TWO HAYLEY

[00:00:00] Ross: Hi there. And a very warm welcome to Season five, episode eight of People Soup. It's Ross McIntosh.

[00:00:06] Hayley: So my interview, semi-structured framework was based around the core things that I needed to find. So, my research was specifically looking at how do women define success as business owners and then, , what are the psychological factors that have enabled them?

[00:00:23] Hayley: So I looked through the lens of the Holy Trinity of personality, competencies and values. my questions were very loosely framed within those areas. I wanted to know how women define success. And then ask them questions about how they went about their days, what strengths they drew upon asking them, about specific incidents they could remember, as they started their business.

[00:00:50] Ross: P-SOUPERS, In our last episode, I introduced you to Dr. Haley Lewis. Haley is the founder of Halo Psychology and as an occupational psychologist, she provides expert and evidence-based support for individuals, teams, and organizations going through transition.

[00:01:05] Ross: This episode is a right treat. As we get to hear firsthand about Haley's doctoral research, and not just the outcomes, but the whole darned process. Haley approached her research with our characteristic drive, curiosity, authenticity, diligence, humor, and much more.

[00:01:20] Ross: if you've ever wondered about the qualitative research process, thematic analysis, and what exactly is a systematic literature review.

[00:01:28] Ross: Then this is the episode for you. listen on, to hear about Haley's research findings. They're not only informative, but fascinating. She's the first to look at values in relation to female business ownership and explore the lived experience of female entrepreneurs. and there's also a free business planning template takeaway.

[00:01:45] Ross: people. [00:02:00] Soup is an award-winning podcast where we share evidence-based behavioral science in a way that's practical, accessible, and fun to help you GLOW TO WORK a bit more often. Let's just scoot over to the news desk because reviews are in for part one of my chat with Hailey Sandra Murray on Instagram said, I love the Bewitched analogy As an ACT therapist, I think I will use that if you don't mind, basically to look at moments where you wish you could wiggle your nose and change a situation. That's awareness of non-acceptance. Then go from there into the hexagon. I do this with clients, but I love the idea of putting some witchcraft behind it.

[00:02:33] Ross: Thanks, Ross and Lisa Falkingham on Instagram too said what a great episode. Thank you, Haley, for sharing your story. So important to be ourselves and love the way you describe the deep, hard work to reveal. This is. As ever. Thank you, Ross. Love these podcasts. Always gives me food for thought and connection. Looking forward to more in 2023, Thanks also to Chris Winston, friend of the show for your thoughtful. I'm really grateful to everyone who listened, commented, recommended the episode to a friend.

[00:03:04] Ross: Reviewed the podcast because with your support, we can reach more people with useful and thought-provoking resources. This episode was recorded on a remarkable day in UK politics, and you'll find out why right at the end. And this introduction is being recorded at my sister-in-law's house in Granada, and I'm currently under the duvet in the guest bedroom to give you the best possible acoustic experience.

[00:03:27] Ross: For now. Get a brew on and have a listen to part two of my chat with Dr. Haley Lewis.

[00:03:39] Hayley: Yeah, well first of all, if listeners haven't listened to part one, how dare you. Now I'm joking. Uh, but go and listen to part one, uh, Ross and I have a really good chat. So, yeah, before we kind of dig into to kind of my main hypotheses in my research, which was about female entrepreneurship in particular women business owners in the early phase of, [00:04:00] starting a business and the psychological factors that enabled that success, and I also looked at how women define success, found some really interesting stuff Ross.

[00:04:10] Hayley: That kind of flies in the face of the narrative that we see in the media and the business, kind of the MBA space, if you like. Um, so we'll dig into that in a minute, but, yeah, what were my motivations? Well, as I've become older, you know, I'm 48 in the 49, I just, I've just become a really angry, older woman.

[00:04:26] Unfair challenges put in the way of women

[00:04:26] Hayley: and some of what I perceive to be unfair challenges put in the way of women, both in the workplaces, corporate employees, but also as business owners and. What was fueling this was the dominant kind of narrative, the dominant rhetoric I was seeing in the media, but also in the online space, so, so on social media, for example, which was this idea that the only way you could call yourself a successful business owner was by having 6, 7, 8, 9 figure. Turnover and you've gotta grow and have lots of employees. And that's, that's the only way we define success is business. And that just doesn't feel right to me. And I'm a one person business. I know very deliberately and happily so, I want to earn good money, but it's not my main value. It's not my driver.

[00:05:18] Not even lemonade

[00:05:18] Hayley: It just got me curious as well as angry, because also what I was seeing. Were lots of my female friends who had started businesses spending their hard earned cash on these courses run by what I think are dodgy people, you know, promising champagne outcomes and just. What you get is kind of not even lemonade at the end of it.

[00:05:44] Hayley: Just nonsense, non-evidence

[00:05:46] Hayley: based stuff

[00:05:47] Ross: Are, sort of ones that pop up on my LinkedIn, my Facebook saying,

[00:05:53] Hayley: yeah, on, in, on Instagram and all that, like with the glossy photos in front of a Mercedes. And if you [00:06:00] do what I did, you will earn, you know, an eight or nine figure

[00:06:04] Hayley: month, you know, let alone a year. And just that. That kind of dominant narrative. And it was just, it was really getting my goat quite frankly, and I'd fallen into that trap myself in the first few months of moving from corporate life to, to being a business owner.

[00:06:20] Hayley: So that was kind of fueling it. The, the second thing is I wanted to add to my repertoire. So Halo psychology is all about leadership and management behavior and how this impacts culture and performance. That's, that's my work that I do. But I am ambitious and I was thinking about the future and, and the life that my husband and I want and I want to, I want to kind of spend more time on coaching rather than tring around the country and.

[00:06:48] Hayley: Delivering courses and so on and so forth. And that still happens now, even after the pandemic. And so I thought actually, I want to help women. I've always been passionate about helping women, and I want to help women who want to set up their own businesses. So I had this idea of a second, almost like offshoot of Halo, which purely focused on women, but I wanted it to be an evidenced based. Support that I gave, you know, as a psychologist, as an evidence-based practitioner, that's really important to me. and the final reason why I did the doctorate rather than the specific subject, is I wanted to push myself. We know it's getting harder and harder to. discern oneself.

[00:07:29] Hayley: So you've got about 600 people per year going through the MSC program in the UK alone. Lots of those want to set up their own businesses, and so standing out. is getting harder and harder, you know, and MSC has become the old undergrad, and so doing a doctorate was a way to do that, but also up my game, you know, I like to set a big challenge at least once a decade.

[00:07:54] Hayley: And I set myself the challenge of getting my doctorate before I was 50. and so yeah, those are the, those are kind of the main,[00:08:00] kind of motivations and that's what kept me going.

[00:08:03] the long dark nights of the soul

[00:08:03] Hayley: if any of your listeners are doing their doctorate or thinking about that doctorate, there will be those inevitable, long, dark nights of the soul as Shakespeare talked about, where you think, oh, I'm not gonna do it.

[00:08:12] Hayley: I'm gonna give up. Particularly when you are either working in a corporate role or. as an employee or you are running your own business. I was also caring for my terminally ill mom. You know, lots of us have other stuff going on, and so it's inevitable that you have those moments where you're like, I'm tired.

[00:08:27] Hayley: I can't do this. It's too hard. And so being really clear on your motivations and what drives you is, is what will get you through that long dark night of the soul.

[00:08:36] Ross: so, so when you were having those long, dark nights, it was that, is it just reconnecting with that?

[00:08:43] My passion has been helping women

[00:08:43] Hayley: Yeah. So I've got a very clear sense of what I stand for and, and two of my core values, one is about helping others, particularly women. And the other is, is. Tackling and overcoming what I perceive to be social injustice. it is why I loved working in local government. It's why my client base is primarily public sector and within, kind of inequity and social injustice. My, my passion and my focus has always been women, and that's been ever since I was a little girl, you know, for a variety of reasons.

[00:09:18] Hayley: my passion has been helping women. and so that desire to want to help and being really clear on trying to make the world, albeit my little bit of the world, a better place for, for other women

[00:09:33] Ross: really get that sense of clarity and your values really shines through.

[00:09:38] How do you disconnect from work?

[00:09:38] Ross: And kind of related to that, before we dive into your research, how do you disconnect from work? Because I'm conscious you were doing your doctorate and many people will be doing masters or doctorates and doing a job alongside that and having demanding clients and then having to turn your attention to your doctorate, how the heck do you do?

[00:09:56] Hayley: I do do a lot. I also teach, I've now taken [00:10:00] over running part one of the doctoral program at Birkbeck you know that's two half days a week.

[00:10:04] Saying No

[00:10:04] Hayley: So I've always had a lot on. Throughout my whole career and I've always been an organized person with, and somehow, and I dunno, I think it's an innate thing, very good at setting boundaries. Ever since I was young, when I first went into the workplace, very good at setting boundaries and that's just stayed with me ever since. So I manage my diary ruthlessly. I use things like task blocking and time blocking. So I don't allow my diary to just be about meetings, So when I worked in as an employee, I always protected space in my diary, which meant being brave in saying NO. including no to very powerful people who wanted to meet with me at the last minute, unless it was an emergency or there was a crisis, like a riot. I would say no. because. , the priority for me was to do this important thing, this report or this strategy or whatever.

[00:10:55] Hayley: And, and as a business owner, that becomes even more important as we'll see from my research, about how you compartmentalize your time. and so yeah, so I'm very good at com, compartmentalizing my time and So when mum was alive, Fridays were a non-work day. Anyway, that's, that's when I take mum to the hospital.

[00:11:14] Hayley: I didn't do any work on my doctorate or any kind of halo work. It was quality time with my mum. I might do a little bit of work on the weekend, but also that was time with my husband and after Mum died, I just kept that Friday free and, I, it's interesting,

[00:11:29] We are the instruments of change

[00:11:29] Hayley: I've been having a few conversations like this recently on podcasts and also with some of the practitioners in training that I'm working with around Dr. Mee-Yan Cheung Judge's brilliant article. She wrote it more than 20 years ago. and it's still relevant now called The Self As an Instrument and as a practitioner psychologist, whether you are working inside an organization or you are working for yourself, you are the instrument. of change and how you show up impacts those around you.

[00:11:57] Hayley: It impacts the environment, the, the [00:12:00] temperature of the environment. And so surely if we are the instrument as a practitioner, it's, it's in our client's interests for us to look after ourselves. And that means making sure you are scheduling time for yourself and that you are. In command of your diary rather than your diary being in command of you

[00:12:22] Ross: Wow.

[00:12:22] Hayley: here end. If the

[00:12:24] Ross: I love it.

[00:12:25] Hayley: I'll send, I'll send it to you, Ross. I share it with lots of the students that I work with and I've been sharing it with, I, funnily enough, I've been working with more and more women in our space who are setting up their own business and. Who are wanting to kind of have a bit of support and it's an article I share with them, I'm giddy. I love talking about my

[00:12:46] Hayley: research, Ross.

[00:12:47] Ross: maybe what did you do? Is that, is that the starting

[00:12:50] Ross: point?

[00:12:51] Hayley: So it was the professional doctorate I did. It wasn't a PhD. There is a distinction. So, with the professional doctorate, you've al already got a number of years under your belt. So I went straight into the doctoral research, and. I was clear. You know, I remember going for my interview with, with doctors Rachel Lewis and Jo Yarker and who I knew anyway. But, um, when they asked me about my motivations, um, and where, what I thought I wanted to do my research on, I already had a pretty clear idea as I explained to you earlier, and they were really excited about it because, much of the research that we do in the space of occupational and organizational psychology still continues understandably to be about leadership and management teams, assessment and selection, wellbeing, all that stuff.

[00:13:37] Hayley: You know, you look in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, for example, and, and that's the dominant kind of research base and, and that's understandable. I hadn't. Based on my own kind of little dive into the research, really found any occupational psychologist who'd researched entrepreneurship or female entrepreneurship.

[00:13:57] Hayley: So I thought, Ooh, and I said that. Anyways, [00:14:00] so long story short, start at the doctorate and. The professional doctorate, you do two big studies.

[00:14:06] The Systematic Literature Review

[00:14:06] Hayley: The first is what we call a systematic literature review, which is different from your traditional literature review. So for those listening who aren't familiar with that, a systematic literature review, you put in place really clear criteria.

[00:14:20] Hayley: So you have inclusion and exclusion criteria. You base it on a framework, you know, what population are you looking at, and and so on. So it is really rigorous and it has to be signed off. and you have to adhere

[00:14:32] Hayley: to that.

[00:14:33] Hayley: So, basically you go through a search a number of times and it's reviewed by a co-researcher. and then there's a third person who mediates if there's a disagreement. So your first run, you put in your criteria in. search engines, you've decided to. So you have to again, agree that upfront you can't randomly go off and just search anywhere. So I had my criteria. And so what came back . So the first search that came back with all my criteria applied was 2000 articles. And I nearly cried. But actually, and I remember Rachel saying to me, trust the process.

[00:15:07] Hayley: Trust the process. It, it actually won't take that long cuz you know what you are looking for. And actually I was able to go through that quite quickly because quite a lot of them were like clinical, medical, sexual health. So it was really easy to quickly go through the title.

[00:15:21] Hayley: So you do what we, what's called a title sift. So that then got it down. I think that got it down to about 500

[00:15:28] Ross: sounds

[00:15:28] Ross: a little bit better, but still crikey.

[00:15:31] Hayley: yeah, did another title sift. So then my co-researcher, which was one of my super. . and we got it down even further. We got it down to about 60. and then you do what's called an abstract sift.

[00:15:42] Hayley: So then you include the, you look in detail at each of those 60 papers abstracts. And so then I was able to kind of take out quite a number and got it down to 17 papers that would be relevant. and myself and my co-researcher were in agreement. And then you read in detail [00:16:00] each of those papers and you have criteria that you. assessing again. So you summarized the, the research, what did they find? But then you do a quality review of each paper. Um, so there's a framework that you decide to use. So I had a framework that I agreed, and so I loved it. . and if anybody who knows me, if any of my fellow doctoral pals who are on the program with me or Rachel or Joe are listening, they'll, they'll laugh because I loved systematic reviews.

[00:16:28] Hayley: Cause I'm a very systematic person. I'm a very processed person. I loved it and I just did a little bit, little and often I called it, I talked about it on Instagram, little and often. and so yeah, and so then wrote up my systematic review. So, That was a big study in itself. So it's like a chapter in my thesis, my final thesis.

[00:16:46] Hayley: that then led me to really hone down where the gaps are in the research for the last 20 years. Really hone my questions, my hypotheses, then it was running the gamut of the ethics committee, which at doctoral level is a whole different ballgame. Lord love me. yeah, just the stuff you have to fill out and defend and, and rightly so.

[00:17:08] Qualitative is as important as Quantitative

[00:17:08] Hayley: so that got approved and I was off and, and so my empirical study was original research. I did a qualitative study because I love hearing people's stories and one of the things I found from the systematic review is a. there was no occupational psychology related studies.

[00:17:24] Hayley: All the studies came from the fields of sociology, social psychology, or economics, which I think is interesting and will fuel the narrative. and a lot of them were looking at money as the success factor. A lot of them were looking at what people didn't do, so what women didn't do, what they didn't do well.

[00:17:43] Hayley: So I wanted to turn that on its head and look at it from a strengths perspective. and so yeah, it just, it just really helped me identify on where to go with my research. and so, yeah. only a couple of the, the studies were qualitative. Other than that, they were quantitative. So [00:18:00] whilst there are strengths to quantitative research, what it can end up doing is homogenizing the results.

[00:18:05] Hayley: so everybody kind of gets lumped together and I wanted to hear the lived experiences of women. I'm passionate about. Stories always have been. I think they're really powerful and I think, I think there can be a snobbishness in our field. About qualitative, we dismiss it. And I'm here to say qualitative is as important

[00:18:23] Hayley: as quantitative.

[00:18:25] Ross: agree. For anyone listening it, it really allows that. kind of synthesis of the different voices to, to arrive at a,

[00:18:32] Ross: a, an analysis that's, that's really rich and informative.

[00:18:35] Hayley: yeah. Well, and, and so, It still makes me laugh that I use big words like this, Ross. but yeah, my epistemological stance was I was a critical feminist researcher. That was my, that was my main stance. and a social constructionist approach. So this belief that what we say and focus on becomes our reality.

[00:18:54] Hayley: And so that's why qualitative and feminist researchers do tend to use qualitative cuz it is about the lived experience, which can't always be distilled down into a nice. Little P score, or T score actually, it's about what, what are the, what are the things that, that these women are saying? So, so that kind of validated my desire to, to do a qualitative study.

[00:19:16] Hayley: And I loved it. You know, I feel so honored and I really wanted to honor, the women who took part. I wanted to honor their stories as much as possible. What really blew me away, So I know there will be some people who roll their eyes at this go, oh, you're so lucky, Hailey . But I do feel really lucky in that when I put the call out for participants, I got overwhelmed.

[00:19:39] Hayley: I thought I was gonna have an absolute nightmare, like lots of us do. I remember doing my masters and just struggling.

[00:19:45] Oversubscribed

[00:19:45] Hayley: I thought it was gonna take me months to get my participants, and in a week I was oversubscribed three times the number. and actually quite a few of them couldn't do this stuff cuz they didn't meet my criteria.

[00:19:56] Hayley: but when I chatted to, to my supervisors about that, they said, you are onto

[00:19:59] Ross: [00:20:00] Mm.

[00:20:00] Hayley: You are onto something. So if women are desperate to tell their story, it's because they've not been given a place to tell their story as business owners. So, yeah. So, so that's kind of where we, where we got to.

[00:20:12] Ross: Wow. Thanks for taking us through the process. Cause I think, sometimes from the outside we can just assume that, that you just have a look, you pick a topic and then you go and ask people questions. But it's so much more structured and un rigorous than that.

[00:20:25] Ross: And hell it should be to produce that level of, of research and insight.

[00:20:30] Ross: so you were oversubscribed, you whittled them down to a number.

[00:20:35] Hayley: 15.

[00:20:36] Ross: you probably already had a kind of, sort of framework structure for the interviews. How, how were the interviews? Describe how you arrived at that structure. maybe.

[00:20:45] Hayley: So I, I used a semi-structured interview because, and again, you know, I, I also used my experience both as a practitioner who'd been in the field a long time, but also as somebody who'd been in leadership roles where I'd interviewed for hiring purposes. And I'm a great believer in the power of the semi-structured interview.

[00:21:02] Hayley: So not having things so structured that it stifles the conversation, but having some kind of framework. within which to position people's responses.

[00:21:11] Summary of Hayley's research

[00:21:11] Hayley: So my interview, semi-structured framework was based around the core things that I needed to find. So, my research was specifically looking at how do women define success as business owners and then, , what are the psychological factors that have enabled them?

[00:21:29] Hayley: So I looked through the lens of the Holy Trinity of personality, competencies and values. My study is the first to look at values in relation to, female business ownership. If not, Business ownership. so that's kind of one of the things I'm gonna be emphasizing when I finally go through the rigmarole of submitting to a peer review journal, which can take a long time.

[00:21:54] Hayley: It can take a good two years to, to get published, but that's the thing that I'm gonna emphasize. So, so, yeah. So [00:22:00] my, my questions were very loosely framed within those areas. I wanted to know how women define success. And then ask them questions about how they went about their days, what strengths they drew upon asking them, about specific incidents they could remember, as they started their business.

[00:22:21] Hayley: there was an equal split. So, five of my participants were in their first year, five in their second year and five in their third year. Cause I was looking in the first three years of business, which is when we're at our most vulnerable as business owners. and yeah, and I found some really interesting staff at one of the, an unexpected phenomena, that came up, was around half of the women I spoke to. Had stayed working, but they dropped her part-time. So they hadn't just made the leap from being a, an employee to setting up their own business. and I was really interested in that and I think that's a really good tactic. Cause I think, I think when I come across women, and sometimes I have some, male psychologists who are thinking of setting up on their own, who've reached. but it's mainly women. And I think sometimes we have this all or nothing thinking I have to leave my job and sell my business. And actually what this phenomena showed is there is a, there is another way, there's always another way. and that's opened up a whole new world for many of the women that I work with who like, hadn't even thought of that. So, yeah, I could go part-time and what does that look like? And I'm working with, a psychologist in the educational field at the moment on that. So, some really interesting stuff came out and I can share with you the themes that I found.

[00:23:38] Ross: tell us about your coding and the, and the methodology you

[00:23:41] Ross: used.

[00:23:41] Hayley: I just, I must people listen to this guy and she needs to get out more. at that point we couldn't get out, so I had nothing else to do.

[00:23:48] Hayley: I dunno if you've seen that meme it's, it's done the rounds of social media. It's from a program, but it's the guy who's got a fag hanging out of his mouth and he's looking really crazy and he's got like lots of papers with [00:24:00] lots of arrows and everything going in everywhere people. We'll know it when they sit, but that's how I felt because in our dining room, there were just flip chart sheets and post-it notes everywhere as I was coding.

[00:24:14] Hayley: So I had these 300 pages across my 15 interviews, and you go through line by line. So I use the Braun Clark thematic analysis approach, and I have to say, I mean, I said this to my examiners, what I thought had been thematic analysis as a practitioner, I realized had not been thematic analysis in its purest sense, and I learnt loads.

[00:24:37] Hayley: So you go through in stages. So you, you go through line by line, doing your initial coding, then you go back through to, kind of double check that coding. You are always questioning your bias. Am I putting my own bias? And then you go back through and theme, and then you go back through and double check that again.

[00:24:56] Hayley: You're not putting your bias on those themes. That's, that's like a really high level overview. that took me a good couple of months, to do, as I say, with just all the crazy picture. My husband would come in and he'd just like, look at the war and walk back out

[00:25:08] Ross: When I've done a, a thematic analysis before, one of my friends came around and I had a similar thing all over the wall, and he said, it looks like the, the lair of a serial killer

[00:25:18] Hayley: love that.

[00:25:22] Ross: I was like,

[00:25:23] Hayley: I love that. that. is yet that's us

[00:25:26] Ross: With bits of thread, I even have bits of thread going from, from theme to theme,

[00:25:31] Hayley: Yeah. Yeah, Been there. and that didn't come down even it didn't come down for months because, I needed it in front of me all the time, even after I'd written up that study, which became another chapter in my thesis, and then writing my full thesis, which is five chapters, and then waiting for the edits to come back. And then I had it in front of me all the time to keep me true. And it goes back to my point about I wanted to honor the women's stories.

[00:25:57] Hayley: so when I found myself kind of going off down a rabbit, [00:26:00] hole in some of my writing I'd, having that right in front of my face just kept me true. so yeah, so that was the process, and then it was just kind of putting metaphorical pen to to paper. So that's another 10,000 word study. so yeah, so the overall thesis, I've never written that much in my life.

[00:26:17] Hayley: It was. 220 pages. It's like 55,000 words, . I've written that much in my life and never will again, Rita. I loved it. I just, I love finding themes. I love interrogating data. particularly qualitative data. I'm just, yeah,

[00:26:36] Ross: I

[00:26:36] Ross: think the time is ripe. Now, let's, dive into your themes. Tell us what, tell us what you found.

[00:26:44] Hayley: Yeah, sure. So, um, I've created a, a theoretical framework. and I didn't feel like I had, but my examiner said, you've created a framework. Be proud of it. I was like, okay, then I will. and it's one of the things that obviously I'll share in the peer review journal when I finally kind of get that going, but just to describe your listeners.

[00:27:02] Hayley: So, in terms of success, which was the, the starting premise, how do women define success? So from the systematic review, no one had looked at that. No one had asked that. and no one had asked that question of women business owners. and so the women that I was interviewing in my own study were women who were, running coaching and or training businesses, so kind of micro businesses in the uk.

[00:27:26] Hayley: And as, as you said at the beginning, it's a really competitive industry in the uk, let alone the world. And so I was really curious how did the, how did these women define success? And some really clear stuff came out every time. And I've got some beautiful quotes from, from the women. So number one that came out was around success was defined as as credibility and reputation.

[00:27:48] Hayley: So, being seen as top of your field. , being seen as credible in your practice, having a really good, well-known reputation as someone who delivers that was seen as a [00:28:00] mark of success, freedom, and autonomy. So freedom and autonomy did come up across. a couple of the systematic review studies, but not in any real.

[00:28:10] Hayley: It was almost like a throwaway comment, whereas in mine, it came across as such a strong theme. Every single woman I spoke to talked about how having more freedom and autonomy over how she spent her time over the work she did and didn't do, over which clients she did and didn't work with. Came out across all 15 of them without a shadow of a doubt, you know, and lots of them shared the power of, and the life-changing nature of, if I want to just go for a cycle ride with my nephew that afternoon, I can, if I don't feel right about a client, I can say no.

[00:28:45] Hayley: so there's some really powerful stories. The third theme around success was most of the women talked about making a tangible difference. This is where the evidence base comes in. All of these women talked about having hard, tangible evidence for how they were making impact with the, the people that they were working with and the organizations they were working with.

[00:29:05] Hayley: And so actually they had hard data that helped kind of back up their success. And then there was a really interesting one. So, anybody who is listening to this, who's followed me on social media, if you followed me for a while, you'll know that one of the theories I love is the Theory of Thriving by Gretchen Spreitzer and colleagues. It's actually not a well touted theory. It comes from 2005, but I love it. and whil. The theory of thriving, very much focused on the traditional employment kind of environment. What I was finding from the stories that the women were sharing is many of the things that we're saying actually, linked to the theory of thriving.

[00:29:45] Hayley: So here you had women who weren't corporate employees, or not all corporate employees who were running their own businesses, who were actually exhibiting all the factors that suggest we thrive, that Gretchen talked about in in her research. And so there's two [00:30:00] things we look for. When people are thriving in a work context, they get a sense of energy.

[00:30:04] Hayley: They get vitality and energy from what they do and they're learning all the time. And those two things came through in absolute bucket loads. There was one of the women I talked to, she said, I am in love with my business.

[00:30:19] Hayley: She talked about it in in terms of love. , she was, she was in her first year of business, which she said, I am in love, completely utter love with my business.

[00:30:27] Hayley: And that for me, exhibited, thriving. And they did talk about money. So, you know, I'm not naive. And even though I took an anti-capitalist stance in my thesis, we all need money to, particularly at the moment, we all need money to live. And, and so the, the fifth. Was around having a steady income.

[00:30:44] Hayley: none of them talked about wanting to be millionaires or to grow their business so that they had thousands of employees. They all talked about wanting to earn a comfortable living where they didn't have to worry about money. They could pay the mortgage, they could go on holiday with their families.

[00:31:00] Hayley: They could put savings aside. They could invest in their own development and not worry about that. That was it. It was about having a content comfortable life rather than what the systematic review found. So the, the 17 studies across the systematic literature review business success was about amount of turnover, amount of sales, big profit growth, and unless you were meeting that criteria, Your business was not a success.

[00:31:26] Hayley: And so my empirical research kind of flew in the face, of that you could be and feel successful. and there were other things and are other things that seemed to be more important. So that was success.

[00:31:39] Ross: it's, it's just fascinating. I love the way you're bringing it to life.

[00:31:43] Ross: I'm on the edge of my seat.

[00:31:45] Hayley: Hold on to your seat. So, so I looked at personality. so I dug into. What the papers in a systematic review said, and then what came up in the interviews in my empirical research. And so there were some very clear things that can help [00:32:00] women in those early years. So, I looked through the lens of the Big Five and psychological capital, in terms of the Big Five, Two of the, the big five that seem to have the most positive impact on women in those early years. You tell me what you think they might be. Ross

[00:32:17] Hayley: didn't expect that, did you?

[00:32:18] Ross: I would say a good dose of openness and perhaps. I guess there would be some agreeableness in there and probably a high level of conscientiousness, perhaps driven by values.

[00:32:30] Ross: Yay.

[00:32:31] Hayley: you win the prize. So, so yeah. So those, those three really stood out. But in particular, both in the systematic review and in my empirical research, high conscientiousness and high openness to experience consistently come up, across the papers that looked at it, but also, The, the interviews that I did with women, so in particular some of the women I spoke to talked about the importance of having routine.

[00:33:00] Hayley: So it's very easy when you go from being a, an employee to setting up your own business. I did it a little bit myself in the first two months, like, get up late cuz you can, and letting things slide. And so lots of the women talked about the importance of having routine and structure even when you didn't necessarily have work.

[00:33:17] Hayley: But clients booked in, openness to experience as we know, as a personality trait. can aid with creativity and innovation and coming up with ideas and being open to when things happen and, and flexibility. and that came through in particular in the stories from the women I spoke to. In terms of psychological capital.

[00:33:39] Hayley: So in terms of pcap, obviously there's, there's the four hero elements of psychological capital. For those listeners who aren't familiar, it's hope, optimism, resilience, and self-efficacy. across the studies that had touched on this? not explicitly, but I drew out from those studies and in my own research with the women, [00:34:00] there were two aspects of the psych.

[00:34:02] Hayley: A model that really came through time and time again, which was resilience, unsurprisingly and self-efficacy. Having that belief that we've got what it takes to achieve a goal. W e can draw on kind of prior experience, prior accomplishments.

[00:34:14] Hayley: There's all sorts of things we can draw on and that helps our self-belief and self-belief and resilience. , absolutely were strong threads throughout all the stories, of the women I spoke to. So, particularly you think about when I was doing the interviews, Ross, you know, we were, we had our, we were in the middle of our, in London.

[00:34:31] Hayley: We were in the middle of our third lockdown. and I was, I was interviewing women around the country, so not just in London, so Manchester, Scotland. And so they all talked about the challenge of running a business in the pandemic and how, you know, it really tested their resilience. and they're really digging into their self-belief of when they'd had challenging times and they'd done it before and they could do it again.

[00:34:54] Hayley: And, it's a really weird thing to set, but it felt like a real privilege to be able to do research. One of the u most unique

[00:35:00] Hayley: times in history?

[00:35:02] Ross: did, did you ever find that the conscientiousness tipped over into, because you talked earlier about yourself and boundary setting and, and saying,

[00:35:10] Ross: no. Did you have that, did that conscientiousness impact on boundary setting?

[00:35:15] Hayley: No, not in any discernible. Not in any discernible. Way that I can, I can remember, I think there were other things that the women drew upon to help navigate that very difficult time, which we're gonna touch on now when

[00:35:28] Hayley: we look at competencies. So I looked at what we call, I don't like the terminology, but it's, it's what most of us use, the soft competencies and the hard technical competencies.

[00:35:38] Hayley: So this was really interesting because in the, in the systematic literature review, what came out was women basically got a really bad rap in these 17 studies. So, in particular, many of the researchers across these studies, We're saying women tend to be weak at the, the more technical stuff.

[00:35:56] Hayley: Well, let me tell you, I found the complete and utter opposite in my [00:36:00] study. So there were two soft in inverted commas competencies that really came out across both a systematic review and my study. the first of which is the ability to build and maintain relationships. So within this, this is about the importance of your network, being proactive in reaching out to people, keeping that going, using things like LinkedIn, setting up your own. meetings and networks. collaboration came up loads, and collaboration really helped a lot of the women during the early stages of the pandemic. One of the women I interviewed, I think, really drive it home and it comes up sometimes in the coaching that I do with women business owners.

[00:36:41] Nurturing networks

[00:36:41] Hayley: One of the women said, I wish I had spent more time building and nurturing my network before I left my job. Because she said I felt like I was running to catch up, but when I did, my network is like gold. Nearly all of the women talked about the generosity of other women, and we'll touch on that in values in a minute.

[00:36:59] Hayley: So how open women were to sharing their client contacts, to connecting new women business owners with other kind of women and men. and it was Just such feel good vibes from the conversations. Um, so generosity within relationships, not just taking, really came through the second soft competency is what I call self-directed learning.

[00:37:23] Hayley: So this links back to thriving. So these women were all proactive. they were focusing on their continuum, professional development. They were reading avidly, they were proactively seeking a mentor or a coach, or an advisor. they were always learning. and always finding opportunities to learn.

[00:37:43] Hayley: They, they were reflecting. there was one woman who talked about quarterly, she would reflect on how she felt she'd done with her business. So there was, there was this kind of real self-directed learning, which is incredible. Now, here's the interesting thing. As I say, women got criticized, got a bad rap in the [00:38:00] systematic review across the 17 studies around technical competencies in my. interviews, it came through as a strength. So every woman I spoke to talked about how the fact she put in place a business plan was highly organized, so had a strategy, had set themselves goals, had set themselves financial goals. Basically had done really good business planning, so I've created a free template, an evidence-based template on the back of my research to help women and men, any men listening, develop their first business plan.

[00:38:32] Hayley: the, the other was around commercial awareness, so pricing. So all of the women I spoke to were really clear on their pricing. They'd done their research, they'd done benchmarking. They'd looked at who their competitors were. They thought about the kind of clients they wanted to work with and, and, and what it would be prudent to charge.

[00:38:51] Hayley: they thought about all that in detail and. The third technical competency was what I called market sector awareness. So again, all the women I spoke to were really clear on the kind of sectors they wanted to work with, organizations they wanted to work with, and then they diligently were paying attention to trade press.

[00:39:10] Hayley: If they were working with central government departments. They were keeping an eye on policy changes, things that would impact their clients they were paying attention to so that they could show up. and work with their clients in the best way possible. and so, yeah. So those are, those are the competencies.

[00:39:27] Hayley: And then the final bit was values. which I, I loved kind of asking the women about. And again, as I say, my study is the first to specifically and explicitly look at values in relation to business ownership. And there were three that came out time and time again. So I used, I primarily used the Swartz values inventory.

[00:39:45] Hayley: It's one of the best known in the world as a framework three that came out. The first was authenticity. So every single woman said, I finally can be who I am. Or words to that effect. So a lot of the women said that when they were in corporate roles or in leadership roles, they [00:40:00] felt they, they were having to pretend in order to fit in.

[00:40:02] Hayley: And now being their own boss and, and running their own business, they could decide what their business stood for and they could bring themselves into their business. So, because many of them are micro-business owners, And I know this myself as a micro business owner, you, you are your business. Your brand is your business' brand. so authenticity came through. The second was around helping and caring for others. every single woman I spoke to, Talked about this in detail about that's what drove them. it was behind the decisions that they made, the, the things that they did, the things that they didn't do, the clients they worked with, the clients that didn't quite fit with their values.

[00:40:40] Hayley: And then the third was about being community oriented. So giving something back. So this links back to my point around generosity. So seeing the business world as a community rather than seeing other women running coaching and training businesses as a threat, actually seeing them as a community and you are better together.

[00:41:00] Hayley: there is more than enough work to go round and we don't need to be fighting each other. So yeah, so that is, my thesis and my findings in a nutshell. I did find a couple of barriers whilst I wasn't explicitly looking for them. They did come up in the stories and my supervisors rightly said, Hailey, you need to include these.

[00:41:20] Hayley: so the two barriers were there was one that was about a discomfort with selling. but selling in that really icky way that we've all experienced, particularly on LinkedIn. I dunno about you, I get direct messages, or it's just like, does this work? Does this approach to selling work?

[00:41:36] Ross: not on me. I can tell you that

[00:41:39] Hayley: not on me. I just delete.

[00:41:40] Hayley: I just delete. Sometimes it depends on what kind of mood I'm in. I might send a, a terse reply. but all of the women said, I don't like selling, but when I dug into it, They don't have to sell. because of the credibility and reputation. They put the effort on giving stuff away for free. On social media, it's word of mouth.

[00:41:58] Hayley: A lot of their [00:42:00] business was word of mouth cuz they'd done good work cuz they had a good reputation, evidence-based impact, others would refer them. So actually, In spite of there being a discomfort with selling, they didn't have to do that. Icky old school, I think is old school selling. And then the other barrier, potential barrier was a lack of financial competence and confidence.

[00:42:19] Hayley: So lots of them talked openly about that, but they'd all put in place. Things to help them, whether it was getting an accountant, whether it was booking in time once a month, to really go through, and get comfortable with your financial data going on a course to understand financial terminology. So again, whilst lots of them talked about it as a potential barrier, they'd all proactively put things in place to mitigate that. And now I'm gonna breathe. And if anybody's still listening to. I love you. the one person who's left.

[00:42:50] Ross: Well, we'll make that too. And I'm, I'm sure there are many more. Thank you so much for your generosity in sharing your research and bringing it to life. I felt quite moved when you were describing that cuz it really felt like you were conveying the voice of your participants and absolutely doing them justice. so Hailey, I'd love to ask my guests if they have a takeaway for our listeners.

[00:43:12] Ross: And I think everything you've just told us is an absolute diamond mine of a takeaway. But is there anything specific you would, you would draw attention to or, or,

[00:43:23] Hayley: Yeah. I think whether you are. working as an employee and thinking of setting up independently, so running, working for yourself, or whether you are in the early stages of being your own boss, running your own business, making the time for good business planning is essential. Having that first business plan is crucial, and then getting into the habit of setting yourself an annual business plan and then reviewing that quarterly or however often you want to is important.

[00:43:55] Hayley: It is why I've created a free. Evidence-based template called my [00:44:00] First Business Plan, which is geared all around the, the things that we've touched on here from my research. So I can, send you a copy to share

[00:44:09] Ross: that would be super useful. I'm thinking for me, but also for of all the listeners and you know, you talked about those values of authenticity, helping others, making a difference in building a community. I see that like shining out like a lighthouse in everything you do at HALO Psychology. So thank you so much for doing that and I look forward to your.

[00:44:30] Ross: Peer reviewed journal article coming out at some point in the future. I know what a journey that is in my work with, Paul Flaxman, our colleague at City. know how long that can take with reviewer two and

[00:44:44] Hayley: dun.

[00:44:46] Hayley: dun.

[00:44:46] Ross: all the very best for that. But thank you so much for your time

[00:44:49] Ross: and for bringing this to life so openly and authentically and beautifully.

[00:44:54] Ross: I really, really appreciate.

[00:44:56] Hayley: Thank you. And thank you ever so much for, for asking me back again. It's, it's a real honor. Thank you.

[00:45:00] END

[00:45:00] Ross: That's it, part two in the bag. Thanks so much to Hailey for bringing her groundbreaking research to life on people's soup. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Let us know what you think on the socials, or drop me an email.

[00:45:17] Ross: If you like this episode of the podcast, please, could you do three things? Number one, share it with one other person. Number two, subscribe to the podcast and give us a five star review. Whatever platform you're on, and particularly if you're on Apple Podcasts, the Apple charts are really important in the podcast industry.

[00:45:36] Ross: And number three, share the heck out of it on the socials. This will all help us reach more people with stuff that could be. I'd love to hear from you and you can get in touch at people soup dot pod gmail.com. On Twitter, we are at People Soup Pod on Instagram at People dot Soup.

[00:45:53] Ross: And on Facebook we are at People Soup Pod. thanks to Andy Klan for his Spoon Magic. And Alex [00:46:00] Engelberg for his vocal. Most of all, dear listener, thanks to you. Look after yourselves. Peace supers and bye for now.

[00:46:08] Ross: Well, shall we go back to just checking the news? It's, it's been a whole hot, hot hour,

[00:46:15] Hayley: Oh my

[00:46:16] Hayley: gosh. She stepped down. she's live. Liz Truss steps down as prime minister and conservative party leader after 44