In this week’s episode, Anna Lundberg speaks to Lucy Chamberlain, a female founder who is reshaping what success looks like in both the business world and her personal life. From leading a recruitment company division to becoming a single mother and launching her own venture, Lucy’s journey is one of resilience and redefinition. Tune in to discover how she navigated critical life transitions and realigned her career with her core values.

Key moments:

[01:13] Introduction and Lucy’s Career Journey

[04:45] Initial Definition of Success

[07:40] Evolution to a More Internal Definition of Success

[11:24] Lucys’s Business Model

[19:05] Practical Tips for Balancing Life and Business

[23:43] Slowing Down to Speed Up: Reflection Practices

[26:18] Lucy’s Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

Resources mentioned:

• MicDrop speaking community run by Alex and Olivia Merry
• Lucy Chamberlain’s Company C&C Search
• Find Lucy on LinkedIn
• The Business Accelerator Programme: Learn more about supporting your transition with this tailored programme and join the waitlist OneStepOutside.com/accelerate.
• Connect with Anna Lundberg on Instagram or LinkedIn.

Redefining success as a female founder

Anna Lundberg:
Okay. Hello, everyone, and welcome to this month’s interview. I’m here with Lucy Chamberlain. Lucy and I have met in a speaking group called Mic Drop, led by Alex and Olivia Merry. And Lucy, I’d love for you to tell everyone listening, what were you doing before and what are you doing today?

Lucy Chamberlain:
Oh, thank you so much, Anna. And it’s awesome to be here having this conversation and get the opportunity to connect with you again. And. Okay, so I guess my career has probably looked. Well, I’ve probably had three significant chapters. So the first 17 years of my career, I was building a big division in a partnership of a large recruitment company. Had about, I think just under 40 people reporting into me and really learned enormous amounts around everything from search to leadership and everything in between. And I had sort of several significant life events happen as they often do.

Right. We all know that in. In sort of a very short period of time. But I found myself unexpectedly as a single mother of an 18 month old, and I started having this really, I guess, Christ, life crisis, personal identity crisis, and. And noticing more and more that the values of the founder of the business I was building this big part of and my values did not align. And the more I looked at my daughter Chloe, the more I realised that I needed to represent young girls like her in a different way if I was going to stay in business and, and keep leading teams. And my team happened to be all female whilst I was in his partnership. So with, I think about a couple of thousand pounds to my name at that time because like life had, had dealt some, some more difficult cards and I left knowing I had this bigger purpose.

So the last decade of my career has been spent building my own business, but also diversifying my career. So part of building my own business has been that, yes, I can build a team of amazing women which we are 24 incredible, very different women, all of whom share a passion for career development, hiring, recruitment. But I also now wear lots of different hats. So I have coaching certifications, I speak globally, I work lots on female pipeline projects and with various female oriented charities. And so I feel, yeah, I feel like I have these kind of different chapters to my career so far. That’s a little bit about me.

Anna Lundberg:
Yeah, thank you so much. And it’s an interesting one with a disconnect with the values. I think that’s something that we often underestimate and maybe don’t think about when we’re in our 20s, but, but as something like that happens, having a child can often really shift your priorities and when that disconnect happens, it’s really tough to stay in a place like that. Although it’s also a very brave decision to leave. If we go straight in with a deep question. This podcast is called Reimagining Success. So when you started your career in recruitment, pre those important life changes, how did you look at success? If that was even something you were thinking about? What was your goal entering that recruitment career and how has that definition changed where you are today?

Lucy Chamberlain:
Yeah, well, my, my. As I entered into recruitment, I think my desire was for financial freedom. I came my, my upbringing, two brilliant parents, but we had very, very, very little. And as a result of that, there was, you know, there wasn’t a lot of opportunity for family holidays or for buying the things that I wanted. So when I entered into recruitment, I realised here was an environment where what you put in in terms of hours of work and effort and what you got out was directly rewarded into your monthly pay packet. And so I think the initial driver was very much an opportunity to use the skill I love most, which is communication. And coupled with this capability that I suddenly had to shape my own financial destiny. And certainly success back then would have looked like at the big house, the nice car Holidays three or four times a year, being able to go and shop in that seemed completely unattainable to me growing up.

Nice dinners, definitely very much exterior. Yeah. Things that would have felt validating from an exterior perspective and that would, I think on a deeper level, I was also driven by wanting to belong and by wanting to be part of something. But I, at that point, what that felt like was needing material success in order to tick a box that, yes, I belong now.

Anna Lundberg:
Yeah, I see that. And that’s so. It’s so common, I guess, unfortunately, that we’re looking to that external validation, whatever background we come from. I find school kind of conditions us to look for those grades and of course, to belong as well is such an important part of being younger. So how has that shifted, I imagine, to a more internal definition these days?

Lucy Chamberlain:
Yeah, I think. I think for me, that relationship with what success looks like has been really, I think, a challenging one for me, actually. I think a lot of push, pull a lot of conflict between what I need and what I want and finding a bridge between those two things. And I think when I first noticed that my relationship with success was shifting was about a year into building the business I was really struggling with massively loud inner critic and horribly harsh inner critic. And I saw a speaker coach, well, all those years back then, called Anit Petru, and she did one exercise for me that I think shifted my whole relationship with success, which is she just got me to look at it, look in her eyes for a minute and say nothing else. So just. Just that. And I realised I was so disconnected from what mattered to me, what brought me joy, happiness, love to playfulness.

I had absolutely no connection to that part of me left whatsoever. And so these last nine years have been spent on this. Kind of sounds a bit cheesy, but it almost like a journey back to myself and understanding all of the parts of me and bringing those together again. And so success for me absolutely feels like being comfortable in my own skin, using my voice, holding my boundaries, speaking, speaking, you know, speaking up, thought matters and not needing. Not needing to belong to anything or anyone else but me. And I think that has been an ongoing.

And I’m still not there yet. It’s ongoing, yeah.

Anna Lundberg:
And I think that is a journey. It’s the cheesy J word, but that’s what it is. And I think what we miss when we make that initial, very courageous decision to set up on our own, I think what we’re worried about maybe is how do I do a website and how do I get paid? And so on. We don’t realise this huge amount of mindset work and inner reforming our identity, which can be quite intimidating but also so incredibly rewarding and life changing. When you had that moment of I’ve only got a few thousand pounds to my name and so on, what gave you the confidence or how did you sort of, yeah. Develop the belief that you could make this work and how have you maintained that resilience over perhaps less successful from a financially perspective, months along the way?

Lucy Chamberlain:
I think my first driver was fear and I think that initial, that initial belief system came from. Yeah, came from partly a track record that I’ve done. I have done this in, in to some greater or lesser extent, albeit with all the big safety net of a. Of a paycheck coming from, you know, from, from my employer. But I think mainly it was. It was by a fear of failure drove me and I think my work ethic when I first started was off the charts unsustainable. And, and that has. That has shifted a lot and I.

I still have to do a lot of reframing around fear and that’s that capability to shift into faith, but also faith with action. So I think what’s been in an interesting part of building the business and during COVID we were definitely very, very close to going, you know, to going under during COVID and there’s been other hugely challenging times, but my learning has been, is that tapping into creativity in those moments is the most beneficial way that I can shift into that action. So from fear to faith and into that sort of action with faith. And. And so taking time or creating or carving out time for creative thought for me has been massively impactful in navigating those more complex times, because you go into that kind of survival brain, don’t you? And it’s really often difficult to see and think clearly when you’re in that constant doing space. Because those brilliant moments of like, oh, I could try this, or let’s give that a go, just don’t come to you.

Anna Lundberg:
Yeah, I love those words, are using the fear. Exactly. There’s a bit of the stick needed, right. We need the fire up our backside to move forwards, but if we get too panicky and you say, oh, I’ve got to do this, and you just get completely fragmented, hunted and scattered and you lose sight of what was working. On the other hand, the blind faith of just sitting there going, ah, it will come to me, I’ll put it on my vision board. And that’s all happy days. Right. It’s not quite the world I’m living in, at least.

So I love that. Faith with action is a really powerful. Yes. Believe that you can do it and it is coming, it will come, it always does. It’s a matter of when rather than if. But it will come from action, not just, yeah, sitting there and sort of hoping for the best. I think that’s an important reminder and as you said early on, that sort of really empowering thought that you are in charge of your own destiny and the money coming in, which I think we’re not in a traditional company, when it’s not commission based salary and so on. Yes, I have a stable salary, but I can’t necessarily increase that.

There’s a ceiling to how much I can earn and of course there is the possibility of redundancy. Whereas when you have your own business, yes, it feels quite scary. But in theory, the possibilities are limitless in terms of how much you could create. So what is the business model? I know you’ve mentioned lots of things, sort of from a personal brand perspective, I guess, that you’re doing in terms of speaking and so on. So tell us more about the business that you’re in.

Lucy Chamberlain:
So. Well, in terms of what we do as a company, we. We place business support and HR people and talent professionals into financial services and professional services firms. Now, that could sound a little bit dry, but it’s actually unbelievably fascinating because you spend your life immersed in other people’s careers and in organisations, you know, organisational success. So you get this opportunity to spend so much time understanding how different businesses function and work and their culture and, and their, you know, their, their direction of travel. And then equally you get to spend this incredible. I think it’s an incredible honour spending time with individuals and really learning about their career pathways and journeys and dreams and hopes and motivators and then marrying the two. It’s almost like a dating agency for careers.

And, and it just never gets old because it’s this. No two days will ever be the same. Even though ultimately, I guess on paper what you do is relatively repetitive. It never feels like that. And I work with, with, with a lot of women that I’ve worked with for a very, very long time, which is an absolute blessing. I’ve worked really hard to build a business where women can thrive and succeed and on terms that work for them, because I certainly did not have that opportunity. I remember my first boss congratulating me. I didn’t realise I’d gone through a Divorce and, and I think it may have been that conversation actually I just thought I just.

I can’t be here anymore. And so that privilege in the business to build a business which was by design. People often say why don’t you employ men? And of course we’re not anti employee men. It’s just I happen to absolutely adore working with. With women. So I think that’s a core part of what we do and why. Why I do what we do I.

Anna Lundberg:
Guess And I love that description because as you said it could sound quite dry and perhaps some of us have had negative experiences of recruiters and hr.

Lucy Chamberlain:
Everyone like to hate a recruiter.

Anna Lundberg:
That’s the vision I would have for it exactly that understand their hopes and aspirations and fit it with the organisation. That’s a win win for everybody long term rather than just kind of putting someone in the box because that’s what their CV happens to say. So from a personal brand perspective then how are you looking at in terms of your speaking and you as a person beyond above and beyond the company itself?

Lucy Chamberlain:
Yeah and I think I became an accidental speaker and I noticed that I had this burning passion for other women feeling more than enough and you hear that all the time now but that sense of being able to unlock potential and strip away some of those, you know, those masks that we wear. There’s the, the. Those limiting beliefs that keep us so stuck and, and married with this absolute passion for communication. And so the. On the personal brand side, I mean I’m flying out to Johannesburg next week to speak and. And so I’ve worked really really hard to start to build a multifaceted career where I can explore other things that bring me joy and also where I can really give back where ability to use all of my rich experience to support others and hopefully give them a quicker direction or quicker pathway through life’s challenges and particularly related to, to. To careers and to. Yeah.

To be able to explore new parts and you hear that sentence all the time. Don’t you stay in your lane. And I think it was a no. 1 side of what that means. I think it’s also a really dangerous concept because actually no then if I can swear but f. That why stay in your lane. There’s a million and one lanes available to all of us. And, and I felt at the beginning of exploring my coaching, my speaking I’ve.

I’ve done little bits of things like TV presenting and I felt the imposter syndrome come up and I had that horrible feeling of what are people going to say you know, Lucy’s at least the recruiter. She’s not all these other things. And actually I am now really creatively curious about all the different things I can explore. And. Yeah, it’s having great fun doing it, I guess.

Anna Lundberg:
Yeah. And I love that. And again, it’s sort of that putting yourself in a box so you’re, you’re in this type of business and that’s what you do. But unlocking the possibility of, of staying curious and continue to learn, I think that’s what keeps things exciting. Right. Flying off to Johannesburg one day and then, you know, the next day you’re in the office with the, the amazing women that you’ve. You’ve created as part of a team. And what does a typical day or week look like? It sounds like that doesn’t quite exist if you’re off to South Africa tomorrow.

But, you know, have you tried to sort of set up a rhythm? Are you really open to it being. You know, just see what happens. How do you structure your. Your time?

Lucy Chamberlain:
Yeah, I think, I think that the older I’ve got, the more I’ve understood that there has. There has to be. I mean, rituals for me to, to give me the scaffolding that I need to have the energy required. Although there isn’t a specific. No, no week looks the same. I do have time carved out on a Wednesday afternoon, for example, where, you know, you’ll see my diary. No meetings. And so I have, I have, I have really tried to create a flow in the week that means that Tuesdays and Thursdays are kind of my peak optimum performance days when I’m out doing the majority of the meetings or speaking and trying to have that kind of sort of slow trajectory upwards on a Monday, downwards on a Friday, and creating that space on a Wednesday afternoon where I can do work on my business, have some thinking and creative time.

Because, I mean, I have absolutely experienced right to the very edge of burnout several times in building the business. And. And it’s just. You can’t serve anybody from that place. So. Yeah, so I’ve created. Yeah, there is. So there is a rhythm to the week, even though each week looks different.

Anna Lundberg:
Yeah, and I love. Those are. The scaffolding is really important. I think certainly in my early days, I thought freedom meant, oh, just waking up whenever I wanted and doing whatever I felt like. But that’s not really quite going to work in terms of getting the results you want. And obviously you’ve built an organisation with a team and so on. So hearing everything that you’re doing. I suppose I would be tempted to think that you are busy all the time and so on.

So what tips do you have beyond that? I guess more tangibly in terms of stepping back and trusting your team to get on with things when you’re away and, and making sure you don’t blur the lines and, and you know, book another meeting in that slot that you’ve planned to, to have for strategic thinking. What are your sort of pragmatic tips to make sure that that works in practise?

Lucy Chamberlain:
Well, if you can outsource it, do that’s number one. I tried to wear that badge of honour of I can do all things and be all things to all people and, and of course, yeah, of course that desire to control is very, very strong when you’re alone, when you’re an owner of business. So for me one of the big things is to find things where I can step away from everything to do with technology and whether that might look like for yoga or going for a walk without my phone or whatever it may look like, that’s one of the big tips because productivity wise I’m so much stronger. Delegate, delegate, delegate and outsource whatever you can. Even though it feels like an investment, it’s ultimately an investment back in you, in the business. What other really practical tips do I have? I mean for me it’s little things. It’s having a colour coded diary where everything is colour coded so I can see a glance on a Friday if my week looks too intense, the following week there’s too much pink, so pink. All my meetings I know instantly something needs to shift or change.

Having space and time in terms of being somewhere for me hot yoga is the place I go. No one can ask me for anything in that space because all I can do is stay in the hot room and get through that hour and a half. So that for me is really important. And then also setting up your home. So again that, that’s working really, really well for you. Whether that looks like the family diary, whether it looks like who’s doing what’s, you know, support around the house, having people to help if you can and you know, I hate things like ironing so I get somebody to come pick up my ironing, you know, anything I can give myself energy and peace in order that I can perform is really important. But that organisational aspect has become ever more critical and I am using technology more and more. You know, I use fixer, I use co pilot and again those, they, why not use tech? If it’s if, if we can use it to support our peace and our space and our energy.

Anna Lundberg:
And importantly the outsourcing. Not just in the business. Right. The personal things. I think we sometimes forget about the fact, you know, the housekeeping, the cleaning, the ironing, the whatever it is, that’s a huge amount. We finally got a tumble dryer the other day and it’s just revolutionised by. It makes a big difference and you know, those are the things to think about. I’m also really curious about the colours of your calendar.

Anna Lundberg:
I’m a big fan of this kind of approach. So do you mind sharing? So you’ve got meetings. What are the other kind of categories that you’ve got to be able to.

Lucy Chamberlain:
Internal meetings, external meetings, thinking time. I’ve got admin time. I have reach out times. So for my business development and all of the activity around that. So those are my five core. But then I also have now which I didn’t have a few personal time. So that might even just mean. So that I can, I can make sure I have lunch or I can go for a walk or I can breathe for five minutes because otherwise.

Yeah, it’s very easy to end up going from meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting. Yeah.

Anna Lundberg:
And I think that’s important again in the business to have a sort of the outward face. Okay. That’s business development, getting new business but also then the sort of delivery and if those two are out of balance at any point, probably there’s going to be an issue further down the line then for the person. I would even break it down if you can into sort of health and well being stuff and family stuff and even sort of growth and personal development might be on there as well. So I think it’s. Yeah, it’s a really fun exercise to think about what those categories are that we want to have balance in and then see how we can do that each week. It’s never going to be perfect. Right.

But we can strive to. Oh, that was a bit too much of this. And we were just talking about the rituals and the seasons of terms or even winter. I feel like, I don’t know about you, but coming out of winter now I feel like a lot of us are a bit more sort of okay, I’ve had my winter season about ready to go. Spring, summer, everyone’s kind of blooming again which is very exciting. I think sort of listening to those instincts is no bad thing.

Lucy Chamberlain:
One of the things I forgot to mention that is now an absolute non negotiable non Negotiable for me is at the end of each day is I will have a very brief reflection. What worked, what didn’t, what could go better and, and how can I make it go better? So what works is really important. So it gives you that little sort of oxygen psytosin boost or the bit of happy hormone. And what didn’t gives me a chance to try and make sure I can course change for the following following day and making sure that I’m resource then what do I need? What resources do I need? And I think that has made a massive difference for me because what I used to do is finish my day, get a glass of wine, think, thank God for that. Right, I’m done for the evening. And actually the challenge with that is it’s really difficult to create a life on your own terms if you’re not building in those mini reflections.

Anna Lundberg:
Yeah, that’s a future you problem. Right. It’s the whole, I saw that before Christmas. Everyone’s like, oh no worries, I’ll just get to that in January. But then, yeah, yeah, January, you’re going to have to deal with it.

And on a micro level that’s true every day. What I’ve loved hearing from you is this having that space and slowing down a bit to speed up. I think coming back to the fear piece, it’s easy to let that take over or I could do more and everyone, whether it’s in a full time job or in your own business, you can always work longer, do one more thing, let that flow over, but then, and then you come back the next day and you’re frazzled and you’re sort of not sure what’s going on. So having even just a few minutes I imagine to reflect and think about what’s gone well and what you can do differently tomorrow will make such a difference. So slowing down to speed up I think is a really key insight.
So where can we learn more about you? Where can we connect with you and, and follow along with your journey after this call?

Lucy Chamberlain:
Well, you can find me on LinkedIn and, and, and I share all sorts of content there. I also run free workshops once a month, all of which designed to help you with that scaffolding you need to build an amazing career and find, find me on my website as well, which is cnc and csearch.co.uk we’ll put that.

Anna Lundberg:
In the chat as well. I guess as a final question, if someone’s listening and is in that position perhaps quite sort of nine, 10 years ago, you really Stuck in. Oh, my values are not aligned perhaps with a co founder or, or a company they’re working with. Sort of any words of advice you can give now that you’re on the other side of it. What, what might you have said to past you when you were sort of wavering on what to do in that situation?

Lucy Chamberlain:
Yeah, first thing to find a network that have walked the path you want to walk first. I didn’t do that and my God, that would have made an enormous difference had I got that network in place before I’d made that leap so that I could have drawn on all of those amazing resources. And women are so about collaboration over competition so that’s where I would start with that. But I’d also do things like for me the areas that caused me the most challenge and stress and really fed into that imposter syndrome was not understanding the fundamentals of running a business accounts things like that. So go and look at practically what your tool set and strengths are and what matters and your values and all those things and then think, okay, what are the aspects aspects that I’m not so strong at? Can I afford to outsource that? Or do I need to go and learn it myself so that I’m not feeding into that inner critic so that I have got that foundational knowledge and that trust in myself that I’ve, I’ve done a sort of small business, you know, launching a small business course or that would have made a very big difference to my self belief I think.

Anna Lundberg:
To know what you don’t know and then either going to fill that gap yourself or finding someone else who can support you there sooner rather than later. Yes, love that. Thank you so much for sharing so generously. Selfishly, I always love to hear the, the story of how you’ve got to where you are and best of luck with the next phase of your career as well.

Lucy Chamberlain:
Thanks Anna. Thanks for having me. Thank you.

Anna Lundberg:
Perfect. Thanks so much.

All right, so if any of this resonates and you’re ready to build a business that truly works for you, without the overwhelm, without the hustle, all that constant second guessing, then I’d love for you to join us in the business accelerator. I’m bringing together a small group of like minded experts, coaches, consultants, solopreneurs who want that personalised support, clear action step and above all, real accountability. If you want to get in early, then head on over to onestepoutside.com/accelerate to register your interest or join the waitlist. Let’s create the business and the life that you have always wanted. Can’t wait to see you inside.

WORK WITH ANNA

Let us help you design a business and a life that gives you freedom from the 9 to 5. There are several options for how you can work with us. Choose the programme that’s right for you.

The Outsiders Business Accelerator

A mastermind for service-based business owners, freelancers and online entrepreneurs who are ready to achieve success on their own terms. onestepoutside.com/accelerate

The Outsiders Business Academy

A self-paced course for you to work through in your own time, to learn – and implement – the foundations of building a profitable business that lets you escape the 9 to 5. onestepoutside.com/course

1:1 Coaching & Mentoring

If you’re looking for one-to-one support to help you achieve your specific life and business goals, Anna has a limited number of spots for individual coaching and mentoring. onestepoutside.com/coaching