it's really expensive and it's really logistically difficult and you're trying to do so many things so I was in my head I was like right you know I will be optimizing for cost and time um and so you like you think get nanny and then the nanny can work here and then you can do this and and what you what you completely fail to realize before you have kids is that actually you've completely forgotten that you're optimizing for love and this love that you feel that you couldn't understand like the only way that someone I think that doesn't have kids the only way you can even begin to compare it is like a romantic partner so if I have no time to see my romantic my my my husband or my boyfriend or whoever I'm in love with like and they're lonely so I can hire someone to spend time with them to have dinner with them I can you know I can outsource that and they'll be that's fine then but it's like and I think that's what you don't realize how desperately you want to be that person and how jealous you are of the person that gets to do it instead and so I have made my life 10 times more difficult not having a full-time nanny because the irrational jealousy I would feel if my kid spent more time and that person knew whose birthday you know was doing all the things and going to the school plays and ordering their clothes and stupid things the doctor's appointments like it has to be me and that is for me where the unbelievable like unsolvable equation comes from because it's not it's not a maths equation it's like a love equation and you can't and then you love your job too like you also want to be there you want to be doing that and you don't want someone else to do that for you either so like you're not two people so yeah how do you how do you solve it um how do you make peace with the insolvability is that a word it is now it is let's go with it how do you make peace with the riddle that can't be squared i don't know if you can i I don't know if it sums or equals or cancels or whatever the GCSE algebra is.

12:22That was the episode. I hoped you loved it. If you did, please make sure you subscribe and I will see you next time.