S3 Ep12 - Leading With Kindness: Purpose, Reinvention & Entrepreneurship with Carmel Saulbrey

What happens when outward success no longer feels enough?

In this episode of the She Leads Collective Podcast, Mary is joined by entrepreneur and founder Carmel Saulbrey. After building and selling one of the UK's largest school photography businesses, Carmel could have retired. Instead, she followed a deeper sense of purpose into children's residential care.

Today she owns therapeutic homes for traumatised children and is developing an innovative AI-powered training platform to help care staff navigate some of the most challenging situations they face.

Together they explore:

•  Reinvention and purpose 
•  Leadership through kindness 
•  Female entrepreneurship and funding 
•  Supporting frontline teams 
•  AI as a force for good 
•  Why compassion and patience are becoming essential leadership skills 

This is a conversation about what happens when success alone is no longer enough, and how purpose, kindness and continuous growth can lead us to make an even greater difference, genuinely changing lives for the better.

Connect with Carmel on LinkedIn - 

Connect with Carmel:

🔹 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carmel-jane-saulbrey-256a9526/

🔹 Website: www.kindnesscode.co.uk

🔹 Podcast: The Kindness Code (available on all major podcast platforms)

🔹 Instagram & Facebook: The Kindness Code

🔗 Connect with Mary: marygregory.com

📣 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/marygregory

 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mary_gregory/

 📰 Newsletter: Subscribe on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7029410958645059584

 🎙 Want to be a guest? Get in touch!
 ⭐ Subscribe, share & leave a review
 ✨ Produced by Mary Gregory Leadership Coaching

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to SheLeads Collective Podcast. I'm Mary Gregory and I'm so glad you're here. This podcast is a space for honest conversations about what it really means to lead as a woman today and how we can all show up with more courage, care and clarity. You'll hear from inspiring women, powerful allies, and bold truth tellers who are changing the game not by playing tougher, but by leading smarter, softer and stronger. Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the She Leads Collective Podcast. What happens when success no longer feels enough? When the business or career that you're in may well be thriving, and yet something deeper starts asking for your attention? My guest today is Carmel Solbury, entrepreneur, founder, owner of children's residential homes, creator of the Kindness Code, and now developing an AI-powered training platform designed to help residential care staff respond more confidently to some of the most complex moments that they face. But Carmel's story didn't begin in care. She built and scaled a successful business from photography to school photography, eventually leading a team, photographing hundreds of thousands of children every year before selling the business. She then did something many people dream about. She stepped away, only to discover that purpose was calling her somewhere entirely different. Today we explore reinvention, entrepreneurship, funding challenges for female founders, leading in emotionally demanding environments, and what it means to build businesses that create genuine human impact. Carmel, welcome to the She Leads Collective podcast. Thank you, Mary. Thank you for having me. It's lovely to have you here. And I think often with my guests, what I do is I go right back to the beginning, and I really think that that's very, very relevant for you because I know that you now own and run care homes and you're developing an AI app, but I'd love to go right back to where you started, and it wasn't really straightforward for you. So your career began in photography and entrepreneurship. Um tell us about that journey.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Um I had done quite a few different things in my twenties. I married a photographer, we started a wedding photography business together, and when I left them, I left all of that. I left the family home. It was, I'll just say, not a happy marriage, shall we say, kind of fled the family home, started in weddings, was going really well, and two years later I got breast cancer and I had to go. I haven't got a business, I've got a job. So then I pivoted. I had a couple of dance schools, rebranded uh as a dance school photography expert. It was all around the time. So I didn't own the dance schools, I just photographed the shows of X Factor and mummies having, you know, spending lots of money on their children and all that kind of thing. So um became the largest school dance school photography company in the country. We at one point had 300 dance schools that we photographed on their annual or bi-annual show. Then I got into school photography because a large local private school asked me to pitch for it. We set it up, and instead of just doing the job and knocking the kids through, we actually, you know, doing it really quickly, we took beautiful portraits of the children. And that was a real game changer because it was something that was really scalable. Um and we really changed the school photography market because actually now the the style of photography that we do has been copied by pretty much everyone else in the market, and it took a while to get that going. But we ended up um I exited fully about a year ago, and um on about four or four fifty schools, it's now to about 500 or more schools, um, which was very difficult because you don't grow the market, you steal someone else's market share because I can't make more schools, I can only get the school photography contracts. So it's very competitive then. Very competitive, yeah. So, but I I'd I'd I've photographed 500 weddings, I I kind of did all the groundwork. By the time we finished, I had um sort of 40 odd photographers and wasn't actually taking photos myself, but I did love growing and leading a team and learning how to actually run a business that was was turning you know a few million a year. Um, and so that was incredible. I was exhausted, I'd been to an awful lot.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

I'm not surprised. Can we get can can we just pause a little bit? Because I want to, I'm curious about um navigating divorce, which in itself is challenging enough, then navigating breast cancer, which again, I I mean, I've not had a serious illness like that, so I cannot imagine how challenging that must have been. What kept you going? Uh I had no choice.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

I'm from New Zealand, I've been here 30 years, my family were good and they came over and supported me at different times, but it was me, two little boys, and a will to survive. And I I guess my parents were entrepreneurial, and so I kind of I had that in me. Um but I I I kind of wasn't, I had I've got a hotel management degree, so I had wasn't going to go into hotels. So I had I had to I had to make it work.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

And I mean you sound incredibly courageous, and and many of the people that may be listening today may be working in organizations and find it quite scary to think of being out there on your own, creating your own businesses. You say you had no choice, but was there something else driving you as well?

SPEAKER_01 5:51

I may be mildly ADHD and I love a challenge, I love the exciting and new, and I love just kind of I'm quite a complete finisher, shall we say. So the excitement of the new. Um, and you know, it doing I I was doing wedding photography initially, which so works in because you, you know, you do one big day every week or two in the summer. So it really did work in with small children and working from home. Um, I I actually put a lot of this down to uh growing up on a farm in New Zealand and doing a lot of sport because sport teaches you that sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. It teaches you that you try really hard and it's sometimes painful doing the training, but then at the other end you get the payoff. And actually, there's really I think I think uh female CEOs that have been had good sports careers are that are more likely to be successful at work and in a in a corporate environment. And and I I do really believe it that that learning resilience and bravery from a young age is absolutely fundamental. And uh and and I would put some of that that down to that, that just kind of innate bravery and resilience that it was f was forged as a child.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

Right. So it's really was it's it's bred into you as part of your upbringing that you're just out there, you're resilient, you do what's needed to keep going, despite navigating some significant challenges along the way. It's interesting, Mary, because I was so ill.

SPEAKER_01 7:20

I had seven rounds of chemo and then radiotherapy and then hormone. I mean, it was a really, really terrible time. I had four weddings over my last two chemotherapies. The day after my last chemo, I got up from my wig on and went out and did a 12-hour day. And actually, you're lumping heavy cameras and things, it's quite a physical job being a wedding photographer, as well as smiling. And this poor bride and groom had no idea what I'd been through the day before. Um and just a need to survive and a need to, I didn't, I didn't want to fail. Um and yeah, I made it through, and uh and you're still here to tell the tale, which is fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

So you scaled that business, you made it hugely successful, and then you sold it and stepped away. Many people would actually think that would be the end of the road. Just put your feet up now. You've worked really, really hard, you've navigated some significant challenges, but then what happened for you once you stepped away?

SPEAKER_01 8:17

Well, I did. I thought I was gonna live the dream. I had enough money that if I was sensible, I probably didn't have to work again. I knew that an opportunity would come along, but I was gonna just have this wonderful life. And I'm a really mad king tennis player, so I had a year off playing the ITF masters circuits, going to these beautiful grass courts tournaments and and living kind of a fantasy life of a professional tennis player. It wasn't that good, Mary, but I did enjoy it. Um, I got bored. I got really bored. I and it turns out in your 50s, you can only play so many hours of tennis a week. I wasn't really doing much. Um, and I realized that you need a purpose in life. I needed some spark in my life, as much as this beautiful, idyllic life of holidays and tennis. Um, and yeah, and it really hit home. I you need a purpose, but I did need a year sabbatical as well, I think, because it actually wasn't one divorce, it's been two divorces and breast cancer and a lot of hard work. So I think it was just my body said, stop. Um, and then I realized that yeah, you we need a purpose. We need to be doing something more than just for ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

So that led you to entering the world of care. You I mean, so it's really interesting because you moved from being an entrepreneur to actually purchasing two children. Is it two children's?

SPEAKER_01 9:41

So they're they're residential care home for traumatised children. They're only four-bed homes, so just like a house, they're not a big, you know, nursing home, which I think some people imagine it is. Um, I the opportunity came along. People say it's very, very different to photography. And yes, it is, and the last 18 months has been one hell of a learning curve. But my motivation was I assumed it would be only women working in these homes, actually, because we're all girls. Um, but actually, there's really amazing, beautiful, kind men working there, and these kids need to see what good men look like as well as what kind women are. Um, and my photography company, I was real, I I realized what I got a real kick out of is going, oh, I can actually make a really awesome difference to women's lives because I mainly employed women, it was school photography, it really did suit, you know, term time only roles and things. Um, I enjoy being a really good employer and making a fundamental difference to other people's lives because not everyone's me, they can't be a single mum and start a business and all the rest of it. But actually, I could be really, really supportive of women. In fact, um, when I had a new gem start, she said, Carmen, everyone's on a different contract. I'm like, Yeah, but they're all different people, they've got different needs, you know, depending on the hours they were working, and there was always someone off on an additivity player, a sick child, or whatever it was. But I got in return really loyal staff, but also I got in return the idea that I've helped people, and that that's my, I think, really core driver. So imagine these care homes. Again, it was a lot of frontline staff that were good, kind, empathetic, decent people. Um, and I thought, well, I know how to run teams and be really supportive of frontline staff that maybe aren't earning, you know, huge money and and as well make a difference to children's lives who haven't had the advantages that I had in life. So caring for large frontline Steam teams was the comparable and was my main motivation.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Okay. So it's the teams that really motivated you as well as what they were doing, because they were caring for the children. But I mean, you entered as an investor initially and then ended up owning the homes. How did that happen?

SPEAKER_01 11:52

A friend of mine, um, who's quite a dynamic guy, uh, said, You invest calm. I thought, great, I'll do recruitment, HR, the businessy side of stuff, non-exec director, one day a week kind of thing. And then it turned out his other businesses became quite busy. And so we made a polite agreement that he would sign his shares over to me and I would take them on. That was after about four or five months, and I did have a couple of people offer to buy them off me. Well, we've come out with, you know, break-even, not losing, not making money. And um, I did have uh a couple of men say, Well, you don't know anything about care, it's going to fail. And that probably triggered something in me. Mary was up, no man tells me I can't do something. And then I had a couple of really incredible women in the SLT, and they believed in me. I'd kind of um, I had brought them with me, and they believed in me, and that'd stuck around when this business had become insolvent and was quite toxic and quite unpleasant, and they were still there and they cared about these kids. So I think it was a combination of being told I wouldn't know how to do it, and that triggered something in me, and also this kind of idea of being really decent. And I'd done a lot of work, I'd met with a team, and and honestly, Mary, in care, these people are beautiful, like they are kind and empathetic and good. It was humbling. Like, I'd never come across a workforce that were just decent, and a lot of them had their own trauma, a lot of them did it for a reason.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

So that was one of the things that surprised you then about going into care was just how incredible the staff were. What else did you learn about residential care or didn't expect when you moved into that area?

SPEAKER_01 13:39

Yeah, really humbling how decent the team were. I spent three days in the home sort of not interviewing but having little chats with everyone, and I kind of cried with everyone. I was an emotional wreck. Um, and that these kids uh it's really difficult. They've had it's it's quite confronting hearing all the stories and then seeing these kids, which are quite good kids, and then something triggers them and they're less their trauma, you know, using the right language, but it comes out in self-harm and violence and aggression and things like that. And it's really, really difficult because I need kids who just haven't had the right start in life. But probably one of the other things is all the lessons I'm learning in care, behavior is communication, um, connection before correction, those kind of really key topics are universal.

SPEAKER_00 14:31

Absolutely. As you're saying that, I'm thinking one of the fundamentals of leadership is connect with people. It's very difficult to lead if you don't have any connection with them.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

And be really curious. So when a child, I mean a employees, you know, their behavior's not quite what you want, and you want to say, sit down, this is what's going on. You take a breath and you say, Well, their behaviour's telling us something, and you ask questions and you'd be really curious and you connect with them. So it has made me a better person because I was saying dynamic, but probably uh sometimes not a very patient person and not a particularly empathetic person, I think. I kind of like had ideas and I wanted to push it all forward. But actually, when you need to slow down, you need to listen, and you need to bring people with you. And and I'm loving learning about care, learning about trauma and form. But actually, it all goes over onto um, you know, what it is to be a parent, what it is to be a friend, what it is to be a human, what it is to be a leader and employer. Um, and actually I do a podcast on it um called The Kindness Code. And I have parents listening who aren't in the care sector saying they have become better parents from listening about how we we work with these kids who've had serious trauma, but it works um across all walks of life, and that that's been really incredible for me because I'm quite comfortable in my masculine energy, Mary, and actually I'm loving um becoming a kinder person.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

So it's kind of put you more in touch with the feminine side of yourself then, and the feminine side of your leadership.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

Yeah, which I I definitely I think I wanted to be that person, but sometimes I wasn't. And I think a lot of the the leadership books is about kind of more and driving it forward and accountability, and actually care is a very good place to do this, but our accountability chart is actually a circle of support where our children in the middle, then the youth mentors, then the team leaders, then the managers, the home managers, and then our ops and our head of care. And we our goal is not accountability and top-down power, it's actually child-focused, and you you're a circle around your next layer, and your job is to support each other. And we have so far, it's really working, so it's not an accountability chart, it's quite a matriarchal. I'm going a little bit woo-woo, Mary, but it doesn't sound woo-woo to me at all.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

I'm getting kind of um connections with service leadership. You know, the leader is the servant that you're there to support and serve others, you're not there to dictate and be authoritarian over them. You're there actually to bring out the best in people, and to do that, you do need to support.

SPEAKER_01 17:14

Absolutely. And this this industry does kind of chew people up and chuck them out because it's tough. You know, you imagine you connect with this child and it's all beautiful, and you do all these wonderful things with them, and they come home and something triggers them. It might be a smell, it might be a comment, and then they smash the tally TV and tell you they hate you. And and then that's a whole cycle, and it and then the child might the placement might end, and it's a really emotionally draining environment. So we we're we've still got more work to do, but this whole idea that you know that it's just about supporting the people who the closer they are to the children, the more support they get. Um and it's it's a tough industry, but it's working and I'm loving it. And I've made some you know fundamental differences to people's lives and improved their workplace and made it, you know, altered the rotors so we can accommodate especially mums with young children because they are you know, they are the ones that have the toughest time and getting ahead in their career, um, being really, really flexible around hours and what we do. And yeah, it's it's it's it's exciting that I can change a structural norm that is normal in so many environments, and care is the best place to be able to trial this for support as opposed to an accountability chart.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

And I mean, care has got a reputation for being a tough sector, an unrecognised, underpaid sector. How have you taken what you've learnt about being a good employer into the way you run your children's homes?

SPEAKER_01 18:53

Allowing people to have agency and having them fully supported, um, doing things from a place of kindness. Like if someone can't um we've got one amazing woman and she says, I go to church every Sunday. So she was only a bank worker, she was only part, like, you know, she only restricted hours. And I went, well, hey, this is great. Someone that goes to church every Sunday has strong values and things. So we changed a rotor that could really accommodate her. Um, and and that showing almost that leadership by kindness to say, let's com let's connect, let's be curious. Obviously, within reason, they still have to do a great job and that kind of thing. But and then so my managers can go, oh, actually, when we show kindness, uh when we accommodate people, when we really do what we can to support them, and that that mentality has actually taken a little bit while to change because the rochers are structured and they're in a rolling rocher and you have to do this. And it's like, well, everyone has different needs, and some people wanted to work Saturdays because they went to church on some Sunday, and some people work Sunday because they play you know football on the Saturday or whatever it was, and everyone we can accommodate people. Um, and then I'm doing a little bit more because I actually think there's this idea of a real kindness to the children, and it's like, well, we can share that kindness, all the stuff we're learning about the kids. Sometimes we weren't really displaying, and and I think this is industry-wide on how we treat our team members and our and our co-workers.

SPEAKER_00 20:23

So you've mentioned the kindness code podcast, and you created the kindness code and um are interested, you're innovating an app as we speak. It's still in in production or in or in uh prototype.

SPEAKER_01 20:37

Well, it's a bit more than that, but yeah, we're we're kind of soft launching, getting the feedback. It's um uh creating an app is one of the more challenging things I've done.

SPEAKER_00 20:47

Okay, but you're creating an app all in support of helping those that are working in care to help build their confidence and preparedness for the challenging situations they may have to deal with. So tell us about what sparked the kindness code and the AI training platform.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

Uh, I was in a seminar and the AI guy was talking about different things you could do, and I thought, well, this isn't us because we need human beings in this. And then um listening to him, and then something triggered that we'd had a beautiful young mentor had taken a child out, really connected, and the child made a serious disclosure, like told us about something very traumatic had happened in their childhood, and it was quite shocking. And this poor young woman, you know, who was a youth mentor, had had all her training, we do incredible in-house training, it's all therapeutic, all the different things they need to know. But actually, what was she to say in that moment? And there's quite a few situations in the home, and every time I went into the homes, the kids would try you out, they'd say things, and I'd think I wasn't sure what to say. I needed to practice. So now what it is is we have an AI child with a different scenario might not want to give its phone back or not. Not refuse to eat or maybe self-harming, and then the the learner can practice what they will say, and the AI will talk back differently depending on how they de-escalate the situation, how they connect with the child, and then they get a summary on what they did well and how they can improve. So we are finding it's really improving confidence because it's all very well to sit in a classroom, but there's so many scenarios, there's so many different things that could happen in the home. So people are feeling a lot more confident on how to deal with the situations, on what to say, and because they're saying it out loud, it's very similar to what they would be doing in an actual situation.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

Sounds like an incredibly complex tool to develop because you know, every child is different, every scenario is going to be very nuanced. How have you actually developed it as something that's of real value to people?

SPEAKER_01 22:51

Well, we've got um we've got about 70 scenarios and we're working on them. So something happened in one of our homes recently, so we could create a new one that was specific. The learner does get a pre see of what's going on, and many of the scenarios are you know, not wanting to go to bed. You know, last night they let me stay up later. Why are you making me go to bed now? So there's a lot of kind of um scenarios that happen all the time in all the homes. Um, and it's not perfect because actually in real life there's body language and things, but this is just one way of embedding the um the learning.

SPEAKER_00 23:28

So are you are you noticing a difference for those that have been uh piloting the app, are you noticing a difference in their confidence?

SPEAKER_01 23:38

Yeah, we're uh where because if you say the wrong thing, you can absolutely escalate a situation quite quickly. So it's learning, teaching the team to slow down, take a breath, asking the questions, connecting rather than trying to fix. Like if a if a child said, You hate me, you're only here because you're paid to, the immediate thing would say, No, no, no, no, no, I'm here. And actually, we're not listening, we're not connecting, we're not being empathetic. And when you tell a child no, you are uh minimizing their their experience. So it's in this small detail, um, and and what we've had, a lot of people are just saying they feel more confident. And especially when we can trial out something that's happened in one home, they might be coming into a fairly um volatile situation, and then it just builds confidence that way. And we've also developed a fast track for our team leaders so we can do additional training where they can practice talking to another team member. So there's there's quite a few applications for it.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

Oh, it sounds incredibly innovative, which is is is fantastic. And it sounds like what I love is that you're using, you've just named five or six different instances, real incidences that happen in the home regularly, and you're using them in how you're developing the app to support the development of your staff. So, what difference is this making for staff retention and overall confidence?

SPEAKER_01 25:01

Staff feel valued, they feel more confident, um, and and actually it it gives them away if there's something they they're concerned about. Um, it's been in the homes now only for a couple of months, but there's been lots of good feedback. Retention is really difficult in this sector, so for all the reasons we talked about. You said most people leave within 18 months. Yeah, I think I think 18 months to two years. I think something like 50 to 60 percent of people leave within the first two years. Um, we have made some improvements on that, but life gets in the way with a lot of people because it's such a it's such a challenging and exhausting industry. Um so it's been really good. We've got our fast track programs, the the people we want to really, so as our emerging leaders are feeling extra valued. So it's it's been going extremely well. Um, again, but it's just launching a SAS product is hard because there is so much training in the space. There's everyone is so busy and getting that cut through. But we've got a few people who are using it now in their homes and we're getting good feedback. Um, so exciting to be doing something that's using AI for good and making a difference.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

Very much a great example of using AI for good. And also what I'm hearing is it's not just the AI app that you're developing, it's your whole approach to leadership and keeping it very personal and flexible, depending on what people's needs are, because you you're employing people with really big hearts to do a difficult job, and you're demonstrating a lot of flexibility and care of them in order that they care for the children that they're looking after. I mean, if if this works, if this appet works, if your approach to leadership works and starts to get used at scale, what potentially would be the impact on the children that are being cared for?

SPEAKER_01 26:48

Really much better outcomes because when again when I first got the homes, one of the teams said something, just one comment, it wasn't meant nicely, and it escalated, and that child's placement ended. And these kids often will have 10 different placements in their childhood. And so one comment that was not meant to be unkind at all made a massive difference in a negative way to these children's lives. So actually, it's almost the trouble with care is sometimes it's not empirical, you can't truly measure it. Because if that child is with us for two years and goes on to independent living, or the placement ends after six months and they get another placement, that's really traumatic. That's really a massive life uphill for these kids who have had not had a good start in life. So if we have got better outcomes for the children, there's more and more need for this. And I think there would be maybe it would be fair to say there are some unscrupulous players in this industry. There's some really amazing kind therapeutic homes as well. And I've met loads of people who have those homes. So hopefully it means we can continue to grow and scale what we do and deliver improved therapeutic care and get people trained so that someone doesn't accidentally say the wrong thing and cause upset in one of these children's lives.

SPEAKER_00 28:11

Well, that is just um phenomenal what you're doing there, um, Carmel. I'm so I'm I'm kind of sitting here in awe of of the approach you've taken and the difference you're making to these children's lives and to the people who work in the homes as well, so your team as well. But we're going to move on now to discuss the juicy subject of funding and female entrepreneurship, because you are a female entrepreneur. And recently I had David Horn on talking about the funding gaps when it comes to female entrepreneurs and that women, uh, women only run businesses, only get 2% of overall funding. So I recognise obviously you've been down that road of funding, and I should imagine you've had your own fair set of challenges. Would you like to share with me a bit about your own story of being a female entrepreneur and going down that funding route?

SPEAKER_01 29:03

Well, funny you mentioned David, because he was a fundamental part of me exiting my first business, actually. I knew about exiting, and then he was um speaking at a mastermind I was on and talking about scaling up and getting your business ready. So he was kind of quite instrumental in that. Oh, you can think bigger, you get your business ready to sell. Um and that was about it was only about a year and later, after I had the seminar with him there and read his book, that I had actually sold uh my photography company. Um I bootstrapped it all because because of the photography, you did the work one week and the next week you got the cash. I could have grown it an awful lot quicker. The only loan I ever took out was actually over COVID, and I paid for a £100,000 massive big photo printer as part of the scale. Um and I think I'm now in an entrepreneur's network uh sort of circle, it's 150 odd people, mainly men. And what I realize is I'm a brave woman, but I'm not very brave when it or risk taking when I compare it to successful men. And I believe that if I'd been in a better room sooner, I would have been braver. Um, I'm really pleased I was in the room when I had someone like David speaking and understand what my business is worth and how I had to get it ready to exit. Um, and I think there's that is about getting in the right room. And we support women and all that, you know, we want we want to be around other women and be supportive, but we need to be in the room with the men because they think bigger, they've got much better contacts, the number of contacts, you know, that I was in the room, I met David Horn, and then um I I could find the right people. It was within my network that bought my business. Um, when I was trying, I bought the care homes, the actual business wasn't worth much, but I had to buy these two properties. I had to jump through so many hoops, and luckily it was someone in my network that knew someone in my network that I could get a mortgage company that would even even, there was only one in the country. And I do believe that, you know, was it because I was a woman, I had to prove even more what I'd done, but also maybe if I had more property portfolios. I just so I feel I never had to get funding except to buy the homes, and I feel as though if I'd taken braver decisions sooner, it would have been easier because I would have uh scaled up quicker.

SPEAKER_00 31:33

So are you saying it's about women's relationship? I'm I'm I'm broadening it to women, not just yourself, but from what you've noticed, it's women's relationship to risk that is so very different to men's relationship to risk, which also impacts the fact they don't get funded as much.

SPEAKER_01 31:50

Yeah, and I think about six or seven years ago the Rhodes report came out, um, and it basically said that women, you know, take fewer risks, and there's all sorts of things around childcare and societal expectations. But actually they take smaller risks, but fewer female businesses, female led businesses fail because they don't over-leverage and they don't take too many risks. So they're a slower burn, but they're a much safer prospect, which is really interesting around this idea that you know only 2% of VC money goes to women to women because actually, yeah, they're not going to be a unicorn that explodes and is worth a billion overnight, but they're a lot less like likely to explode and be worth nothing.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

Um, and so as a s a safe, steady business investment, women's businesses are actually a good good bet for that.

SPEAKER_01 32:37

And I don't I don't want to say it's kind of like blamey around women. I think it's societal, I think, that we are we're not in the rooms necessarily. We are naturally more risk-adverse. I don't say not all women and all that kind of thing, it can be done, but I'm shocked that I thought I was really brave. And when I'm around braver men, I realise that I'm brave for a woman. Um, although I have scale businesses and done me well, and I've never been in debt and I've not had it fail, so I've I've done well. Um and again, I don't I don't want to sound like it's blamey. Like we can't blame ourselves as women, but I think it's something if we're aware of the barriers, if we're aware of the mindset and some of the things we can do to overcome it, um, we can scale more quickly and we can understand the barrier.

SPEAKER_00 33:25

I just hear some pros and cons to both male and female, actually, because although women may be more risk averse, they are more guaranteed to run a successful business. So there's pros and cons to each, isn't there? We could if if we blended the two together, we probably have the perfect scenario, really. And and and you would hope fairer funding going on as well. But the system as it is is very, very stuck, I think. Um, and it's just for women just to keep going and keep supporting each other to to make the success of it.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

Part of my motivation to grow is because one, I want to prove that it can be done, and two, the more I grow, I've got um I have got men and women in my SLT, but I can really my MD is a is is a woman, my ops manager is a woman. And so I feel like I can have quite strong impact if I in the care industry, there's a lot, a lot of men because there's a property developer uh cohort in there. So I am motivated by proving it can be done through helping to super track my you know, my SLT, the incredible, kind, caring woman, and also really deliver outstanding care that comes to a place of of genuine care as opposed to bottom line motivation.

SPEAKER_00 34:46

So you're talking about scaling your care business. What's your vision?

SPEAKER_01 34:51

I don't want to just put a number on how many homes because it's a really, really challenging thing to do and it's actually really difficult to get the registration. But I want to be known as a really outstanding therapeutic care home. We've actually got little schools associated with them as well, and we're doing a lot of work on that. And I want to be able to attract people when people are coming to me and saying, Can I come and work for you? That is a really empirical, wonderful way of saying I'm doing a good job. And if people are coming to me for jobs, it means I have a happy team and I've made a really positive impact on other people's lives because the word is getting out that it's a good place to be and a good place to work.

SPEAKER_00 35:30

A really admirable vision. I really I'm gonna enjoy watching you get there, Carmel, because it is fantastic to hear that. And uh, you know, when you look at your overall journey, what have you learned about leadership and about growth?

SPEAKER_01 35:47

Um, the one thing I say to anyone else that's an entrepreneur, or not everyone thinks like you do. And actually, my MD is a really dynamic, incredible woman, and sometimes she's quite entrepreneurial, and sometimes she gets frustrated. And it's like, no, you think fast, you have ideas, you I can see my vision, but we need lots of people that aren't entrepreneurial, that are actually the people that the work horses, the people who love detail. I hate detail, Mary. Um, you know, the ones that really want to stay in, stay in their lane and do an amazing job at what they do. And so understanding that people don't think like like an entrepreneur. And that's what we need.

SPEAKER_00 36:27

Because if we had a world full of entrepreneurs, nothing would get done. You know, we need absolutely that's the whole ethos of teamwork, isn't it? We need variety, we need diversity, people with different needs, people with different strengths. That's all goes to make the melee of what makes a team effective, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 36:43

And everyone's strength is a weakness, and vice versa, and it's understanding how we all fit in and having the right people in those seats. And probably the other thing I've learned, actually, the other thing I'm learning is um patience and compassion. Maybe compassion lesser, but patience to just take that breath, to not do everything in a hurry, to be to understand that people have to process the information. And I have been guilty of being perhaps a top-down leader going, No, I've got this idea, this is what's happening, this not the best way to do it. In fact, the amazing man that bought my photography company, and we had a handover of a year, um, beautiful, incredible communicator, and he sat me down for coffee and he was chatting away. I said, Oh, what are you here for? He went, Carmel, calm your shit. When you come in, just be kind and quiet and listen. Don't come with ideas because you're scaring everybody. I was like, ah, so um, yeah, maybe it's just old age, maybe it's learning, Mary.

SPEAKER_00 37:42

But um what I hear though, what I hear is you've actually taken yourself on because your natural inclination is to be that leader that's out front, and you've had to learn to curtail that and to really connect with people and use compassion and empathy in order to then build your business, which is I guess is where the kindness code evolved.

SPEAKER_01 38:03

Yeah, and I think it's you know the podcast is actually like a self-discovery of me learning and being quite fascinated about the care industry and about communication. And so that's why we did the podcast. It's kind of my live action learning. Um, so I'm kind of loving that I can do all these wonderful things, but actually maybe make me a better person as well. Um, but and life's a journey. So I thought it's 2020, isn't it? You know, so but I think as long as we never stop learning and growing.

SPEAKER_00 38:34

I think that's the thing, isn't it? We we are all a work in progress for for however many days we're blessed to be on this planet, we are all a work in progress. So being on that journey, actively embracing it as you absolutely are a great role model of Carmel, is is a great way to approach it. I want to just conclude then. Well, actually, before I conclude completely, I want to just say how can people connect with you and where do they find the kindness code? Is it on all podcast platforms?

SPEAKER_01 39:03

The kindness code is on all podcasts, is on all platforms. The kindness code is just googindnesscode.co.uk. I'm Carmel Jane Saubery on LinkedIn and Nisha K Holmes in is on Instagram and Facebook.

SPEAKER_00 39:16

Okay, I will put that into um the show notes as well at the end of this episode. So, Carmel, I just would like to say a big, big thank you for joining me today. I've really loved hearing your story and your whole way that you've evolved as a leader, but also what you're bringing into leadership and into the business that you're running now. It's a great example of how to put your heart into it and really to look after other people's hearts as you're supporting your business to grow and look after those incredible young people that you're looking after as well. Thank you. Oh, that's lovely. Thank you, Mary. Thank you so much for listening to the She Leads Collective podcast. If this episode resonated with you, follow the show or share it with a friend and leave a quick review below. Or leave us a comment. Change happens through conversation, so let's keep this one going. Listen out for the next episode and join me as we keep lifting the lid on the stories that matter. Take care and keep leading with heart.