Confident Conversations

Confident Conversations is a weekly podcast show for ambitious women about confidently balancing work and life, hosted by me, Sherry Bevan, Author, Coach & Speaker. A former Global Head of IT Service for a City law firm, I now work with ambitious women to help them get clear on the career they really want then find the confidence to do it.

This week's episode is about going back to work after a career break and how you can do this with confidence. I invited former client Ashley Aspin to share her personal experiences.

Ashley graduated from Cardiff University with a degree in Music in 1997 and started her working life in London with a leading classical music management agency. Two years later she took a post with the BBC Classical Music Department assisting the managing editor and working on some unique television programmes and events such as the Queen's Jubilee Concerts at Buckingham Palace.

Seeking a career change two years later, Ashley joined the fast-track management training scheme for Davy's Wine Bars in the City of London gaining great experience in the trade and learning about wine. She transferred these skills to recruitment in the hospitality sector and became Davy's recruitment consultant at agency Berkeley Scott before taking a career break to bring up her young children. In 2012 she moved from London to the town of Marple, a small town in Greater Manchester on the edge of the Peak District.

Whilst on her career break, Ashley took up several charitable causes. She volunteered for the National Childbirth Trust, as editor of the local branch newsletter; raised over £2000 for St John Ambulance by running the London Marathon and supported the local primary school by organising major fundraising events.

She is now the HR Officer for the Laurus Trust, a newly established multi-academy trust in Cheadle Hulme, Stockport. She continues to contribute to the local community by assisting as a coach support worker for the girls teams at Marple Cricket Club which has over 90 junior members attending weekly, and of whom over a third are girls.

In the show we discuss:

• How to maintain the intellectual challenge during your career break
• How volunteering helps you to acquire new skills and maintain existing ones
• The value of your skills gained through volunteering
• Ashley's big worries before going back to work and how she worked through them all
• How to find work you love that fits around family

Ashley's top tips for ambitious women who want to go back to work after a career break AND balance work and life "Stop looking for the perfect role and think about your skillset. The perfect balance is elusive but check in with yourself on a regular basis. Be honest with yourself and decide whether or not you need to take action. Be flexible in your approach and be adaptable to what you best can match."

GUEST: Ashley Aspin HOSTED BY: Sherry Bevan

If you want to go back to work after a career break, check out Sherry's unique offering as mentioned by Ashley: Back to Work Confidence.

• Comment on the show notes
• Tweet me @SherryRB quoting CC006 #ConfidentConversations
• Email [email protected]

• On Twitter @SherryRB or search #ConfidentConversations
• Join my Facebook page
• Subscribe, rate and review in iTunes
• Sign up to my weekly newsletter

Confident Conversations is a weekly podcast show for ambitious women about confidently balancing work and life, hosted by me, Sherry Bevan, Author, Coach & Speaker. A former Global Head of IT Service for a City law firm, I now work with ambitious women to help them get clear on the career they really want then find the confidence to do it.

This week's episode is about work life balance and how you can achieve it. I invited Clara Wilcox at The Balance Collective to join me to discuss this topic.

Clara has built on over 15 years of recruitment, leadership, and coaching experience, and the most important qualification of all in her eyes, being a parent, to create The Balance Collective.

Her fascination with what "makes a person tick" and personal development started with her degree in Psychology, many moons ago, and has continued through her work as a Branch Manager of a bespoke recruitment consultancy, to her Management role in a not-for-profit employability skills organisation.

An eternal student, she is also a qualified Project Manager, DISC practitioner and is currently completing her coaching accreditation. Her clients comment that her approach "makes sense"; she likes to call it "coachject management" (coaching and project management combined!)

The Balance Collective is a social enterprise working towards reducing maternal unemployment through training and coaching. Clara helps parents to create the work-life balance they want through career and return to work individual and group coaching, as well as offering CV and flexible working request feedback, mock interviews and consultancy to business.

In the show we discuss:

• A definition of work-life balance
• How important is it to have that balance
• How, as parents, we are role modelling for our children
• The difference between 'want' and 'should'
• Why it feels so hard to get that balance right - technology and society's expectations
• For women going back to work after a career break, how to approach employers about flexible working or part-time work

Clara's top tips for ambitious women who want to confidently balance work and life "You can do anything but you can't do everything. Be realistic about what you can achieve in a day."

GUEST: Clara Wilcox HOSTED BY: Sherry Bevan

Clara's website: The Balance Collective On Facebook: her page The Balance Collective with Clara Wilcox group

• Comment on the show notes
• Tweet me @SherryRB quoting CC005 #ConfidentConversations
• Email [email protected]

• On Twitter @SherryRB or search #ConfidentConversations
• Join my Facebook page
• Subscribe, rate and review in iTunes
• Sign up to my weekly newsletter

Confident Conversations is a weekly podcast show for ambitious women about confidently balancing work and life, hosted by me, Sherry Bevan, Author, Coach & Speaker. Because I love having conversations about career and confidence.

Following last week's conversation with former BBC Apprentice candidate, Aleksandra King, this week I talk to Rebecca Jeffery fired in Week 6, after confusing tagine with tahini and soup for soap. And anyway, how's a Manchester girl supposed to know how far Streatham is from Canary Wharf.

Known as Becs, she is a freelance copywriter, bookworm, mum, tea drinker and sausage dog owner.

She joined her sister's company 3 years ago; together they have built a successful design & marketing business that fits around life and family. Her business plan for The Apprentice was built around recruiting other parents who want work that works.

Our conversation (over a cup of tea, of course) discussed:

• how lonely it can be working for yourself
• the pros and cons of running a business with your sister
• how to make business work around your children
• she applied for The Apprentice on a whim, encouraged by her brain surgeon brother-in-law
• outsource the skills you don't have (like accounting which Fi & Becs outsource to their Dad!)
• being a parent doesn't make you any less ambitious in your career or your business

Her top tip for ambitious women "Don't apologise for wanting to work in a different way."

GUEST: Rebecca Jeffery HOSTED BY: Sherry Bevan

Becs' website: fiandbecs.com or connect on Twitter @_rebeccajeffery, Instagram _rebeccajeffery.

Ask your questions or share your feedback

• Comment on the show notes
• Tweet me @SherryRB quoting CC004 #ConfidentConversations
• Email [email protected]

• On Twitter @SherryRB or search #ConfidentConversations
• Join my Facebook page
• Subscribe, rate and review in iTunes
• Sign up to my weekly newsletter

Confident Conversations is a weekly podcast show for ambitious women about confidently balancing work and life, hosted by me, Sherry Bevan, Author, Coach & Speaker. Because I love having conversations about career and confidence.

This week, I talk to Aleksandra King, Communications Consultant, and better known (this month) as the BBC Apprentice candidate who quit before she was fired. The day after she quit the show, I wrote a post for Birds on the Blog about whether she was right to quit. My take was that she had quit BECAUSE she is strong not because she's not. And that she recognised the conflict with her core values.

In this conversation with Aleksandra recorded a couple of weeks after she left the show, we discussed how your values affect how you work and who you choose to work with.

We also discussed:

• the friendships she developed in the house
• how it was love at first sight when she met her husband
• how women are so often tough on ourselves and don't ask for help
• her love of spreadsheets (music to my ears being an Excel geek myself)
• how she balances work and life
• her personal values and how these affect the way she works and who she chooses to work with
• whether or not The Apprentice is intrinsically biased against parents

Aleksandra's top tip for ambitious women "Don't be afraid to ask for help. Asking for help doesn't take anything away from you."

GUEST: Aleksandra King HOSTED BY: Sherry Bevan

Aleksandra's website: AleksandraKing.com or connect on Twitter @AleksandraBKing.

Ask your questions or share your feedback

• Comment on the show notes
• Tweet me @SherryRB quoting CC003 #ConfidentConversations
• Email [email protected]

• On Twitter @SherryRB or search #ConfidentConversations
• Join my Facebook page
• Subscribe, rate and review in iTunes
• Sign up to my weekly newsletter

Confident Conversations is a weekly podcast show for ambitious women about confidently balancing work and life, hosted by me, Sherry Bevan, Author, Coach & Speaker. Because I love having conversations about career and confidence.

In a previous episode (CC001) I talked about overwhelm: signs we might notice, why we experience it, and how we can cope or even better prevent it.

This week's episode is about how to spot the signs of stress or overwhelm in our partners and how to deal with it.

I turned to Gill Walton at Purple Skies Consulting to find out more about this topic. Gill works with people who are stuck in their careers and need help getting unstuck. And sometimes it's stress that's keeping them stuck.

In the show we discuss:

• Signs of overwhelm, stress or burnout in our partners
• What we can do to support them
• How men deal with overwhelm and stress differently, putting emotions to one side
• Why men walk out of the room when they come home to a stressfest
• The caveman's reaction to a fight or flight situation

Gill's top tip for ambitious women "It's not the stress that is destructive, but the way that we respond to the stress".

GUEST: Gill Walton HOSTED BY: Sherry Bevan

Gill's website: Purple Skies Consulting or connect with Gill on Twitter @PurpleSkiesLtd The Compassionate Mind by Paul Gilbert

• Comment on the show notes
• Tweet me @SherryRB quoting CC002 #ConfidentConversations
• Email [email protected]

• On Twitter @SherryRB or search #ConfidentConversations
• Join my Facebook page
• Subscribe, rate and review in iTunes
• Sign up to my weekly newsletter

Confident Conversations is a weekly podcast show, hosted by me, Sherry Bevan, Author, Coach & Speaker. I love having conversations about career and confidence. In my podcast I interview ambitious women as well as those employers who value female talent.

This first episode is about how to cope with overwhelm.

My name is Sherry Bevan and I run The Confident Mother. After more than 25 years in professional services, I set up my own business so that I could balance work and life more confidently.

Now I help other ambitious women get clear on what they really want and then find the confidence to go and do it.

Many of the mums that I talk to sometimes struggle with how to cope with overwhelm.

In the show, you will explore:

• the signs of overwhelm
• the reasons that we experience so much overwhelm
• how choice overwhelm makes it difficult to decide
• information overload
• how women take on too much: our need to please and the need for perfectionism
• five ideas that help my clients cope with overwhelm so that they get more done.

The five ideas to cope with overwhelm:

1. Acknowledge and accept your feelings of overwhelm
2. Prioritise and focus to free up your creativity
3. Self-care to boost your resilience
4. Ask for help
5. Boundaries - when to flex and when to hold firm