Influence & Impact for female leaders
Influence & Impact for female leaders
Ep 146 – Being intentional about your career with Dr Hannah Roberts
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If you are feeling stuck in your career you’ll be pleased to hear that there is now a framework you can use to identify the steps you can take to move towards career fulfilment.  This framework was created by my guest on this podcast, Dr Hannah Roberts, author of Intentional Careers for STEM Women.

In our conversation we cover…

–        What it means to have an intentional career rather than an unconscious career

–        The ‘proving’ cycle many of us get stuck in when we start a job

–        What can cause us to become unfulfilled in our career or overworked to the point where it is unsustainable

–        How to find alignment in your career through purpose, mission and vision

–        The 3 career pivots that will help you work out what you need to change to find career happiness

Hannah’s book is a fantastic resource for any woman wanting to take control of her career and also goes deep on many of the issues on the confidence issues many women struggle with.  I highly recommend grabbing a copy.

About Dr Hannah Roberts:

As founder of Intentional Careers™, author of Amazon #1 bestseller Intentional Careers for STEM Women and host of a top 10 UK podcast, top 5% globally Women in STEM Career & Confidence, Dr Hannah Roberts is an award-winning coach on a mission to eradicate inequity in the workplace by guiding professionals to design careers for fulfilment with a mindset for leadership to build progressive workplace cultures where every individual feels valued.

Hannah is uniquely positioned as a scientist, mum of three with a background in corporate and academia. She was managing director of a spin-out company before pivoting into coaching, speaking and training in 2019. She has clients spanning 6 continents and is a certified One of Many™ Women’s Leadership Coach and Trainer with the Professional Certified Coach credential from the International Coaching Federation and has been a member of the Forbes Coaches Council since 2022.

Useful links:

 

WORK WITH ME:

If you’d like to talk to me about working together do book a call.

How I work with individuals:

How I work with organisations:

Carla Miller 00:03
So I'm delighted to welcome Dr. Hannah Roberts to the podcast. Hello, welcome. How you doing?

Dr Hannah Roberts 00:09
Thank you so much for inviting me, Carla, I'm really looking forward to this conversation.

Carla Miller 00:14
Me too. So your books called intentional careers for STEM women. Can you tell us a little bit about your background? And what led you to write this particular book?

Dr Hannah Roberts 00:25
Sure. So for those people who don't know what STEM is, first of all, it's science, technology, engineering and maths. And I'm a scientist by trade. So I have a degree in masters PhD and postdoc in chemistry, and then spent eight years managing large multimillion pound projects between academia and industry across the world, and commercialising the research. So one of those projects was starting a spin out company with three other female academics. And I was managing director of that company for a couple of years, and did that phase in my life while having my three children who are now 11, nine, and five. And as Elsie likes to say, and it was on my third map, the board decided to retrain to be a coach. And then after that, I started doing speaking and training as part of it. So that was in 2018, when that happened, so I guess I've been doing this for like, for nearly five years now. So it feels like it's my, I don't know, a second career, should we say?

Carla Miller 01:32
Excellent. And it talks about an intentional career. And in the book, you also talk about that versus an unconscious career. What is how are you defining an intentional career?

Dr Hannah Roberts 01:45
So in the book, I've got this infographic, which takes you through the five different stages of an intentional career journey. And I'll kind of like a back on with the question as well. So when I first started working with coaching clients, like primarily, they went into three major outcomes for me, a better work life balance, and increasing confidence and more career fulfilment. And really understanding that what next question people come and say, Well, I don't really know what's next in my career, I keep getting asked, you know, what do you want to be in five years, 10 years? And I'm like, I don't know. So it's helping people to not just be able to make that next career pivot, but also to be able to self navigate beyond that for like the rest of your career as well. And I found that over time, and innovated, well, first of all, people were going through a series of predictable and repeatable steps in their careers. So that's the intentional career journey. And I'll briefly describe them for you. So the first stage is largely the unconscious phase of your career. This is where you might have actively stepped on to what I call the career conveyor belts, where you just make a choice. And then it's suddenly, oh, now I do this, and now I do this, and opportunity presents itself to you. And you can follow that pathway. And you kind of go, oh, well, I haven't really made that many of my own decisions for quite some time, I'm sort of sort of been shaped and moulded to fit someone else's purpose here. And the hallmarks of an unconscious career is one where you step into that proving phase have, I really need to prove myself hearing, you know, seeking out that positive feedback, you might be doing a lot of pleasing. So saying yes to everything becoming that go to person to get things done. And that slips you into the realm of overworking. So those are the three kind of hallmarks of the unconscious phase. And then people tend to drift then into stage number two, which is unfulfilled. So this is when you're overworking so you start to feel a bit underappreciated for all of that hard, work underpaid, and then you start to feel overlooked. So there might be someone who comes in behind you, leapfrogs ahead of you. And you start to feel like why is that not happening for me to start to feel a bit stuck in the unfulfilled phase? And then you take a step into layer number three, which is probably the worst phase to be in this is the unsustainable phase where you don't have clarity on the What's Next question. Also, you confidence has been eroded over all that time. And you're going but I've got 25 plus, plus plus years ago, my career, so I need something to change. But I just don't know how to take that step and I don't know where to go. So that's the kind of the point where it lots of people go, let me just jump ship into that bright, shiny object over there. without really understanding it's it's an away from motivation. Let me get away from this one. Go over here without defining what you actually want to move towards. And often what people can do is take that leap, and then the same challenges keep replaying out again and again. So then stage number four is purposeful. This is where you do take the time to actually define on where it is that you're heading. So you've got alignment between what I call your purpose, your mission and vision, you've restored your confidence and you've reclaim some boundaries. So you've got balance in your life. And then those who are in purposeful can step up into stage number five, which is feeling valued, where you don't just sort of have alignment on the next step, you can take that long term trajectory. So leadership mindset, self navigation, and true authenticity, where who you are at home and who you are at work and who you are with anyone is the same person, you're showing your true authenticity. So what I often say to people is you don't have to go 12345, you actually can just go straight to fourth and five. So you don't have to go through all of that pain if you're not there right now. So that's the good part about it.

Carla Miller 05:55
Excellent. And then if you swap jobs, do you then often start back at one? Or do you just move across at the same level you're

Dr Hannah Roberts 06:02
actually already at? Well, this is the thing most people do, they move across to a new job, and then start in the improving myself again, phase for at least 12 to 18 months. So in the work that I do, I teach people not to make that drop, but to stay at level four, or moving up to level five, as much as possible. But obviously, we're only humans. So of course, there might be a phase of ah, stage one before you go, Oh, I remember how to do this without doing that.

Carla Miller 06:32
And do you think men go through a similar? The similar five stages? Or do you think it's different for women? Um,

Dr Hannah Roberts 06:41
I know, I've written this specifically for women, because that's my area of focus. But whenever I do mixed groups, so I'll often do mixed kind of workshops. And I don't tend to coach just people who are identifying as men. And but I find that they come to me, they say we're experiencing the exact same challenges. And what you're describing there is exactly how I feel about things. So I would say this framework probably represents, like the vast majority of people, of course, you always meet people who fall outside of any model that you creates as well. But yes, I say this is probably for everybody. And in fact, when I did my book launch at Microsoft, they said, you should just scratch out the for women bits, because this is just for everybody. But I can say them, yes. And you could do it outside of STEM, it could be for any, like any sector that you're in, but actually I specifically for my purpose want to work with women in stuff

Carla Miller 07:40
that makes sense. And I find the same when I ran, we have a be bolder confidence course. And, and it was created with women in mind. But for some clients, we run a gender neutral version, and it is embraced equally, which is great and equally relevant. But it's limited to speak to a particular audience and and for your particular audience to feel seen and heard and have someone go up, but that person gets me I feel understood. And it's not just me, I find that one of the things that podcast is really helpful for your book, my book as well, this idea of actually, we're not alone, in what we're experiencing. It's it's completely normal. And there are actually some really good reasons why we're experiencing that.

Dr Hannah Roberts 08:19
Or for sure, and I get that from the feedback I've had from the book. It's are you describing how I'm you know how I feel perfectly? It's exactly, you know, exactly what's going on for me. So I like that kind of feedback

Carla Miller 08:33
as well. As you were describing it. I was thinking about my coaching clients, and I was like they are they're in stage one. Yeah, we had a conversation just today about stage two. And I find a lot of people looking for career coaching specifically at that unsustainable stage, though, because then it's become so painful, you just can't ignore it.

Dr Hannah Roberts 08:49
Exactly, exactly. And that's the please don't do the bright, shiny object thing. Let's do it properly.

Carla Miller 08:56
Absolutely. And, you know, obviously, your background is stem. What do you think is unique about working in STEM?

Dr Hannah Roberts 09:08
I'm not sure it's unique to stem, I think it's any kind of area where there's a particularly male dominated field. So for example, I was in chemistry, and you'd have to look up the statistics in various different fields. But in an academic pathway, you've got 43% of the intake in chemistry degrees as women, but when you get all the way up to profit, like profit level, Professor level, it's 9% currently. So you you have a huge leaky pipeline of talents. And that's what I really care about. Yes, there's some amazing people doing the stuff with early early years were really helping girls in particular and boys but at an early stage believe that that's a possibility for them. And if you don't get there early enough, they don't even think that scientists NP women, for example, because of all of the things that you see out there, and although this is changing now, but there has to be this piece around retention and elevation of the women that are already in that pipeline. And that's what I really see as one of the biggest challenges in STEM.

Carla Miller 10:18
That makes sense. My son is now watching on TV, Ada Twist Scientist. So hopefully that message is getting through about them girls, and women in science and embracing that. And there was something there was a metaphor that you shared within the book within the proving cycle about this idea of being a cup, and recognition and approval or your beverage of choice. Can you speak to that a little bit, because I think it will really resonate with people.

Dr Hannah Roberts 10:45
Yeah, so I know, for a lot of my clients in the proving cycle, we're always kind of seeking out external people to validate us in some way. Like if I do this piece of work, and it's taken me evenings and weekends, like that pleasing kind of thing. The silent Hoko condition is that you have to thank me, or you have to praise me, or you have to promote me in some way. And what happens in the proving cycle is your self esteem doesn't actually increase decreases over time. Because if I'm pleasing, and it doesn't go well, or I don't get that external recognition, I feel under resourced in some way. When we're under resource, then another like mini hit or mini perceived failure depletes it further. And so your confidence doesn't stay static over time, actually decreases over time. And this is when we talk about this metaphor of like us being a cup, and the external recognition being poured in, you know, like a cup of tea, like pouring it into the top. But because of what's going on how we feel about ourselves, our own self esteem, it's like there's holes in the cup, and all the drinks like going through. So what we do in coaching is actually help people to essentially glue back the holes in the cup, fill our own cup, and then if somebody else does happen to give us some recognition, it's like your cup can be overflowing. But let's do that for ourselves first.

Carla Miller 12:08
I really love that. And it reminds me of in Buddhism, they talk about the Hungry Ghost, and this idea that you that we need this validation from other people, but how much we get, it doesn't actually fulfil us because we need to get it from ourselves instead. So I really love that analogy, I can see that that would make sense to a lot of people. And so let's talk. I think lots of people will resonate with that those first three stages. And they're probably people listening going, Yep, that's me, or that was me, at a certain point. What is the fifth stage leadership mindset? What does that look like?

Dr Hannah Roberts 12:46
Yeah, this one is a little bit more challenging to describe, but I will do my very best to make it simple. So we all have different voices in our heads, right? So one voice might say, go for a walk at lunchtime. It's

Carla Miller 13:00
beautiful outside,

Dr Hannah Roberts 13:01
it's actually not yes, today, and the other boy says, No, sit at your desk, eat your lunch, you've got 100 emails, you'll feel so much better if you just like get to the bottom of the list. Now, depending depending upon which voice is strongest determines which action that you take next. So we all have these voices in our heads, they're all often in conflict with each other. But we have a series of voices in particular, maybe three or four that are super strong for people. Like a strong pusher, this woman a really big to do list, or strong pleaser, that has to say yes to everything, or still perfectionist to me wants to make sure that everything is done to a really, really high standard. So when we have very strong voices, it's like we don't have a choice. It's like playing chopsticks on the piano like with four kids going. Expecting a different tune to emerge. So I help people work at what I call the identity level. So that situation, situational things don't keep replaying out again. And again, we actually change things at the identity level, like getting pushes, pleases perfectionist into a helpful range, so we get access to all the keys on a piano again. And that's what we call wholeness, that getting all parts of us in sync. And wholeness is essentially authentic, like true authenticity.

Carla Miller 14:25
Like that concept of wholeness themselves, which just sounds comforting in itself, doesn't it? Yes, it does. And so, stage four, this is getting into alignment does that link to within your book, you talk about career pivots, and the three different types of career pivots? Is that the point at which you're making those career pivots and that alignment stage?

Dr Hannah Roberts 14:45
Exactly, yes. The career pivots come from getting alignment between your purpose, your mission and your vision. So people often really confused those three concepts, even the biggest companies on the planet, often have vision statements that are missions and all kinds of stuff. So in brief, our purpose lies in the past, that's where our passions arose from. And then our mission is in the present, that's what we have personal power over, because it can change our mission at anytime. And that's quite liberating, I would say, if you don't like our current mission, we can change it. And then our vision is out there in the future, it's what we care about the most, it's the big difference we feel called to make. And that's where you can get the navigation piece. Because often in the unconscious phase of your career, you're just trying to be something like, I'm just going to be a doctor, I'm just going to be a professor, I'm just going to be a CEO, and you fail to reach that or achieve it and you feel like a failure in some cases. Whereas if we just have a really strong vision, and we're always moving towards it, there is no failure. There's just progress along the pathway. And so the career pivots actually come from what do I do if I want to change my current mission? And what are the three different different pivots that I can make?

Carla Miller 16:05
Brilliant now I'm going to ask you about those. But first, I'm dying to know about your purpose, mission and vision, can you share that with us to bring it to life a bit, no pressure

Dr Hannah Roberts 16:15
I can do I can do, I tend to actually remember them in format. And it's probably easiest to start with my vision. So my vision is having a world that works for everybody. My particular mission is around STEM women. So making sure that stem women feel valued in the workplace, so that they can make their biggest contribution in the world and make that impact that makes the world work for everybody. And my purpose is essentially to help everybody feel valued.

Carla Miller 16:49
A lot love it. And so I'm trying to say the mission and vision makes total sense to me the purpose, I've never heard of it as being in the like looking at the past before. So how is your past informed that

Dr Hannah Roberts 17:01
purpose of yours? I mean, so much. Often people talk about purpose in lots of different ways. But usually, it's the kind of four to five key themes that keep replaying out throughout your life. Sometimes it can be due to a negative first experience, sometimes there can be positive experiences. And what I say to people is create a timeline of your life and plot on it like five really positive things, and five really negative things. And then ask you some drill down, ask yourself some questions about each one of those, like, how does that relate to what you're doing now? What did you learn and discover in that particular thing, and usually, it drops down into some key things. So for one of mine is motivating and inspiring people. For another one, it's, I have this drive to kind of overdo things, which could be seen as negative, but I see it as quite like a, now I can curtail it, it's more of a positive thing. And ultimately, you can kind of distil them into one sentence. And mine is just that I personally want to feel valued. And that's how it's expressed in the mission. And then in the vision as

Carla Miller 18:17
well. Fantastic. People with anyone who wants to work on those, you definitely need to get the book and read how to do it in depth. There's so much in the book way beyond careers, actually. But we chose to focus on this as something that would stand out as an episode. Okay, so career pivots, can you talk us through some of those, please.

Dr Hannah Roberts 18:37
So there are three career pivots as I see them, as I say, everyone can obviously other pivots as well. But the first one is around when you have a an issue with career values alignment. So for example, I had a client called Dr. Judith Simon, she was a postdoc and wanting to look at maybe moving beyond that outside of academia. And she's experiencing career values conflict, which means that the values that you hold as a person, when it comes to your career are in conflict with the values of the organisation. So she really wanted a great work life balance, but no matter how much he advocated for that in the workplace, it just a standard, you have to work evenings and weekends in the wasn't in the contract that was just a standard operating of that particular group. So in order to fix a career values conflict, the first thing is advocating for yourself. If that doesn't work, then in order to change the current mission, focus on career values alignment and find a new organisation that matches those career values. And so when she then went for interview at this other company called Oculus, and plus, she actually asked them about what do you do about work when when people are going on holiday and they're like, Oh, we spread it between the team and we really look after our People and she spoke to some people at work family said, No, I've got really great work life balance. So she was really focusing on that, and ensuring that that was a reality of the lived experience of people that work there. And so when she focused on that got the new job, she then had a new mission in the present. That's the first career pivots.

Dr Hannah Roberts 20:21
Does that make sense? It

Carla Miller 20:22
absolutely does. And I was talking to a client about that just today, actually, we were talking about how do you when you go for a new job? How do you make sure you're not going from the phrase frying pan into the fire? Like, how do you win culture is so important to you? And the values of the organisation are so important to you? How do you make sure that you're making those right decisions? So I like that idea of talking to, obviously asking the specific questions, and also talking to other people that work there. Is there anyone out anything else anyone can do to? To try and establish what it's actually like, within an organisation? Um,

Dr Hannah Roberts 20:59
I think for me, personally, I tried to get my clients to do 15 minutes conversations with people in like multiple different arenas within a particular organisation to get their feel for it. bit shorter, like showing up and actually experiencing it, you're probably not going to know until you really get there. Yeah,

Carla Miller 21:20
I like that idea of 15 minute conversations. And I think it's just then having the courage to ask for those because many of us, as women always put other people's needs before our own, don't we? So it feels like, Oh, I'm going to ask someone to take 15 minutes out of their busy day to help us. How would you encourage someone to reach out and do that? Would you do it via the the hiring manager directly? Or would you do it in a different way? Do you think? No,

Dr Hannah Roberts 21:48
I always ask people to as part of the process of professional positioning to start to increase their network on LinkedIn, and particularly have a gold list of your top 10 list of organisations, you would look to work in making 10 new connections a day, people in the group that you might want to work in general people in the organisation. So you might have built up a network, and then to find someone that you have in common, and either ask them for an introduction to that person, or if you don't just be bold and actually ask, and you're asking for 15 minutes of someone's time. If they don't have 15 minutes, or they don't want to, they will either ignore you, or they will politely decline. They'll say no. But what I found is the vast majority of people actually say yes, if you ask them the right way, and, and they want to be of service, they want to be helpful. So the people that makes them feel good as well. So don't feel that it's all one sided. People often like to talk about themselves and their experiences, and it's seen as a positive thing to do.

Carla Miller 22:51
That's a great reframe. Thank you. And for those of you who, who don't use LinkedIn a lot, it's absolutely fine to send connection requests to people you don't. I've got like 15,000 I genuinely do not know all of them. But I always had people sending to me and always really welcomed them. So I think it's LinkedIn is, is very good like that. And people are genuinely, really, really helpful. They're really busy. So I might not see your message. So they're not, don't think that you're necessarily being blanked. But I think it's great to use that as a tool. Thanks, Hannah. So that's the values conflict. Tell us about the other career pivots.

Dr Hannah Roberts 23:26
Okay. The second one is the capability trap. So if you don't know what that term actually means, it comes from Meredith Grey in season 16, agrees anatomy. And she says, just because you can do something doesn't necessarily mean that you should. So this is when you might have learned how to be really good and capable, no doubt, like all of my clients are very capable of doing any job. But it might not be a natural talent for you. And when that happens, often you can reach the ceiling of yeah, really capable. But it feels like hard work, my motivation isn't quite there, I have to almost like activate myself to get this thing done. Whereas when you step into your natural talents, you step into a flow state work actually becomes fun, it becomes easy, and you can be in that situation of, Oh, someone's actually paying me for this. And that's kind of crazy. When that happens, you often master those skills much faster and you accelerate and therefore step into your leadership faster. And you can also find roles that align to those natural talents. So if you're in that career pivots, focusing on the capability chart means focusing on what are my natural talents, alignment to those talents, and you can do that within your same organisation, if that roles available, or you can do it externally. So find a new organisation that has those types of roles. And then you get a new mission.

Carla Miller 24:52
Fantastic, and I love Grey's Anatomy, quote I've been saying for a long time just because you can do something doesn't mean you need to without realising that that I had been absorbed through my many hours of watching Grey's Anatomy. In fact, Shonda Rhimes, the creator of it, she wrote a great book called The Year of Yes, I don't know if you've read it, but it's a really inspiring book because lots of her strong female leads come kind of from her brain. So I definitely recommend reading that. I love that capability chap. And it also aligns a bit with Gay Hendricks zone of genius model, have you come across that one. So his idea and it was aimed at entrepreneurs, but I think it really does apply in the workplace as well, is that the tasks and activities we do fit into one of four zones. So there's your zone of incompetence, so the things you're really not very good at, and drain your energy, then there's your zone of competence. So the things you're fine at, and don't drain your energy, but they don't give you any energy, then these are zone of excellence, which is your specialist skills, you enjoy doing them, you've developed expertise in them. And then the top sort of five 10% of that is your zone of genius. And that's out that idea of being in flow those natural strengths and, and really helping people to hone and own those. And his idea is that as you got his idea as an entrepreneur, is just outsource everything in in the zone of competence and incompetence. My my reading of that in the career world, is that as we develop our careers, we spend a lot less time in those two zones around incompetence. And we really get clear on how can we spend more time in our zone of genius, and our zone of excellence. And he's suggest spending 10 minutes a day kind of honing your zone of genius, those strengths. So again, a really nice model as a way of, of looking at that. And I just like the idea of people going around saying I've got a zone of genius. Yeah, no, I think that's a really good fit for this for sure. And then the final one is around disconnected vision. Tell us more about that.

Dr Hannah Roberts 26:53
Yeah, so for this one, often, if you're in the unconscious phase, you've been sold on somebody else's vision. So like, when I went into my postdoc, the PI there was like, oh, yeah, we're gonna work on sugars, and it's gonna change the world because bla bla bla, bla bla, and I really care about sugars. They're amazing, because they're gonna blah, blah, blah. But over time, if it's not your particular vision, or it's not an alignment with your vision, you can find, oh, I really disconnected from it. I don't care quite as much about this, and the work then becomes a lot harder. So we often say to people, it's that realignment of focusing on what actually do I care about the most in the world? Is the realignment in the current workplace. Is there a way in which I can have that? Is there any overlap between my personal mission or sorry, my personal vision, and the organization's mission vision? See, the terms are so like intertwined? Division on vision, you wouldn't like a Venn diagram where there's some crossover between them, you ideally want to try and maximise the crossover. But if you can't, then you need to look at an organisation that does have alignment to that vision.

Carla Miller 28:03
Okay? And is that the point where you see quite a lot of people going out on their own starting their own thing? Because they've got this really clear vision that they don't see elsewhere?

Dr Hannah Roberts 28:15
Not necessarily. So I would say that vision is acquired, quite familiar, is what I would say most people's visions fall within some kind of context. Like, if you looked at the 17 global goals for sustainable development, usually, people's vision falls within a few of those categories. And there are always organisations already working towards that particular thing. So I always encourage people to look first of all, you don't always have to start something new by yourself. And it be your one and only thing. You can sort of be in collaboration with other people, you can already tap into what already exists. So yes, sometimes people want to set out by their own, but I would say that's because they choose that vehicle, because it aligns to who they are as a person. They might be quite entrepreneurial, like wearing many hats and quite risk, okay, but that vehicle may not be okay for someone who is more risk averse or who really likes working within a leadership structure or particular team environment or needs a regular

Carla Miller 29:21
paycheck doesn't

Dr Hannah Roberts 29:22
always work that way with entrepreneurism.

Carla Miller 29:26
Tell me about it. And I think that's an it's good to be realistic, isn't it as well, because a lot of us are making decisions about careers, but it's not like we have this completely blank sheet where real life doesn't exist, and we can just do whatever we feel like doing. Many of us are breadwinners or providing vital money to our household or don't have flexibility on location or certain things. So I think it's great that you kind of build into the book and your thinking and coaching that. That reality check as well. I think

Dr Hannah Roberts 30:00
it always comes back to your life values as well. A lot of people say to me, Well, my family is really important to me. And I'm trying to make this decision. And I just don't know how to make a decision about moving countries or taking this role. And when I ask them about their life values, often their family or what they get from their family, so love connection, intimacy, like happiness, actually, them can often sit above the career value. And if that's the case, you're going to pass it through that filter first. Whereas for other people career may come like, above family, and that's okay, too. There's no judgement there. But it's gonna run through that filter first. So you're gonna make potentially different decisions, depending upon your own, like, like values,

Carla Miller 30:45
you see a difference in terms of the stage of life that you're talking to people at. So I found when I was coaching, a lot of people in their 30s was like, everything's possible. And it's all about career and that side of things, if they were about to have kids or in their first few years of having kids. Now, I've got a lot of clients who are in their mid to late 40s, early 50s. And a lot of them are in a place of going I don't guess I know, I want to retire in 20 years, and I want to do something meaningful, but I don't feel like I can look 20 years ahead at the moment, I feel like I can only really cope with the next 18 months, two years. Do you see people at different life stages responding differently?

Dr Hannah Roberts 31:27
I know what you're getting at, because sometimes people have that kind of I don't want to call it midlife crisis. But I'll call it like a midlife unravelling of wanting to do something more purposeful. And that can kind of happen any time from I notice. For some people, it's in their 20s, but like mid 30s to mid 40s, shall we say. But for my clients, the vast majority of them are stuck in a fear cycle, which would prevent them from even contemplating doing something like wild or wacky, the first stage is just to kind of get to the really the root cause of the fear. let that stuff go to be able to take empowered next decisions. But often when I see clients who I've worked with for two years or four years, some of them are now going, Oh, I'd quite like I'm possibly going to start my own business or I'm I'm thinking into the possibility of. And that's what I love being able to see people like dream bigger into the possibility of what they are truly capable of, rather than what the fear state tells them. They can do.

Carla Miller 32:33
Yeah, fantastic. And then there's a lot in the book, and we've covered quite a lot in the podcast. But if there was one takeaway you wanted people to take from either the book or from this conversation, what would it be?

Dr Hannah Roberts 32:48
I think is probably what we've talked about already that inside out revolution, if you want to be respected by other people, you have to first learn how to respect yourself. If you want to be valued by other people recognised you first need to learn how to value yourself, it works for whatever you want more, it has to start from within. Yeah, and your book is a great place to start to do that work. So Hannah, if people want to find out more about you will obviously put the links in the show notes. But where can they go to find out more? The best place to go is to connect with me on LinkedIn, and Hannah Roberts coaching. And I hope to sort of see what's out there in the LinkedIn world.

Carla Miller 33:31
So do go and connect with Hannah, if this has resonated with you, is an excellent book. I read a lot of books for my job. And there's so much in there so many useful tools, and I think you will read it and feel really understood, which I think is such an important part of the book and what makes it work. So thank you so much, Anna, for writing the book, your vision. Your mission and your vision are super exciting, and I look forward to watching you achieve them. But thanks very much for sharing your insights with us today.

Dr Hannah Roberts 34:01
Thanks for having me.