06 - Elizabeth Willetts - Done Is Better Than Perfect

In this inspiring episode of Between the Bells, Rebecca is joined by Elizabeth Willetts, founder of Investing in Women and passionate advocate for flexible working. 

Elizabeth shares her powerful story of launching a business during the pandemic, building a thriving community, writing her book Flex, and championing flexible careers for women. 

Packed with actionable tips on taking consistent action, automating your business, and staying focused on your goals, this episode is a must-listen for any entrepreneur growing a business between the school bells.

Useful links for Elizabeth :

Connect with Liz on LinkedIn

Visit her Website

🎙️ Edited with precision by podcast editing master, Mike Roberts of Making Digital Real

⏺️ Got feedback, a question, or want to be on the show? Leave me a voice message by CLICKING HERE – we might even feature it in a future episode!

✨ Subscribe, follow, and share with anyone who’s growing their business between the bells.

🔗 Connect with Rebecca on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rebeccanewenham
🌐 Learn more about Get Ahead: getaheadva.com

Transcript

Be consistent. I wrote my book, Flex, I wrote it in six months because I just basically wrote half an hour a day and I set a timer and I made sure I did it and it was like there in my to-do list, you know, a bit like if you're gonna do whatever, you need to write it down, you just need to do it and you know it's gonna feel painful the first five minutes, like if you go to the gym and it's often the thought of it is worse than it is. Hello and welcome to Between the Bells, growing a business in school hours. 

This is a podcast for ambitious entrepreneurs who are building successful businesses within school hours. I'm your host, Rebecca Newenham, founder of outsourcing agency, Get Ahead, franchise consultant, business mentor and host of LinkedIn Local. If you're a parent, carer or just someone who doesn't want to be tied to the traditional nine-to-five, then you're absolutely in the right place. 

This podcast is all about proving that you can build a thriving business while still being there for school drop-offs, pickups and everything in between. I'm thrilled to be joined today on Between the Bells by Liz Willetts. Liz has set up a phenomenal flexible working community under the name of Investing in Women and I've had the privilege of knowing her for the last couple of years and she's been a fantastic resource for me for promoting our Get Ahead franchise and I've just loved watching her journey from starting something from scratch to scaling, growing and yeah, she's a wonderful guest to have and I know you're going to get real value from the real-life tips that she shares in this episode. 

Liz is extremely real and down to earth and her biggest takeaway is around just taking action and she certainly has done that in spades. So I know you're going to love this episode and her homework assignment is spot on. So a huge welcome to the lovely Liz from Investing in Women to Between the Bells. 

Welcome Liz. Thank you so much for having me. Oh Liz, I love this because normally I'm on your podcast and I want to acknowledge the fact that you are the reason I've set Between the Bells up because you were such a supporter of mine saying you've got to do it. 

So huge thank you darling. No, that's all right. I can't wait to listen to the episodes. 

Oh, well exactly. They're really super exciting. What I'm loving is they're short and sharp and giving tips which makes a huge difference. 

So could you tell us all about your amazing story because I know it back to front but not everyone does. Oh, thank you. So yes, my background is recruitment. 

So I've worked in recruitment since 2007. So a long, long time now. It's probably coming up to nearly 20 years.

And I joined one of the largest recruitment agencies in the world and spent a good eight years there recruiting into banks. First of all, I recruited qualified accountants before moving into HR recruitment. And then in 2015, I eventually moved in-house into in-house recruitment as it was known then. 

It's now known as talent acquisition and I worked for one of the big four. I recruited their consultants. And then like lots of people, I was made redundant during the height of the pandemic in 2020. 

And my children were really little at that time. They were just one and three. I had been working part-time in in-house recruitment. 

Like I said, I got made redundant and then could not find a part-time or flexible role. And that was something I really wanted. I'd suffered from infertility. 

So I'd really struggled to have my children and my first daughter was born as a result of IVF. So there was just no way that I wanted to work full-time. But every time a recruiter approached me and I asked, will they consider part-time? They said no straight away or ghosted me. 

And I look back on my own career and like, you know, I'd been in recruitment a long, long time at that point. I'd been in it, you know, 13, 14 years and I had never ever recruited anybody at that point on a part-time basis. When we worked in agency, we didn't even register people that wanted to work part-time. 

I'd never recruited anyone part-time in my in-house role, even if people asked for it, we would say no. So I thought, you know, looking back, I was probably part of the problem. I had recruitment skills. 

There's a lot of people making a lot of brilliant noise about flexible working online, but actually no one had a recruitment background like mine. So I decided I wanted to use my recruitment skills for good. So I founded Investing in Women in June 2021, and it started off as a job board and helping people find flexible part-time and home-based jobs. 

We also offer now the full recruitment end-to-end service. We've worked with loads of different clients from people that are making their first hire all the way through to FTSE 100 organisations. And we've done loads of LinkedIn Lives and Facebook Lives with experts like Rebecca along the way, all aimed at empowering women to achieve the best that they want to achieve within their career. 

Offered loads of advice, worked with lots of different career coaches. We also offer CV writing, interview prep. We've got a podcast that Rebecca has been on a lot called Work It Like a Mum, where I interview women doing brilliant things in their career post kids to hopefully show that careers don't have to end when you have children and actually they can blossom into something amazing and often sometimes a little bit different as well. 

And then I had a book called Flex that came out in January. Well, I mean, it's amazing. I wonder pre-pandemic if you'd ever envisaged what you're doing now? No, I was like a completely different person. 

Like I often think of people like my colleagues, I was like really meek and shy and would just get my head down and wouldn't really put my head upon the parapet. I always feel like I was a completely different person, but at that point as well, I was suffering from infertility, which had completely knocked my confidence. And I felt like I was a bit of a shell of myself and I would go into work to sort of escape what was happening at home and just work, get my head down and then get home and be Googling symptoms, Googling how to have a baby, which at that point to me was like all-encompassing, the number one goal.

As I said, all-consuming and when something's all-consuming like that, then everything else sort of just evaporates, doesn't it? Yes. So I was just working, just basically putting one foot in front of the other. I didn't have any ambition for my career at that point. 

And look what's happened. And I think you are a wonderful example of when you find your thing and when it's, but also timing was right. I mean, I know you didn't have much choice, but it just proves that when the time's right and everything is aligned, but you are amazing at driving things forward. 

And just from what you said, from going from a job board to what you've got now to a wonderful team that you've got supporting you, but you are an absolute cheerleader for Flex. Yes. Yeah, no, absolutely love it. 

And yeah, you're a real inspiration, thank you. Oh, thank you. So can we move into our quickfire question then? So can you perhaps share some of your favorite tools or lessons? Yes. 

My favorite lesson, I mean, one of my favorite tools, I've written those down. I love a tool called Dubsado. I don't know if I recommended it to you, but- Yes, it's on my list to look at.

I love Dubsado. So basically as a small business, obviously, I set up the company with 5,000 pounds of my redundancy money. I've never had investment. 

So I've had to be quite scrappy in how I've got the business off the ground. And then my favorite tool has been Dubsado because I have literally, it's an automation tool and it does loads of your backend stuff. So people can book appointments, they can pay for appointments and they get automated emails. 

So I've basically spent loads of time mapping out every single process in our business and systemizing everything because I've worked out that that was the best way for us to scale on a limited budget. So I've automated whatever I can within the business, which has eliminated the need for us to make loads of hires that would have maybe previously had to do some of that work. So that is my favorite tool, Dubsado.

I don't think I can live without it now. It's like an employee. We also use Flowdesk for email marketing. 

Again, we've automated a lot within Flowdesk as well. We've got loads of email workflows that we have running where people download lien magnets, they go in welcome sequences. Everything where we can is automated there. 

People are automatically segmented if they click on certain links, et cetera. So I really love Flowdesk. Obviously LinkedIn, I'm on LinkedIn.

That's how I have marketed my business. I think it's, you know, obviously big organizations are on multiple social media platforms, but if you are one person, it's probably best to initially focus on one that's your favorite, one that you like being on the most, one that your target audience is on just because of bandwidth. So definitely LinkedIn as well. 

And as a recruiter, we use all the LinkedIn recruitment tools. Yeah, I think to me, you are the queen of LinkedIn, but that's also because like you say, you concentrate on it and you consistently show up on it. Yeah, to be honest, I rarely go on the other sites. 

You know how people say they've got Instagram addictions. Even though I've got Instagram on my phone, I might open it once a week. I know, well, I just find it's full of noise. 

Well, with LinkedIn, I'm naturally drawn to it and you can see that relationship building. And obviously, you know, I host LinkedIn locals, you know, live, so face to face. So I've got that inside part of it. 

But you're so true. I think it's, and I think when people are starting out or running their business, they feel an obligation to be on absolutely all the platforms. You can't be consistent on all of them.

I know. And I think I did that. And actually looking back, probably should have started on stayed on LinkedIn, like actually, because the others are a bit of a distraction for us.

Yes. A distraction, as we know, can come in many forms, can't it? But I think you're right. Yeah.

Oh, brilliant. Any other tools or is that? So we run WordPress. So that's our website is on WordPress. 

So a lot of, but obviously, yeah, whatever website builder you want to use, there's Squarespace as well. That's good. As a job board, we needed to be on something that would support that functionality. 

So we have a job board plugin that is plugged in on WordPress. So that's, yeah, so we're on WordPress a lot. And I love your site because very much like mine, you're continually adding things to it. 

So it's evolving, isn't it? And it's really, what I like about WordPress is, is customisable. So, you know, you can make it, everybody's WordPress site will probably look completely different. It is a little bit complex.

I'm not going to say, so I do have a web developer that has built that site on WordPress because there is, I wouldn't have been able to build it. Although I know how to manage it and work it, I won't be able to build it because it's quite code heavy. And there's something like Squarespace is much more templated. 

So you can probably do that yourself, but you know. I think you're right. I think it's about, again, finding what your skill set is and you are very responsive. 

So I certainly from experience where I've needed a men's doing, you're there and doing. Yeah, I can do that. If it was something much more complex, I can't. 

And then obviously it's Canva. Oh, we all love Canva. We all love Canva.

I get our point. Hello, Canva. Yes. 

Yeah. No, brilliant. Oh, thanks, Liz. 

So what about a bell ringer moment then? What's your single most important sort of takeaway? I think that my, I remember listening to loads of podcasts when I first started, I still listen to podcasts and hearing a lot that done is better than perfect. And I've tried to carry that with me as much as possible because I think that women, particularly women, I'm just looking at my daughter as well. She is such a perfectionist and gets really upset if she makes a mistake on a piece of work. 

And I'm trying to tell her that I think a lot of women can hold themselves back. And I've been guilty of that. And because you want to put something out there that is perfect, but actually just getting something done, getting something out there is much better. 

And actually you can then improve it. You'll learn lessons and you can improve it and you can pivot. You're not spending hours and hours and hours, you know, producing one social media post. 

It doesn't really matter. So think about where you're going to spend your time. You know, I know this is called between the bells. 

People, you know, a lot of women don't have a lot of time. They're juggling multiple responsibilities, but just get it out there and you'll learn, you'll get better. It doesn't really matter.

You know, I think, I think as long as you get it out there. No, because I think we can, like you say, we can procrastinate, can't we? And then worry, the good girl in us can sort of say, Oh, well, I better not put that out. Someone might judge me for it. 

When actually you're better to move forward by actually taking action and doing it then you are sort of fiddling around and spending far too long trying to make templates and everything look great. Yeah. And actually those raw posts on social media always do better for me than something that's too curated. 

Very interesting. I know and I'll find that spontaneous ones that I think of on my dog walk rather than the shiny one that I've had planned for a while. And I think as well, I mean, especially in this internet age, not everybody's going to like what you do. 

And, and that's fine actually. Cause you know, as long as you find your audience, your people, you know, you're not going to attract everybody. No business is for everybody.

You know, even like the massive organization like Coca-Cola, there'll be a lot of people in this world that hate Coca-Cola, but actually, or McDonald's, you know, I know so many people that say I would never eat at McDonald's. And then obviously they're multi-billion dollar organization. So they have enough people that will eat at McDonald's.

And we often say, I say to my franchisees, you know, not everyone's our client. I think that's a big bit, isn't it? I think when we're starting out, there's that slight pinnacle, not desperation, but you want to get people through the door, but actually having a confidence to say, no, we're not the right fit actually proves to be better longer term. Doesn't it? Yeah, I think so. 

Oh no, really interesting. Thank you. And so the school drop-off, Charlotte, it's interesting. 

Some of my guests, like myself, don't have children at school anymore. So we've been sort of laughing about that, but I know with your lovely girlies, you're still involved in the drop-off, aren't you? I am, yes. I did it this morning. 

Yeah, I find it definitely more relaxing on the way back than the way in. As soon as I drop them off, like, phew. And then I put my headphones in, either I'll ring my mom because I do ring my mom a lot and I think, oh, let's try and speak to her most days.

So I either ring my mom or I put a podcast on. At the moment, I'm listening to audio, but I've discovered audio books, which has been a bit of a revelation to me because I love reading and I love reading like personal development, self-help, business books. And so trying to like, just double that, you know, what I'm consuming and learning, I've got the audio books as well.

So I listen to an audio book at the moment in the morning or on the school run, and then I'll read another different business book in, you know, as I'm going to bed. Wow, that's so interesting. So we've got our Get Ahead Book Club that we started three or four months ago and we had it last night. 

And so a couple of the team was saying they're doing the same, having the audio book and probably retaining the information better than they would be if they were reading a physical book. Well, I do too. So I'm listening to different audio books than the one I'm reading, which maybe is not what you should do, but I'm obviously getting twice as knowledge. 

That's how your heart is. That's amazing. Utilising that space and time.

Yeah, and the time. So if I was like, you know, fortunately now we have a cleaner, but I remember when I used to clean, I'd be listening to something. I feel like anytime you can, squeezing a bit of personal development is really good and you can do it whilst doing something else. 

Yes. So it's that multitasking. I would say you are the queen multitasking and I've sort of observed that. 

And I think as women, we probably find it naturally more straightforward to do that. And you could. Yeah. 

You know, if I'm cooking or anything, I'll listen to a podcast. No, brilliant. And I think I've always had that feeling to make every minute matter. 

That's some downtime as well. So if I go on a dog walk, I generally don't listen to anything because I want that space to sort of think things through. But in the car, I'm podcast all the time. 

So it's sort of make being, I suppose, having control over what you're listening to, isn't it? So you're producing your own thing. Yeah. So because if I go in the car, I'm with the kids and then we have to listen to Taylor Swift on repeat. 

Yeah, it's Taylor Swift or Little Mix on repeat, which I do quite, I know I like Taylor Swift and I like Little Mix, but not constantly. But they wouldn't appreciate you putting on a Mel Robbins podcast either. No, no. 

They go, it's boring. Turn it off, it's boring. Yeah. 

Actually, it's picking a moment, isn't it? Yeah. And finally, Liz, then your homework assignment. I'm loving these. 

So what are you going to share with us? I think that the best thing anybody can do that wants to start a business or, you know, do something is just to take action. I think, you know, we talked about this, Donna is better than perfect. So many people procrastinate and don't take action and then like, because they've got an excuse that they're busy or that life gets in the way. 

But we're all busy. Everybody's busy. But it's actually just carving out that time and spending time every day on your business.

And you know, however little time you have, whether it's, you know, half an hour, an hour, a couple of hours in the evening, actually do it, be consistent. I wrote my book, Flex. I wrote it in six months because I just basically wrote half an hour a day and I set a timer and I made sure I did it. 

And it was like that in my to do list, you know, a bit like if you're going to do whatever you need to write it down, you just need to do it. And you know, it's going to feel painful the first five minutes, like if you go to the gym and it's often the thought of it is worse than it is. But just do it. 

No, absolutely. Just do it. And I think that feeling of I like your idea of diarising things. 

And Erin, who was a guest a couple of episodes ago, talked about her CEO time. So on a Monday, she puts two hours in and that CEO time's planning on the business. And I remember as part of Entrepreneurs Circle years ago, Nigel Boshall used to say, you know, the 90 minute rule every day of committing to the business. 

And if you don't do it, it doesn't get done, does it? So making it happen. Yes, you've got to just do it. You've got to carve out some time and just, you know, whatever time you've got, as long as you touch your business a bit every day, do it, post it, you know, run that email, whatever it is, make that call. 

The thought of it is always worse than the actual doing. Absolutely. Oh, Liz, I knew this would be a fab episode filled with top tips. 

So thank you. And before we went live, you were telling me that you're going to be on Irish TV later. So here I am. 

Yeah. Can't wait for that. And I find, you know, who would have known, like we said, back in 2021, 22, that this is what you'd be doing.

And it's so lovely for me to witness your journey. And I can't wait to see what the next five years bring you, Liz. Oh, thank you so much.

Pleasure. Lovely to see you. Thanks so much. 

And you.