A marketers guide to a squiggly career - Helen Tupper, Amazing If

0:28Welcome back everybody to Uncensored CMO. have a successful squiggly career. So I thought I'd catch up with Helen and find out what it's all about and what advice we can get in terms of having a successful squiggly career. So without further ado, here's my episode with Helen Tupper. Helen Tupper, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Now, I must start with the name, right? I love the name because when I first came across it, I'm like, geez, that describes my career, right? You couldn't plan my career the way it's turned out. But I'd love to find out how do you come up with the name? What inspired you to kind of create the squiggly career so it's so interesting you say that that sounds like my career because that that is what people have played back to us and that's really why it's kind of grown for us because people identify with it but it started with a conversation back in 2013 I was working for Virgin my friend was working for Sainsbury's and we'd known each other for about 10 years at that point been to university together and we were reflecting on our career we were really ambitious we had started our careers by doing graduate schemes and quite quite ladder-like in its kind the early start of our career and then we were both saying oh our career doesn't feel like that anymore and we've both developed in different directions and done different things and Sarah my friend drew on a napkin oh it's a bit squiggly and then there was something in that picture and something in the understanding that we were succeeding in a squiggly career that we were loving it but a lot of people that were coming to us for mentoring were feeling a bit stuck in their squiggly career and we kind of said well what would it take for people to not feel stuck but to succeed and we were like well let's just help people let's just help people together and that napkin that squiggle was the origin of sort of everything that's followed on for the last 10 years I love it it's so good it really resonated with me because I know there's times in my career where I've kind of talked to headhunters and I said I want to make a change from big corporate into a small startup and they often say well if you do that you'll never get a CMO job again sort of thing.

2:22And there's a lot of fear, isn't there? Stepping off the ladder sort of thing. So I think there's something quite reassuring to know that actually you can still have a career, even if it's non-conventional. But how does this sort of, I love the idea juxtaposed with the ladder. How does a ladder career and a squiggly career differ? So ladder's been around for a long time, over 100 years. And you've got organisations that have basically structured themselves in this quite staircase-like world of work. What it essentially says is you start, you pick a path and you start at the bottom and you work hard and the promise is if you show up and work hard you will go up this ladder and we'll mark your progress with lots of promotions and the expectation is every one of us is motivated by the same thing it's about becoming more senior and ultimately getting to the top that's that's the ladder and it is out of sync with our reality and also out of sync with what people want from work today so work is not predictable it's not linear.

3:13Most people have some kind of restructural reorganisation at least every 12 months. And all of us will do jobs that don't exist yet. So this idea that we can plan our way and fix our future is just not reflective of the reality. But also not everybody wants to become more senior. And so you have this situation where people think, well, I want to do something different, but that's the wrong thing to do. Or I'd actually quite like to try, you know, and move into a different function, but that's going to be bad for my career. So you have people sticking in roles and becoming more senior, even though that's not the thing that really motivates them.

3:48And it leads to unhealthy competition because there aren't that many promotions to go around. It leads to lots of comparison because we're like, why, why are they there? And I'm not. And it leads to people losing confidence. So ladders are holding far more people back than they are helping to move forward. and squiggly we think is more reflective of the reality because it's fluid and full of change you don't know where it's going to go and that creates you know that creates challenge but it creates lots of opportunity but it's also more reflective of people's individuality because no two squiggles are the same your squiggles your squiggle mine's mine it's not about good and bad it's just about what's this good look like for you and let's let's help you to find it yeah that makes so much sense i mean the other obvious flaw of the ladder is most most companies have a hierarchy that's a triangle don't they so the higher you got the less roles there are so it doesn't make sense for all of us to be on the ladder anyway it doesn't make any sense all that happens everyone's trying to get promotions there aren't enough to go around you start competing with each other and you lose sight of what actually makes work meaningful for you because you just look to promotions for the answer then people get promoted and wonder why they're not happy and it's like well because promotion was never was never the answer we need to go back to what actually do you want from work what are your values for example yeah we'll come on to that because i think that's such an important point isn't it well congratulations in the for the book as well because that's done rather well hasn't it so what when did you decide i'm going to write a book on this and how did that come about so we didn't set out to write a book we didn't set out to build a business john to be honest

5:17so from that conversation 2013 we decided that we would go and help people to succeed in these squiggly careers and so we sarah and i looked at what had helped us and we decided we'd create these open sessions that people could come to. So for about two years, every fortnight, we would go to a room in London, and people would come and we would train them on these squiggly skills. And we learned what worked and what didn't, because people would play it back to us, you know, they'd get in touch with us a week or two weeks later and say, Oh, I tried out that model. And so we started becoming more and more clear and confident about what tools really made a difference to people in their development.

5:54And we did that for quite a long time. We had no real plans to write a book. We just wanted to help people and reach as many people as we could. And then we were approached by Penguin after I'd spoke at an event about these squiggly skills. And effectively, that first book was actually a lot easier to write than the second book, because in the first book, everything had been tried and tested for five years before we wrote the squiggly career. and so it was really just sort of putting those sessions and those tools down on paper and I would say it wrote itself. I mean it didn't, it's hard writing a book but it's harder copywriting a book but the tools, we knew the tools, we just had to put them into a format that made it easy for people to sort of do it on their own.

6:36And the podcast has been amazingly successful. Congratulations on that. Tell me how that started because you didn't necessarily intend, did you, to start out to sort of dominate the world. There's a theme of like unintentional growth. Well, we, so 2017, we had written this little ebook. So the first sort of form of the book that we did was this free book that we wrote called How to Overcome Your Confidence Gremlins. And we sort of self-published and it sounds grand. It's just like a little book. But we decided that we wanted to give that book the opportunity to reach and help as many people as possible.

7:10And we thought, well, we'll do. There were 10 Confidence Gremlins. and we thought we'll record 10 podcast episodes so that people can get some extra support on the thing that might be getting in their way and so we hired the studio and John it was so formal we had like a script hi I'm it was so scripted it was so scripted and those all those episodes are still there I don't ever want to listen back to them because they're like the very first ones and and we realized though that when we got off the script we actually quite enjoyed talking to each other in this way and so we just kept at it and I think we just don't know how to stop now we're at like episode 330 and we've just done it every week since then it's a little bit less scripted now but it's just become a really important way for Sarah and I to research something that feels relevant to people in terms of their career and to discuss it with each other we always come at it with slightly different perspectives and in that process something happens where we create new tools for people and it's it's not a very I can't plan for it it's a conversation that we have together and then I'll think of a matrix and she'll think of a model and then we'll put it down on paper and it becomes something people can use yeah I mean I mean I haven't had done as many as you I think I'm on episode this will be episode 80 right so I'm not quite on 300 but it's an amazing way of I find for me podcasting I'm the biggest beneficiary like because because what I learn in the preparation and meeting great people like you and the stimulus it's just every week you're learning it's that amazing kind of you know so you know kind of what I've learned in the last three years is probably more than 30 years you know what I mean because it's incredible isn't it it is and I think Sarah for me she her brain is very different to mine so Sarah is thoughtful and reflective and I'm like pacey and actiony and so sometimes I will I'll say my thinking and she'll play it back to me with more clarity and thought and it's just so it's so useful I come away and go oh I might try that out and I think if no one listened to the Squiggly Careers podcast we would still have that conversation in some form once a week for the sake of our learning yeah now it's incredibly generous isn't it and I know when I started my podcast three years ago now I was like can I really put all this content out for free this seems like a really crazy business model but there's there's a lot of logic to it isn't it it's helped your business grow phenomenally hasn't it and over the last few years to talk to me about that we were talking weren't we off air about the flywheel because for some people might not realize what a good i think you know kind of business model that podcasting is yeah talk to me about how it fits in with your kind of business so the mission of our business is to make squiggly careers better for everybody and that sits at the center of this concept called a flywheel which is jim collins model from his book good to great and the easiest way i can explain what it is though he would obviously explain it much better is that there is an interconnected set of activities that help a business to grow and so if you imagine a wheel on our wheel the first point of our wheel is to create free useful career development content and then that leads to us to the next point in the flywheel which is creating advocacy and people who recommend us and then the next bit is who buy our products and services and then the last bit of the flywheel is to produce insight and revenue that helps us too and it goes all the way back to the start create free useful career development content and what we have learned is that if we dial up any bit of that flywheel it affects the next so if we create more products and services we get more insight we get more revenue so we can create more free useful career development if we create more free useful career development we get more advocacy and over the past couple of years we've sort of taken this business that's grown very organically and started to put some structure around it so that we can improve our impact and increase our impact.

10:59And we're always thinking, well, how do we do? Do we need to create more free or do we need to make it more useful? So the podcast, for example, 330 episodes, we don't need to do more than one a week. I'm not sure I could fit more than one a weekend, but we can make it more useful. So we created pod sheets and pod notes and pod plus so that you take that one thing that happens every week and you just make it more useful for more people and it has been such a useful framing for how we do what we do better and what we don't do what we don't do as well because it's a distraction to that flywheel that's super interesting that's really interesting it reminded me actually in my squiggly career right so i i managed to get fired twice in one year i think i know exactly i think it's a bit of a record so yeah i got fired from a big corporate job and then went to brew dog uh which i you know what was i thinking i don't know but like probably the toughest boss in the UK right now.

11:55And anyway, it lasted three months. So I suddenly found myself having, I don't know, 25 years career in marketing. Then to be kind of fired twice as a CMO is a bit of a challenge, isn't it, on the career front? So I ended up freelancing as it happened, just, you know, as you do, what am I going to do now? Because, you know, the phone wasn't ringing hot, you know, with CMO offers. And I ended up doing business development training for agencies Because what I discovered, which is really interesting, is that in all my network, they all wanted to know what it's like being a CMO and how might you pitch to a CMO.

12:27And it's really interesting because one of the first tips I used to give them was because they're often saying, well, how do we get a relationship with CMOs when they're not in the market to buy sort of thing? And I used to say, create something of huge value for free that is available regularly. Right. Because I said, if you can if you can add value to somebody, A, they'll remember you. they'll feel obliged you know when the brief comes up to kind of you know contact you and it kind of strikes me that that's partly why i did this actually was because um not everyone's in the market to buy what you're selling in fact most people aren't i mean the erenberg bass institute worked out that in b2b 95 of people aren't considering buying what you're selling so the trick is how do you remain relevant to people so when they suddenly go do you know what we need to do a career development session for our executive team right there are 300 episodes in already aren't they they're going to go we know who to call absolutely and we kind of think about it sort of people helping people and you just have to sort of trust in the reciprocity of that approach but also people like helping people so even if i help someone in whatever way i might help them and that doesn't ultimately result in some form of help back it doesn't really matter like i like helping people it's a it's a useful way of me spending my time but i think finding ways to do that efficiently is the trick.

13:44So whether you write a newsletter or you do a podcast or you do a weekly post on LinkedIn that people want to read, I think doing it consistently, credibly and authentically, like not copying John, for example, and going, well, I'll just do what John does, but finding your own way to do that, I think is the important thing. And it's always surprising what happens. I mean, I say to every guest that comes on, I can't promise you what will happen, but I can promise you good things. You know what I mean? Because it's like every episode someone will go oh do you know what after that i met this person after that we got to pitch my book sales went up then i've had a couple recently where they went out of stock after coming on the episode i felt great i was like brilliant you know that shows that you know it's kind of hitting the hitting the spot i'd love to talk about the book because um it really got me thinking reading over the weekend and and i love the five skills you cover and all of them were just yeah just really kind of spot on um the first one which i love is is is strengths you know what you want to be known for and i remember years ago meeting um jill garrett who was the she was managing director of gallup at the time this is probably 20 years ago i remember i was at dinner with her and she said to me that the latest this is obviously while ago the latest science was saying that you're much better building from strength than but than trying to address weakness and she said all the research at the time was showing that people will be more motivated will get more energy and more likely to succeed if you encourage them in their strengths as opposed to what most career development at the time was focused on which is almost like let's identify your development areas you know and all you know all the sort of corporate you know reviews i'd had at that point were probably 80 what to do better it's almost like well john we know you're good at this so let's focus on that you know sort of thing and actually made so much sense because like when you do something you're good at you feel energized don't you but and that really struck me so yeah talk to me a bit about strengths and why they're so important to start there just to go to the weaknesses bit for a moment it is it is really normal and natural that people often start there like oh how how can i be as good at john at this thing or that's something i need to get better at to be good at my job because we have a negativity bias in our brain which anchors us to those things but the amount of effort and energy you have to put in to getting good enough at something that isn't a natural talent for you it is a distraction for your development so we said we don't don't ignore your weaknesses but just just try to get good enough so they don't get in your way so for example one of my weaknesses is attention to detail it is not something we share that by the way so i'm very happy about this i love that we can celebrate our weaknesses now i have a weakness a weakness champion um so yeah it's not something i'm very good at do i want to become the best person in the world at that no do i need to think about when are the moments that matter posting something on linkedin i should probably double check that or when i'm copywriting a book that's that's a moment that matters so i try to get good enough at it in those moments but i definitely don't want to be known by it it was really thinking about well what do you want to be known for what's the work that gives you energy that you want to build your brand around and I think the most important point here is that is your choice you choose what you want to be known for your manager doesn't decide it for you your colleagues don't determine that for your development you you choose it and you might have to put quite a lot of effort around making sure that that is what you are known for but if you don't choose that you're leaving that perception to chance for someone else to be like oh Helen she's amazing attention to detail I'm like no no don't know me for that know me for careers and when you've worked that out like what work gives me energy that I want to be known for it's really just a matter of well let's stretch that strength we want you to use that strength that you want to be known for with as many people and in as many places as possible because the more you use it the better it gets so it's sort of like frequency builds competency.

17:32And you want to be doing that in lots of different situations and scenarios, because that sort of stretches it in different ways. And I love it. And I think for me personally, I really see it reflected in my career, because I sort of used to do marketing, and arguably, I still do a bit of it with my business now. But that was that was my job title was marketing. It was, you know, marketing director for Microsoft, and then head of marketing for one of Virgin's businesses. And I made a decision about my development that I didn't want to be known for marketing I wanted to be known for career development and I just spent a long time having made that choice stretching that strength in the companies that I was working for like as a manager really making that part of my management style and now you know in a side project and now in my job but that has been an intentional thing it's not luck it's it's a decision you make about your development and then action you take as a result it's very clear because you light up when talk about it which is lovely which is amazing so for someone listening that maybe hasn't discovered that yeah what was the how did you discover it you know because because you know that's really important isn't it you find the right thing and then yeah how do you do that i would say um a good place to start is to do some kind of energy audit so look at your diary over the last couple of weeks and for each one of those weeks just go into every day and pick out what was your highest energy moment in that day so maybe it was recording a podcast or maybe it was writing an article or maybe it was presenting but like almost just do a note what was the best moment of that day and then think about what strength was I using in that situation so it might be oh it was preparing for podcasts because I love the research or it was mentoring somebody because I loved making a difference their development that was that was the strength I was really using and if you can just write down what was the strength I was using that situation and do that for maybe two two weeks so every day highest energy moment strength you're using that situation and then scan through the strengths and pick two pick two of those that you want to be known for because you're not you're not going to build your brand around a long list of 10 strengths like no one's going to go oh do you know john he's amazing at researching and building relationships and commercials one day they're going to be like john is amazing uh growth they're going to know you for that one thing but that is your choice so energy audit then pick the two you want to be known for and it's at that point then you've got to stretch the strength oh yeah it makes so much sense let's come and talk about values because i think value we underestimate how important values are and i i think you know we might rationally make a decision based on well it's the right thing for my career because it was a bigger job and it had a bigger team and that's something i think values are surprisingly important aren't they so explain to me a bit about the role values play in in our kind of careers i have to be careful because i think values are my favorite of the five skills okay i talk about it for way too long way too long and in fact sarah and i had a debate about which one came first in the book because i i think values should come first this is a kind of values okay because i think they're at the center if you are going to have a career as individual as you are you have to understand what motivates and drives you and so i think that's the heart and while sarah agrees with me she also thinks it's not the easiest place to start so we had this debate and i let her win pick pick your battle so i let her win but values are at the heart they are what makes you you and everybody has them and you don't just have work values and home values it's not a separate thing you are just who you are but how that shows up in work is a thing that i really want to help people understand because if you can connect what makes you you with what you do you will be happier in your job you will make better decisions about your development and you'll build better relationships and that matters like we in our waking hours work is the thing that fills most of our time the only thing we will do more than work in our life is sleep so I think work matters and I know I'm biased but I think it does matter and if there's this skill you can learn that helps you be happier make better decisions build better relationships I'm like please let's help people learn this stuff it isn't a list so it's not like an aspiration you can't put a list of 20 values and say who who would you like to be today you are just who you are but there are exercises that you can take people through that help people to increase their awareness and once they've got that awareness they can put it into action and you know there's loads of different things but a relatively simple thing that someone can do is to just think about over the last 12 months what has been would you consider a high in your career I might ask you John and what would you consider a low I won't get you to do the low I'm prompted but what would be for you over the last 12 months what would you consider to be a high?

22:09I'd probably say achieving a big milestone in the podcast, actually. I mean, we went YouTube beginning of the year. And why did that moment matter? It felt like a sense of progress versus, because I guess when we started it, it was, I had no idea would anyone listen? You know, I genuinely sort of had this slightly worrying feeling that I'd put this content out there and five people would listen sort of thing. and then you go oh it's a couple of hundred thousand people have downloaded this i'm like oh okay you know so and that that kind of feedback loop from people that listen they they love it and and they get something from it i mean i mean there are people that have resigned after listening to an episode you know i mean god right i'm in the wrong job i'm gonna go and do that which you know all those people got promoted and that kind of thing so i think it was just that yeah so if i was again doing a few more exercises i might write down the word progress i might write down the word impact and and then we do some more exercise and the more I would see the same words coming up the more clues we'd be getting that that is what makes work meaningful for you once you have that insight so let's say it's progress let's say it's impact that are part of your values then we can start thinking well how can you get more of that what could you do that would give you a greater sense of progress how could we help you to have more impact and as an individual when you do that you start taking control of your development in a very different way as a manager who understands that about the people that works for them you can help them in such a meaningful way that goes far beyond like what job title they do next it's so right isn't it because it is we obsess over things like job titles but really it's just one thought that occurred to me is when we talked about strengths you probably want to build a team with people with different strengths but when it comes to values you probably want a team where they're they're more shared would that be right or or can you have teams with differing values?

23:57I think what you want to do is build a high trust team. So this is getting into the territory of Amy Edmondson's work on psychological safety. So diversity is great. When you have values, you can have a way to discuss the difference, I think. And one of the factors that creates a high trust team is where people feel like they can be themselves. And so if I'm different to you, that should be fine. But we want to feel like it's safe for that to be possible and that you and I can discuss our differences. So I don't think that high trust, high performing teams are built on everybody having the same values.

24:32I think they are built on an environment where people can discuss, understand and explore their differences, like whatever they are. Okay, let me put the question back to you on the 12 months then. So what would be your high in the last 12 months? I think hiring some people into our team. We have brought some new people into our business and for me I think it is the it's a combination of impact and integrity so as in we can increase our impact because we suddenly have people who can help squiggly to scale and then there's sort of like an integrity thing for me which is so I talk to lots of people about how to make careers better for everybody and now I get to do that with the people that work in my business and that feels really important to me that you practice what you preach and I don't want to get too far away from helping people to do things that I'm not doing myself on a day-to-day basis so that and just to see them grow it is the most rewarding thing for me to see people happy at work and growing in their careers and yeah I love it and I'm just get a bit closer to it now because they're in our business yeah that's wonderful isn't it it's funny isn't it how neither of us talked about financial results neither of us talked about sales or anything like that you know or even growth but we're talking about the impact it has on other people yeah and one of my values is growth but that and my definition that's why definitions and values become so important that um it's not a monetary thing it's making things bigger and better and that could be an individual like how and they sometimes don't want that like values can work for you and against you like i'm like how can i help you grow and they're like i'm fine helen step off the career conversation for a moment let's just talk about something else but um i just like growing everything businesses people the occasional plant like it's all it's just it just matters to me and that's the thing your values just matter to you and helping people have that awareness is such an important way that we help them to be happy at work actually you're right on the growth i'd probably say the same actually because i know the points of my career where i've been the happiest have often been the most where i've work for the smaller businesses or they're in more challenging positions uh where i've got less budget you know because i've seen the opportunity you know whereas when you're working on the big brands with the big title and the big spend and the big teams you know it it feels it feeds the ego but it doesn't feed the values you know i found it quite interesting actually i want to sit here with a pen and write all your words down yeah yeah yeah fascinating let's get on to number three because again this one stood out as well um confidence about how to make the most of the opportunity this is funny actually this is one that most people probably associate with me when when they work with me sort of thing and i don't know is confidence something that's innate in people is it something you can develop and train you know how do you get confident so confidence can be a natural talent so some people are just naturally more confident than other people but it's also a skill which means that anyone can learn it and i think we have to be really careful when we're talking about confidence that we don't assume that what we see on the surface is confidence because people can fake that in a moment and then they can go away from the moment like let's say an interview or a podcast like this you know I could be feeling really nervous but I could smile and nod a lot and I might look confident but inside all of those worries and doubts and the sort of negative thought patterns we have can can can be kind of going on in parallel and I'll go away and it'll all flood straight back in and that's because you know authentic confidence sits below the surface it's not what you see it's how I feel about me it's the thoughts I have about my work like do I think I have a good job it's the thoughts I have about my worth do I believe I deserve to be in the seat talking to you or do I think I got lucky and you're going to find me out any any moment and that stuff can't be solved with a smile or a lucky you know a lucky top or whatever people do to make themselves feel confident in a situation it takes work and it takes effort but it's a skill and so everybody can learn to be more confident they just have to be willing to put their effort into the actions and obviously we talk about the different actions and i can go into them i would say this one this one's the hardest it takes the most work but i think it has the most transformational impact if you can what we call cage your confidence gremlins because so many people's growth is limited by a gremlin and it is a limiting belief they've often created for themselves it's nobody that said oh helen you're a bit too young to apply for that job it's it's a story you've created for yourself that stops you succeeding in your career the thing i found as well is it i i found for me personally i found it's been a mix of the of the self part self-belief but usually the self-belief actually for me is going what's the worst that can happen so i i sort of go you know because if i'm feeling nervous about something i'll tell myself okay were that to go really badly what would happen sort of thing and you go okay well you know and i'm just just teaching myself that you know before i don't know doing a presentation on stage or something and then just calms you down you just go well okay does it matter is the audience gonna think i'm terrible because i happen to kind of forget my lines or something no they don't you know that we've all been there so so part of it i find is kind of the stories you tell yourself and and that sort of thing the other thing i find is some people focus on the evidence of what works and they look back, don't they?

30:02Whereas some people seem to focus on what goes wrong. Whereas I think you should train yourself to go, well, actually, let's look at what's worked here. How can you do more of that? Rather than obsessing about, oh no, this thing went wrong all the time, you know? So is it something that you can kind of train by teaching yourself to kind of draw on the positive? Almost back to strengths a bit, isn't it? Like getting the balance right. But maybe failure isn't your confidence, Gremlin, because you sound like you have, so for example someone who has failure as a confidence gremlin will say if i fail then i'm a failure so they make an incident their identity and because they don't want that to happen they don't put themselves in a position where that's possible so they won't speak on a stage or they won't speak up in a meeting or whatever it is somebody who doesn't have that confidence gremlin they're thinking might be more like what you're presenting which is like if i fail i never fail to learn like learn about myself learn about what i could do better next time so either you have naturally gone through that process or that just has never been your confidence gremlin and maybe you have a confidence gremlin about I don't know presenting or numbers or senior people or being liked by people or all the other number of gremlins that we hear about when you have a gremlin it's very hard to kill and that it sits with you for a really really long time and it pops up in really annoying moments and it makes you do something different to what you really want to do and it's just helping people we often start with the 10 gremlins we see most commonly and we say which ones of these feel relevant to you right now they're not the only gremlins but just as a starting point for people to be like that that's the one and then we'll get into okay well how's it showing up how's it getting in your way and once you've got once you've almost like unleashed the gremlin then you can start to cage it but you're in control of the gremlin rather than the gremlin being in control of you which is very often what happens yeah oh that's really interesting I remember actually that I did a talk once on my five greatest failures.

31:53So the fact that you did a talk on this makes me think this is not your grandmother. I know, it's funny, isn't it? I know, it's just like, but I was amazed that you're right though, because I was amazed at how like everyone was shocked that I would do that. It was like, you're doing what? You're talking about your failures? And of course the twist was obviously that following every failure was the success, right? Because it's what I learned in the failure and what it taught me that helped me then go on and be successful. but I was really surprised that it was such almost controversial even to talk about it and how counter-cultural it was you know I think we're better now but I mean this is a few years ago but yeah it's surprising how failure is has got a stigma attached to it isn't it well it does and I think gremlins they often seem so strange to other people you know like so like people have gremlins about presenting for example and in their head every presentation they do on zoom has to be like Simon Sinek's TED Talk.

32:47You know, like it's got to be amazing. And then you say, well, do you think that your colleagues have to do a presentation like it's a TED Talk? And they're like, oh, no, no, no. They can just wing it, don't worry. So why are you putting that pressure on yourself? And it's almost like we put ourselves on this pressure pedestal where we've got to be great at this thing and we can't fail and everyone needs to think we're amazing and all this stuff. But we're so much more forgiving of other people. But it's just because we lose a bit of perspective when that voice is so loud in our head. And presentation is a really good example, isn't it?

33:18And I always think, I often ask my advice on that because it's something I am good at. Lots of things I'm not good at, but that's one thing I am good at. And I often say to people, no one knew what you were going to say that you didn't say. Because everyone gets so het up about, well, I'm meant to say this and I was going to say that. The audience didn't know that. And also being authentic as well because there's nothing more relatable than actually saying, oh, I've just run in, I've just dropped the kids off and this has happened. Bringing your authentic self is the most powerful thing you can do.

33:47And everyone's got an authentic self they can bring. So, you know, start with that, you know, be true to yourself. But that's the strengths really, isn't it? Just playing on those. The next one is networking. Now, networking always makes you smile because I used to be terrified of networking. I know, I know no one believes it. No one does, honestly, I don't believe it. But that moment where you go into a room at a conference or something, everyone knows everyone you think, right? And you're stood there on your own by the sort of, you know, the warm coffees and teas in the corner going, I can't possibly talk to someone.

34:17I just find that terrifying. You know what I mean? I'm not sure anyone loves it. But I think the issue is when people think that that experience is the definition of networking. And it is so different to that networking, we just think of it as it's people helping people. So it's not how many random events do you go to? And it's not how many people do you know, or are connected to on LinkedIn, it is people helping people. And that could mean you've got quite a small community because maybe you're an introvert. Like my business partner, she is an introvert. She hates those events. Like if she ever has to go to them for like an amazing thing for us, she will probably message me beforehand and go, why are you making me go here?

34:56Or something, she hates them. So we don't all have to build relationships in that way. But what we all do need to do is build relationships based on people helping people, because that's sort of a giving first and people like helping people so it's an easier place to start and it also creates reciprocities people want to help you back so it's just a nicer way to build your network and that could be a network of five people or 500 like you sort of scale it depending on how you like to build relations i like people i love i quite like going to events and meeting random i do now weirdly this is one i've trained myself okay so this again this is whether it's skill this is one i've trained myself so my tactic now is to ask people about them yeah so simply to go oh really interesting you work at so and so what's that like you know can you tell me a bit more because i think then you get comfortable and people love talking about themselves right so as soon as people are on their home it breaks the ice and it's fine but i have or i or i ask somebody to introduce me to someone else they think i might be interested to meet sort of thing so you kind of use a use someone else to kind of make the introduction that's the other that's the other tactic but it's definitely taken taken a while to get comfortable with that sort of moment where you go oh what do i do now i wonder whether curiosity is one of your strengths yeah yeah it was doing the podcast right it's like could be could be a tell but do you want to be known for it that's the second yeah true yeah whether i want to be or not i probably am actually now on time okay going back to the fired twice experience right the the other thing that taught me was when i when i'd um i think when The first time I got fired, I went to meet someone and just asked their advice on what I should do.

36:36I'm suddenly out of work. What am I going to do? He gave me this advice. I think his wife had done it. And what she had done is, in a similar situation to me, she'd written her own 100-day plan to meet 100 people in 100 days. Wow. I know. I know. I was going, you what? I said, that's impossible. Anyway, but it got me thinking. I thought, what a great way to focus your energy and time in a time where you suddenly got more time than you wanted, but you've got a limited kind of time before you need to be back in employment again. Anyway, so I wrote the 100-day plan. I probably started with no more than 30 people.

37:10I could, you know, good contacts I could get. So what I then decided is every meeting I had, I was just going to ask a simple question. Tell me three people that you think in your network would be of interest to me or I could be of interest to them. And what I discovered is nine times out of 10 people would be so generous and they'd go oh you know dear Helen you've got to meet my friend John because he's you know he's just been fired but he could be useful you know maybe and I ended up filling up that 100 list really quickly it was incredible but it was the generosity that really struck me that that generally if you reach out to people and like with LinkedIn now I mean you can reach out to anyone people are quite generous aren't they and they will help you yeah I think that do you know anyone who is always a really good question to end a conversation with because it means the conversation keeps going.

37:56And I think, and again, just looping back to confidence gremlins, that does rely on somebody not having a confidence gremlin about asking for help because that's effectively what you're doing there. You're asking for help. You're asking for the conversation. You're asking for the introduction. So again, sometimes you might have to cage the confidence gremlin before you have that conversation, but the skills all work together. Yeah, and going back to a previous part of the conversation as well, I think the other thing you can do is volunteer for things. offer to contribute or if you're out of a job start a podcast do a newsletter right creating things of value to other people just gives you a reason to reach out I mean in a way going back to this podcast one of the reasons I did it was it just gives me a reason to meet interesting people you know the sort of people that I might want to meet you know so think about what's the equivalent for you that just gives you a natural reason to kind of connect with people you could be volunteering on I don't know charity or something I mean it could be anything right but just think of those vehicles that gives you an authentic way in yeah absolutely and i think do the thing i've we kind of talk about this as being um sort of contributing as a way of building those relationships and i think you just got to do a way that feels authentic for you so don't do it because you think oh i work in marketing therefore i should share this particular thing if you really care about something completely different that you do outside of work then make that the thing that you share because then you'll build relationships authentically with people and it might still be with people in marketing but you'll be connecting on a very authentic point rather than something that you think looks good on the on the surface actually another good point there is is is find out what people are passionate about personally as well you know it can be really powerful kind of get people on that again with the networking thing get people on the topic they're passionate about you know if they volunteer for a particular charity in a particular sector well ask them about that do some research on it find out how you can help you know subscribe to their newsletter all that kind of stuff now moving on to the fifth one uh possibilities which links very nicely to what you just said actually curious career conversations about reaching out to people and understanding and so what to what extent can you future-proof your career because if you go back to the ladder of course we're all like well I'm brand manager I need to be senior brand manager and then marketing manager it's all very scripted isn't it but in the squiggly career of course you know who knows where it might take you so how do you how do you future-proof your career from that perspective what we really want in a squiggly career is for opportunities to come to us and in ladder-like careers what tends to happen is people do their job they do it really well there is an expectation that they do their job well they'll get promoted so they sort of become a little bit dependent on a company system for them and their their progression that tends to look like a promotion and they only really apply for a job when they decide they want a new one so it's a little bit reactive it's a little bit dependent not not helpful in a world of work full of change makes you quite vulnerable and that's your approach to your career so we don't want that We want you to be exploring rather than just applying when you decide you want a job.

40:45So we want you to be exploring continually. We want you to be curious about your career. So you're having lots of conversations. It's not about applying for lots of jobs. It's about having lots of different discussions about your development. So curious career conversations are literally finding somebody who works in an area that you're interested in and having a chat with them about their job. and I always say like to give people a sort of script to start off with because people might be thinking well what do I say now I've got the meeting what do I say so I give them a script and I'm like don't don't stick to this too rigidly but if you want a starting place for a squiggly career script for one of those conversations I'd always start with a day in the life like what's a day in your life look like at work because people quite like talking about themselves and you can learn a lot by listening because you're effectively the filter that you want to have here for you and your future possibilities is does that day in their life sound like a day that I want to do that's sort of the filter you've got and you can just be nodding or like shaking your head depending on where that conversation is going and the next part in the conversation is you want to get a sense of fit so values and strengths come in here so I might want to talk to you about what are the skills you use most frequently in your job and what I'm listening for is does your job need what I want to be known for.

41:59Because ultimately, if your job or your function or your profession doesn't need what I want to be known for, then it might sound really good, but it might not be very good for me. And so we really want to get a sense of fit. And then the last area is about development. So this is about the future proofing piece. So let's say your day sounds amazing. You definitely need what I want to be known for. This is going great. Then I want to set myself up for future success. So I might say, you know, if this is an area that I was interested in, um is there any particular experience or expertise that you think would be useful for me to invest in now and that means that when there is an opportunity in this area not only might i be more in mind but i will also be more likely to be suitable for that position because i've got the fit i understand the reality of the role and i've invested in the skills or experience that i need to do it and and it's that it's just having those conversations with people very intentionally that means that more more opportunities come to you regardless of you know regardless the timing or the title you're kind of got this constant flow of opportunities for your future i think most people don't realize how few jobs are actually advertised as well oh 100 it's shocking isn't it yeah i remember meeting a actually really interesting i met a headhunter who works for the candidate not for the company brilliant so basically as a candidate it's quite expensive you pay a few thousand pounds but anyway and then in this case she what she would do then is research companies that fit your values and the way you want to go in your career really interesting she did herself out of a few thousand pounds though on this one because i'll tell you why she said to me um i'll make a little better of you john because i i'll give you the background just to understand the kind of squiggly jump i was trying to make so i'd worked 12 years in in a soft drink company you know worked across the different marketing roles so you know fairly fairly sort of ladder like actually but i wanted to go into private equity because i wanted to own something i wanted to kind of you know be part of a management team that bought a company and turned it around and sold it and that kind of thing so and private equity by definition don't advertise they're private for a reason right you don't see jobs going coming i know yes exactly but it's private for a reason i remember she we had a lovely chat and at the end of it she said i'll place you a little bet.

44:09I bet in your contact list now is somebody who works in private equity that has a job that will fit you. And I'm like, oh, come on, Claire, you're absolutely ridiculous. There's no way that's going to happen. I got to see. Honestly, I went, oh, Chris, he works in my team and we used to work in private equity and he's bought and sold businesses. I'm like, how did I not see this? He's in my team. I'm like, what? How did I not even think about this? I phoned Chris up. Of course, I'll help you he sent me three names the first name within two weeks I got a job how funny first name I was like what ridiculous you know anyway so it just shows isn't it like the power of the network is is incredible but you know particularly and the thing that resonates with me about that is you need to put yourself like you need to be thinking about your career move way before you're doing it because obviously it's timing isn't it but by having all these career conversations you know you know developing as many as you can and asking for people that might be useful you're basically putting yourself on the market in advance of when it and then suddenly someone would go Helen of course I've met her I know her she's curious she's keen she's energetic she's got the values bingo that job will never be advertised probably you know what I mean I used to work for Capital One and we used to be very at the time I worked there it was all about being front of wallet so you wanted your credit card to be front of wallet and I think what you are trying to do in your career is be front of mind and make sure that when people are thinking about opportunities and thinking about you they are keeping you you are front of mind for them so they kind of connect the dots that help you with your development yeah totally um you remind me of one more thing actually and this is a game going back to my earlier part of my career i was on a kind of management development off site and it was ridiculously simple but it kind of brings a lot of this stuff together they just they just said at the end of it like um in in a big circle write down all the things you're passionate about that your strengths that you want to be known for right and in the other circle right all the things you think at the moment are gaps in the company that they can't do right that are the open spaces and just draw the overlap and go what is it i'm passionate about and good at that the company has is not able to oh yes innovation right this company used to be great innovation no longer is i'm good at it and passionate about it and i I remember like, this was like Friday afternoon.

46:30I remember emailing the sales and marketing directors. I was quite junior at the time, right? I was kind of very far down the ranks. And I said, I want breakfast with you, eight o 'clock Monday morning. I remember walking in. One of those things where it sounded like a good idea, I'm sure, Friday afternoon at the end of a week away and we're all bonding and stuff. And I remember the very cold office on a Monday morning, eight o 'clock, where I got my flip chart out with the scribbly notes and went, doesn't make quite the sense it made on Friday, But actually, it did work out because I said, look, I remember making a pitch to these two directors going, we used to be famous for innovation and we're no longer famous.

47:06And I've gone and looked at the data. And, you know, over the last five years, none of our innovation has worked. And this is the reason why. I'm really passionate about it. And these are the strengths that I bring. So I said, I'm going to create your proposal to transform innovation in this company. And again, four months later, I'd got, in this case, something like six million quid signed off. I'd got permission to build a team. I'd got, you know, a number of these innovative brands put into a little portfolio. You know, it started off with those two circles going, you know, what's my passion and strengths and what's the gap?

47:37And I think finding that gap is often helpful, isn't it? So, you know, where can you sort of, you know, fit those strengths and make a difference? We call it like the squiggly sweet spot where you're trying to work out like, well, we all think about strength solving. So take the thing that you want to be known for. So, you know, all those things that you might like. Innovation, I really want to be known for it. And then pick up a problem. Most people sort of leave problems for someone else to sort out. And so often there'll be quite a few problems in the business. And if you can be a strength solver, you take that problem, you solve it with your strengths.

48:08Often you'll have an open door for your development. You just have to pitch it to your manager so they can see the value of you doing it. So it's exactly the example that you just shared. Actually, you remind me of something I often say to people is find the biggest single problem in the company and offer to solve it. Yeah. And people are like, I can't possibly do that. But imagine, like, if you're the directors of the board, right, and you're going, we've got a real headache with this particular issue. And somebody steps in and goes, not only do I recognize it, I've got an answer for it and I'll commit to it.

48:36Yeah. It's really hard to turn that down, isn't it? I mean, you'd be pretty hard to go, ah, we didn't, you know. Wouldn't you? It's all right. So simple question, but, you know, can go a long way. let's talk about some of the myths as well because you know i i love kind of unpicking a few myths so often we think it's all about getting promoted don't we and that success is based on promotions but i suppose it comes back to well what is a successful career then because i guess we've got this mindset of i must have a job type must have promotion but how would you define that when we look at our development through the lens of promotions people often find themselves getting quite frustrated because there aren't that many promotions to go around we talked about earlier and they will also start to stagnate because they're in sort of weight they're in weight mode and they're kind of ready to develop but they're waiting for that promotion to make it possible and so what we really want to do is think about progression more broadly there are so many different ways that we can progress from succumbments to stretching our strengths by working on different projects to sideways moves and we're not we're not like anti-ambition like I'm super ambitious.

49:42I just know that myself and you and everyone, we are more likely to get to where we want to go if it doesn't always require a promotion to make it possible. And so it's so important that we start progression first and not promotion first when we're thinking about development. That's really interesting. And almost create the job. Going back to what you just said, create the job rather than wait for the job. 100%. Could make a big difference as well. Now, the idea of Squiggly, is that just for young people that kind of have portfolio careers that you know want to learn or is it for us older it's for everyone squiggly squiggly's for everybody every organization every level every amount of tenure and squiggly just says you do not have to be defined by the last job that you did and you do not have to develop in the same direction it is about having more freedom and flexibility with where you work what you work on and how you manage your your career and that that's appropriate for everybody i do think people are in different starting places with squiggly i think that's an important thing to recognize so what we're seeing is the younger generations coming into the workplace they expect squiggly from the outset and and so if you try to fix their future for them they're going to get quite frustrated with you and they're probably not going to be around very long because their expectation is that they have choice and freedom what we need to help them with is developing the skills because that does take a bit of time and you do need insight and experience to get some of the answers you know me saying to you what have you done the last 12 months what do you do in the last five years there's so much insight in that but you've got to have the experience to do it so that's kind of what we need to do is help them build experiences really so they get that awareness sort of people who are slightly more tenured might have been more like you and I in our career started out quite ladder-like and then we've got a bit of adjustment to do you know like we're kind of going oh actually maybe that isn't what success means to me and so confidence is often quite important because if people are going to leave that ladder behind they might also be losing a bit of identity with it and so you have to sort of bridge them to squiggly with okay well if we're losing that then let's think about what is more meaningful for you so people are in different starting places but squiggly is appropriate for everyone let's talk about changing companies so what's the kind of squiggly sense of you know you you know, back in the day, right, it was always advised you shouldn't change companies too often.

52:00And it would be, you know, when I got sent CVs by a headhunter, they'd always kind of go, well, the downside of this candidate is they have jumped around a bit, you know what I mean? So what's the kind of squiggly sense in terms of, you know, changing companies and having a more varied, or actually, as a lot of people do have, you know, side hustles as well and stuff like that. So what's the squiggly sense on that? Well, I think two things got to come together here. So one, I think that recruiters and managers will be less likely to draw that interpretation as squiggly careers become more accepted as the norm.

52:29But whilst that is happening, what we need to do is help people to make squiggly sense of your career. So have a career story, explain the moves that you've made, find the dots. So you might have worked in different companies or different industries, but what's common across all of them. So for example, I have loved working for large organisations that give me the ability to do different things. So if I look at whether I worked in E.ON and I launched some businesses for E.ON and I did the same at Capital One and I did the same thing at Virgin, there's a pattern that I can talk about in terms of my progression, which goes beyond the job titles.

53:04And so it's that, it's knowing your narrative, saying your squiggly career story that helps other people understand the moves that you've made. Brilliant. Now, I thought a great place to end actually. And one of the things I loved about your book was you may got 100 people to give you their top career advice. It's just an amazing chapter right at the end. Is any of those quotes particularly stuck with you? Well, there's one that guides me and my development a lot, which is the one that I kind of reference right at the end, which is to run your own race. I feel that if you stop competing and comparing yourself, it's just liberating in terms of your development.

53:41So that's one that personally means a lot to me. I also really liked Simon Sinek when he said to us, you don't need to have all the answers and you don't need to pretend that you do. And I was like, that's a good thing to know. That's a good thing to know. So many of us going back to Gremlins have this sense that we must achieve everything before we can go to the next stage. Or I'm not qualified for the job because there's something I've not done. And often you have to jump, don't you, first. And then, you know, that phrase goes, jump and the net appears or whatever the thing is. You know, that's very true.

54:11it's funny actually because i i before i read that chapter i thought oh what would my advice be sort of thing and i kind of thought i bet it's in here and it wasn't interestingly which i tell you what it was i think you should apply for a boss not a job because if i look back at my career i think the great bosses i've had have shaped my career in in loads of senses in terms of like giving the confidence or permission to take the risk i mean i remember um one of the best bosses i had actually clark uh worked for him for three years and he asked me this interesting question when I left he said do you do you feel I've ever overruled you in the last three years and I said weird question I said actually no I can't think of any moment where you've actually said then I've done my job I thought that's really nice but you know I remember in that phase of my career he gave me permission to try he he was you know he was okay if I tried and failed and learned and then improved sort of thing but I think who you work for is probably you know as an individual is often more important than the name above the door.