Ep# 21 Breaking Barriers in Law: Susan Cooper and the Rise of Accutrainee

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e. without being a law firm, which meant that instead of the usual training contract route, which people were generally following, who wanted to qualify as a solicitor, they were able to come to AccuTrainee and Get experience working at a variety of companies and receive sufficient training and support provided by AccuTrainee to actually qualify as a solicitor.

So really a forerunner of the system that's more recently been introduced by the SRA in terms of more flexible qualifying work experience as opposed to a training contract being the only way. into qualification. So I really wanted to talk to Susan today, about AccuTrainee and what it does, but also because she's an amazing female entrepreneur who started life as a lawyer and has really helped to open up access to the world of lawyering.

So we're going to hear a little bit about Susan's journey today. Susan, welcome.

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What happened in your early legal career? And then let's move on to the decision to, to set up AccuTrainee and what happened along the way to get there. So let's start with why did you decide to become a lawyer in the first place? And what sort of law did you do?

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So that's kind of got, got me. thinking about it, looking into it. And the more I sort of explored it, the more I recognized that it seemed that with law you could sort of go off and do lots of different things. You wouldn't have to be sort of tied down to any particular industry or practice area. And that really interested me.

I was very, fond of the sciences at school. and so trying to, identify a way that I could use that science background and get into law, sort of again, solidified, a route for me that I, I started to find really exciting. I wanted to use, my studies in genetics to go into eventually a pharmaceutical company and be a general counsel.

I had it all mapped out as I went through.

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I didn't, my father being a professional though, he, at his work sort of, he, he knew a solicitor and put me in touch with Catherine Skull. I remember her name. She was amazing. and I had a chat with her like in my teens. And she was the one that said to me, well, you don't need to do law at university if you want to be a lawyer.

And I was like, Oh, really? Okay, fantastic. I can kind of carry on doing the biology and genetics. I really enjoyed. and so the more than I looked into it, I really kind of got guidance and advice from her. and then it was, it was much more around talking to the. Law firms that had, you know, an IP department were very big in sort of pharmaceuticals, things like that.

and so as I sort of went through that process, you know, with that in my mind, you know, the whole training contract applications, everything was always about, look, I've done a science degree or I'm doing a science degree. This is what I want to do. Founded the IP partners at the time and, eventually managed to, get a training contract at, Hogan Lovells, which was Lovells or Lovell White Duranta that time, it's changed so many times.

and although I had this plan really well mapped out, I did my first seat in insurance, which is as with most first seaters, you kind of do what you're told to do. the second seat was lined up for me to go into the IP department. And I thought at that point, right, I've arrived. This is it. Fantastic.

This is what I've been waiting for. and I think the sort of litigation part of it, unfortunately, I just found very slow and long winded and just didn't really match my, you Personality in terms of, I, I, I recognize at that point, well, actually I really love the sort of transactions, the quick turnaround, the, you know, let's get it done.

The allnighters, you know, that was kind of what I, you know, I, I guess got a bit of a kick out of Mm-Hmm, . so at the end of my second seat, I was a little bit of a loss having had this sort of plan in place and I thought, well, now what do I do? and I was fortunate enough to be sent to, New York for my third seat where they did sort of commercial and ip.

so I've got a little bit more, of a broader experience. And in my fourth seat. Yeah, I think the graduate recruitment team by then had given up on me and thought, God, what does she want to do? And they threw me into banking and probably within the first four to six weeks of that seat, I thought, this is it.

I've arrived. You know, this is what I love. was fortunate then to be offered an NQ position in the Banking, Lovells and, Really loved it. Just, great team, great firm, great work. I just was having a way of a time, and then things changed a little bit.

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Like how we have these plans. And then I guess that is one of the things like, I mean, have a plan, definitely have a goal, but be willing to be flexible. I know I wanted to be a litigator and I think my first seat was in litigation. And I just read lots of documents, but I had no clue why I was reading them for a long, long time.

I did then get to go to the Falkland Islands, which was pretty amazing, on a libel action. But, but I, but in the end, I loved the banking like you and capital markets. So it's, it's interesting how, and when I, when I was a trainee, when I was being shown around by a trainee. He was, he said, I'm in the capital markets division.

And I said, what's that? I don't really know yet. So it's funny how we go in with this plan and actually then something completely different happens. So, sorry, I interrupted you carry on.

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You will find that It may be very different in practice to what, you know, what you're expecting. but no, as I was sort of saying, I was really enjoying my career, but always knew I wanted a family. and when my first son came along,again, very fortunate that, love was at the time being very flexible and they allowed me to kind of come back.

I have to be careful with my language, like, allowed me, you know, they, we agreed that I was going to come back on a part time basis after my return to LEAD, which, again, at the time was really unusual because I wasn't a partner, I was a junior associate, and it wasn't really something the junior associates did at the time.

And in particular, given the practice area I'd chosen, I think that made life a lot harder, you know, when deals are sort of completing within a couple of weeks, when you're taking a day off a week, you miss quite a lot. and Other factors made it even more challenging because we didn't have cloud computing at the time.

So, you know, the day I was not there having to catch up all the time and that didn't always work. And it's the same story as I think every, new mother experiences when they go back to work on a part time basis, you know, trying to actually make sure it is part time even though you're sort of accepting the sort of.

the pay cut and all that sort of stuff. So it, that was challenging, but it just sort of got, harder and harder, I think, for me personally, from a career perspective, in terms of what I felt I could achieve in my career and how I could grow when I had all my peers sort of racing on ahead because they weren't working part time or because they didn't have, other responsibilities.

And these were all my choices. I didn't regret it at all, but I could recognise that that was going to work. to sort of eventually rub me up the wrong way a little bit. So I made the really difficult decision of leaving Lovells, largely because of the children, I guess. My second part was kind of, I think, was on its, on his way at that point.

So that was a really hard decision. And it took me probably psychologically a couple of years to get over. You know, I certainly had.

long period of time when I'd wake up in the middle of the night going, what the hell have I done? You know, my dream job, you know, what, you know, you're mad, you know, but it just felt to me that at that time, I didn't feel like I had an alternative. I didn't, I didn't feel like I had an option. So, so that's kind of that, that took me out of the legal profession for a period of time.

After that, actually the plan, for me, I don't know. So the career perspective, or I'm not sure if you can call it a career, but, but, a job perspective was to set up a, construction business or a, a, a property, development business, with my husband as an architect, the idea, was that he would design houses and flats and I would be responsible for building them, which was a massive learning curve at the time.

Yeah,

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it was very much a partnership with my husband, you know, I wouldn't, if he wasn't there, you know, having been a long term sort of property developer, I don't think I would have had the guts to do it, but, you know, he had his own. job as well. And so, in a way, I was very much responsible for the project managing the sites.

And, it was, It's funny, it's a good question, actually. I think we just kind of thought, well, yeah, that, that sounds like a good idea. Let's give it a go. and it wasn't a sort of Sarah and Beanie type thing where they were sort of renovating lots of properties. These were all sort of a new build. So sort of building, from the ground up.

And that was a big culture shock for me. As I said, it was a massive learning experience. You know, I didn't really know how to look at plans at the time, you know, at one point I think I was trying to explain to the brickies what to do and I realized I had the plans upside down, which was slightly embarrassing.

So, You know, it was a massive learning experience and the big plus from that, which I didn't get from my legal career, was having something very tangible at the end of it to show for my efforts. Because as we know, you know, with the transactions and the deals that come and go, you know, you're there for a period of time and then you step back and then, you know.

The deals happen without you, as it were, whereas now sort of driving down the road and seeing the houses and the flats that we built with is actually really, very rewarding experience. We did that. That was great. but, and then sort of fast forward that business for us. you know, it wasn't fulfilling me, I think, from an intellectual perspective, because it was very lonely as well.

before the financial crash of: 2007

So: 2007

at this point, I think I was pregnant with my third child then. and I remember some really good friends of mine, they sort of bought me these career books, you know, almost like when you're at uni, like these are the different things you could do. And I thought, my God, how could I be here and like be thinking about what is it I want to do?

so I eventually decided to do an MBA just to kind of give me a bit of time to work that through and also because, something I didn't touch on, I think. Even right at the outset in my school days, I always knew I wanted to have my own business. I wanted to build my own business, which kind of the, the property development business sort of did that to some extent, but in an area I really knew nothing about at the time.

So I knew I wanted to do my own thing. and very, pointed, pointedly selected a dissertation on my MBA that sort of introduced me back into the legal profession. Cause I knew was something I really missed. and so from looking at Well, at the time, knowledge management within law firms, and then looking at, you know, what was going on in the profession with Legal Services Act, You know, kicking off deregulation and the, in the profession, you know, the alternative legal service providers and the, you know, the ability to have external investments into law funds, all of those things kind of made me feel like there were going to be lots of different, business opportunities there that I wanted to explore.

And as I started to explore legal process outsourcing at the time, which was sort of taking on commoditized legal work and, and offshoring it essentially,

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Tell us what that is. What, what is that?

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And actually looking at what's required to complete those tasks, you can then say, well, do we need a solicitor to do this? And particularly a solicitor in the UK, that's quite an expensive job. way of doing things. And so a lot of the large law firms at the time were talking to, looking at setting up, outsourcing, provisions or, or, centers, in low cost jurisdictions like India, like the Philippines and things like that.

So, when I started to kind of, I think, look at that a lot more because to me, I felt that was going to be something that we just see more and more of. that's when I almost accidentally fell into, well, I guess the directions were slightly pivoted when I started looking at what happens with the work that junior lawyers do here.

And if that does explode, if legal process outsourcing explodes in the way that everyone at the time thought it was going to, what do the junior people that are looking to train and develop and to learn how to be a solicitor, what do they do? What do they cut their teeth on?and that was sort of mirrored by a lot of the, not so much the articles themselves that I was reading, but the comments that were coming through online from students who were trying to get into the legal profession.

And I guess that raised a little bit of an alarm bell in my mind when I thought, well, okay, you know, we've always had thousands of people trying to get into the legal profession. And we've now got. All these students who with university fees have incurred debts and they're trying to, you know, trying to find a training contract, what this problem is going to get even get even worse.

And so the more I then started to look at the traditional training contract model and how it worked. the more there were all these issues and inefficiencies and inflexibilities that were coming out of it for me, not just from a student's perspective, but actually from the law firms and the very few in house legal teams that gave training contracts at that time.

So then I kind of explored a little bit about how do we, how do we improve on that? How do we, make it better?

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And I thought, no, there really is a problem here and it needs to be solved. The more I spoke to people in the legal profession, the more I felt that there were aspects of the traditional training contract that weren't being done very well. whether that was in terms of how you identified the people, you know, that were going to come in and do a training contract with you in terms of, How the, those individuals were being developed and how it was being assessed in terms of what work they were doing and what skills they were acquiring, to talking to the law firms and the, and the in-house legal teams where there was this inflexibility that you want to train, you have to have 'em for two years.

Don't you know that there's no other option? Yeah.firms tend to sort of have these cycles of six month rotations for, for seats, which. Again, can work in some instances, but actually works against some, candidates who may be really sorry. Candidates is my terminology. maybe some trainees who really know what it is, having done maybe their second seat and really feel like that's an area that they're passionate about and interested in giving them an opportunity to explore that even further within their training contract, you know, and it was really just identifying all of those, different aspects of the training contract that wasn't marrying up with.

What the profession, our clients, the regulators were all saying we needed to be doing at that time. And that was, you know, we needed to be more proactivist listeners. We need to be problem solving in terms of not in terms of our day to day jobs in, in the deals, but actually how we operate as a profession.

We need to be more innovative. You know, we need to be more flexible. Cost saving all of those things. I was looking at the traditional training contract going. The answer is no to all of those things. So I really wanted to revolutionize that in a way in terms of how people qualify, but but really crucially, to also open up opportunities that otherwise wouldn't have existed.

And and really the the main driver behind that was seeing. the huge numbers of excellent candidates were constantly slipping through the net every year. And that could be for any number of reasons, but often it was because of the opportunities that those individuals had had up until that point, which may be or lack thereof, which wasn't allowing them to kind of get their foot in the door of organizations.

And so there were two is a sort of two pronged attack, you know, how do we actually assess How those individuals are selected in the first place to ensure that we're always getting people that, you know, we feel very strongly going to be the best candidates. It's got great potential, really driven, but also there aren't enough places already in the backdrop of legal process outsourcing coming in and potentially lowering those opportunities or reducing those opportunities.

How do we increase those opportunities? and I think I'll. Our response to the second part was very much about focusing on the in house legal teams, who until then really didn't feel that taking on a trainee solicitor was something they could or should do. one, because, you know, they can't necessarily commit to two years.

They might not have a training program in place. They may not have resources internally and And I think psychologically as a profession, we all were kind of grown up with, you know, apart from one or two in house legal teams that were, that were huge. You did your training contract in a law firm and that was it.

And then you might

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And I think if you're going to start a business, one of the key things that I've learned is that unless you are 200 percent sure about it. You may as well not bother, which sounds awful, but you, you know, any business is so take so much out of you, and unless you are totally sure, and are willing to put aside any.

You know, anyone that says, no, it's never going to work. This is crazy unless you're, you're able to kind of, push beyond that. I think some of those lows, as it were in the sort of highs and lows that you get in the entrepreneurial journey, some of those lows are going to be very hard to get yourself out of.

So, and so for me, when this, when I kind of hit upon this idea, the more I. Research it, the more I explored it, the more I thought, yeah, this is something that has to be done. and that's kind of how AccuTrainee, was. Was born. and so just

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I guess it's more like you have to have a passion or on a drive to believe that this, you've hit upon a really, really good idea that's going to push you through, rather than knowing for sure it's going to make you lots of money.

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But, but I think as, as an entrepreneur, particularly if you're introducing something new, if you are going to get dissuaded or discouraged the first time someone says, Oh, what do you think that's going to work though? And, and what about this? You're not going to get it to the next step because you will.

always come across people who, don't see your passion or don't see the potential, that you see. And I think you need to be, you know, have that conviction within you to go, that's fine. You might be right. I don't know. That's up to you, but actually I believe this is the right thing to do. And I feel really strongly that this is the right thing to do because there will really be times when you're tested and you're challenged on that.

I mean, I often say to my husband that, you know, Building AccuTraining and running is a bit suffocating. It feels like, death by a thousand paper cuts. You know, you, you get a lot of knockbacks. And, and in particular, I think for me, in terms of my experience of the journey, introducing a new concept and a new business model to a very traditional, profession, you know, the conversations I had around, well, this won't work or this is, you know, this is.

We don't do it like this. This isn't how we've always done it. And, and I think if at that point you're going to get a bit like, Oh, well, okay. Yeah. Maybe this isn't going to work. You're going to, you might have quite a short journey because you

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Cause it's really interesting listening to you. I mean, Just even the fact that you went onto a building site and started telling bricklayers how to do things, what they needed to do, I find pretty remarkable. I would definitely have felt out out of my comfort zone. and then you said, I thought there was a way to revolutionize the legal, you know, the way the access to the legal legal services.

It's pretty, so there's a lot of innate confidence there, but have you ever, have you ever felt any form of imposter syndrome or or have you always been someone who's just. Just been able to just do things and not worry about them too much.

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Looking back, I think I always had it, but perhaps didn't recognize what it was.I felt that, you know, particularly even in, in my early career days, absolutely. I was like, my God, what am I doing here? I don't know what I'm doing. And of course there was that, but maybe some of those challenges. And having to get through them and then finding that I'm still alive at the end of it helped me recognize that, you know, when I was stood on that building site that yeah, okay, I don't know what I'm doing and I, I think actually my professional training helped with this because I always knew at the back of my mind.

Okay, I can find out though. And obviously with, with, with the house building. yeah, my husband was on the end of the phone all the time. Otherwise, if it was just me, I would have been far more nervous. So I had a lot of support through that process. with AccuTraining, I think where it was more, the imposter syndrome came up more is that Building a team myself and managing a team.

That was very new to me. You know, I'd only been a junior associate. And then, as I said, when I was, building houses, I was really just working with myself and then the different trades people, that was a very new experience. And I had to learn that. And I had to kind of, you know, dare I say it, I hope none of the head office to you are listening, but yeah, I just had to blag my way through that earlier days and I see, you know, I'm a very, very strong believer that we're all learning every day, you know, no matter how old we are and, and, and that's part of the excitement and the thrill of it that, you know, we are hopefully improving and developing and learning something new and, you know, So yes, definitely the former, I would say, Erica, there was imposter syndrome at each of those, stages and still is to some extent.

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but you don't, you don't want it to hurt all the time. So then the very first step of AccuTraining, what was the first, I don't know, what was the first contract or the first, what was your very first step of thinking, Oh, I've done, I've done something. This is, this might work.

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and that was a really frustrating, process for me because Again, this was at the time when our regulators were saying, come on, you know, come on, solicitors profession, we need to be more innovative. And I was trying to do that, but really struggling to get anyone to listen to me.

You know, there were, there were systems and processes in place. So for example, you know, to offer a training contract, you need to be a registered training establishment. In order to be a registered training establishment, you need an SRA number. for the law firm and I, you know, trying to explain to them, look, I'm not a law firm but I wanna offer training contracts and this is what I want to do.

Took months, you know, literally months of trying different ways to get in, get my foot in the door to talk to someone, to say, look, this is what we're, we're looking to achieve here. And in fairness to the SRA, once I did that, once I was able to, and that was really through networking, that was not because of the SR that was because, you know, finding the support externally to get me in front of someone where I could explain my idea.

That they went, Oh, yeah, that's a good idea. Okay. And then then there were several months or, explaining how this whole model was going to work, explaining the fact that we were looking to not just offer training contracts, but offer an enhanced version of it. So going above and beyond what the regulatory requirements needed of us, but really analyzing.

What is it that students need and trainees need? How do we ensure that they become excellent, all round, competent, day one, competent solicitors, and not just send them through a process, but really look at each individual? Because, you know, as with all of us being individual, we all start in a slightly different place, and we've all got different skills and responsibilities.

strengths and different things to work on. so that was really key for me that we were, we wanted to offer a sort of gold standard in the training contract in a way that wasn't really being done anywhere else. because, you know, this was an, this was a known formula. we all kind of went through a training contract.

We went through this 2 year period. We had a training principal. We had training records. But actually, there were, to me, there were some things lacking in terms of how do we know each of those individuals are actually getting exposure to all the practice skill standards, which is what the regulatory body says that we need to get exposure to.

You know, how much exposure is it? Have they genuinely learned through that experience? Have they reflected on those tasks that you know, what they could have done to improve? And so those were all things we really wanted to bring into this process. and that for me not only was about having a lot of touch points with our trainees, because again, obviously, they're not with us and I haven't explained that.

I'm sorry. But, yeah, so our trainees, we will offer a training contract, but then actually, because we don't offer legal services, we send them out to different organizations in order to. Gain that experience that they need. Some will go to sort of four different organizations. Some will go to one organization.

It could be a mix between private practice in house, but every training contract was bespoke, and it was unique, and it was very much designed around that particular individual, which, of course, was very attractive for students. And that's why we received so many applications. But in terms of when they're actually going out there, we knew we had to have those touch points because we felt very much We were responsible for them, and we were responsible for certifying them and confirming that yes, you know, yep, they've done everything that they need, and they're actually at the level they need to be.

but wrapped in all of that was, and again, this is, this is about 12 years ago now was a recognition that mentoring coaching, you know, that that one to one was so important, particularly, I mean, I say, particularly at the early age, but actually at any stage in your career, it's important, but certainly not something that junior people were getting much exposure to at the time.

So that mentoring, I think for us was really a key point. And as it turned out, you know, The feedback we've always had from our trainees is that that's such an important part of the process for them to have that individual that they can go to, that they can speak to, they can offload, they can ask questions that they might be a bit nervous about asking in their day to day, you know, were all things that we felt was really adding to the whole experience of the training contract for, for our junior lawyers.

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it wasn't easy at all. you know, and I, I don't know because, because I haven't worked in that many different industries.I don't know how hard it would be in a different industry or different profession, but what I do know is with the legal profession, there are a lot of people that are very set in their ways and, it was very difficult to push the door open, particularly in the early years.

And, and, you know, we're talking about. a time when flexible resourcing itself wasn't really a thing. it was starting, you know, we had the likes of Axiom,over here, so it was definitely starting. We didn't have the sort of peer points and that, that was, again, that was sort of starting to come through.

so not only was I sort of trying to convince people that flexible resourcing was a good idea, but actually doing it the junior end, it, it was, It was honestly, Erica, it was bonkers to start with, you know, when we launched the publicity and the, the interest in it was just at a scale that I just didn't anticipate at all.

Okay. And we launched and then suddenly, you know, this was in, you know, all the legal press and all the, I mean, the comments were just. Awful, you know, it was so nasty, you know, and it's like, well, God, you

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Or was it good because people at least knew you existed?

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But because again, this was entirely new. This was an entirely new concept. It hadn't been done before. People made an assumption that Essentially, what we were looking to do with trainees was to have a, almost like a, a warehouse of trainees sitting there, you know, in an industrial kind of like, just turning over work and, and that was the polar opposite to what we were looking to do.

We were actually looking to really make the experience very quality driven, unique to the individual. and, you know, there were all these comments of, you know, you can't possibly have trainees jumping in and out that, you know, of organizations. And that was never, you know, the intention as with every training contract, you know, we look for so common opportunities of ideally 6 months or more, because we want individuals to have an opportunity to go into an organization to firstly, understand.

the way the business works, the processes, but most importantly, to have an opportunity to demonstrate to that organization why they're such a great candidate, why they're such a great lawyer. and the, the, the reason why that's important apart from the individual's own self confidence and self esteem is, is because we want those organizations to be offering them jobs once they qualify.

and, and I think the big, that's probably the proudest moment, or one of the proudest moments for me was You know, when that started to come through at the other end, because obviously, you know, with the first few, they're starting their training contract, but we've, we've historically always had an excellent track record of people, then, you know, what happens to them after qualification.

And currently, I think, sort trainees will secure one or more jobs on qualification. We're really proud of that, because it very much points to the quality of those individuals and the quality of their, of their training. but, Yeah, I mean, that, that whole launch part, which I wasn't, that's the thing I think with media, isn't it, you kind of, it's down to what's going on on that, in that week and that day, and if the papers don't have anything else to write about something, they'll pick up on it and, and, I was comforted at the time with some, some advisors and they said exactly the same thing as you said, like, you know.

All publicity is good publicity, but crikey, it did feel like, you know, I needed to grow a thick skin at that point, and I think, oh God, I'm honestly just trying to do something, you know, positive, but, So, yes, the reason why I mentioned that is, is it took a long time to get people to sort of recognize, You know, this, this new concept, definitely.

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Did you have mentors and advisors around you who could help you? Yeah.

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And, and that support network ranged from, you know, my, from family, from, from, you know, my mother, my husband, to, to people that I didn't really know at the time and who just very, very shockingly were, were very open and willing to give up their time and counsel and advice. And, and I will be always, eternally grateful to those people.

and, and they've sort of blessed them, sort of stuck with me. Not, not so much the family, they've got no choice, they have to stick with me, but, you know, the, the, the, The advisors that I've had, the mentors I've had, I'm not, you know, there were times where I'm not sure I could have kept on going. So, you know, going back to your question, it wasn't, it wasn't necessarily about imposter syndrome, but it was about like, Gosh, you do need a lot of resilience and you need someone occasionally that's not, you know, I'm not, I'm, I definitely have that evil nasty voice in my head that will constantly put myself down.

And so just having someone that's not me, that, that suddenly goes, you know what? You're doing okay though.

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It's, it's, it's sort of part of our psyche. And then when you suddenly become an entrepreneur and you're completely on your own, a solopreneur, No one's there to do that. No one's there to give you that at all. or to kind of say, yeah, good job. You know, you get nothing. And so, when suddenly you get someone who you really respect, someone senior who, you know, you think, wow, you know, they're even talking to me.

This is amazing. To kind of say those things, it means an awful lot, definitely.

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just one thing I was going to ask you about briefly was like, so I presume at some point you did need some extra, Cash some money to keep the business going and to grow. And I think you mentioned you, you got some private equity, investment. What, what was that like in terms of going about finding it?

And then what was it like having investors? Think not being insult, you know, complete and utter charge. I guess suddenly you've got some other people to worry about. What do they think you're doing with their money? ?

[: 00:39:09

Mm-Hmm. , I got some, private equity, funding right at the beginning, so it was seed funding, really, more than anything else, and that was largely down to the fact that, whilst I was doing my MBA, I was on a module and I was doing a pitch, you know, and at the time, again, this was legal process outsourcing, this was for you.

This wasn't actually the pitch that, that, that what Accu became. and I, I did a pitch to, to essentially the, the people that were running a entrepreneurship fund. Mm-hmm. for people at my MBA school and. And it was very, very early days, but something I said or did sort of piqued their interest and they said, look, just stay in touch with us and let us know how it's going.

And I did do that. And in the very early days, they were great in terms of just giving me some office space to work out or just to get some headspace. And, and as the idea developed around the sort of new training contract model, they very much kind of stayed with. with me through that process. And then when the time came that I needed some funding, they were happy to, invest.

So my journey is very atypical. So it wasn't a situation that particularly as a female as well, which is makes sometimes things even harder that I had to kind of go and knock on doors. And so I was very, very lucky that I had this, kind of already in place. And at the time I was being given advice, because of the idea.

And I think because You know, people found it quite exciting. They were, I was being told there were opportunities to kind of look elsewhere. But the one thing that I really liked, about the Cast Entrepreneurship Fund, which is who eventually, I'm not even sure if they're called that anymore, but, who eventually invested in the business, they were very hands off, and that's what I wanted, because I really wanted this to be my baby.

and so there was a real sort ofwhat's the word? I think, I think for me, I needed to know I was going to be able to do this my way. Yeah. and when I'd spoken to other people who'd had investments elsewhere, that just sounded like a real, occasionally a real problem, something I had to be really careful about.

But I was given a lot of assurances, and to be fair to them, they were absolutely true to that. I, you know, they were there for me when I needed, support, but otherwise they did very much follow my lead, as opposed to saying, you should do this, that, and the other, which was great.

[: 00:41:44

And I'm going to ask you to talk about three of your strengths. And this is because I'm trying to get women everywhere to start thinking about what their, what their strengths are and to acknowledge them. Cause I don't think we do enough of that. and then I'll ask you about your three pieces of advice to your younger self.

And as Susan's talking, anyone who's listening, She's talking about her strengths. Just think about your strengths. How would you answer this question? So, Susan, tell me, what are three of your strengths? Very proudly tell me.

[: 00:42:19

and you know, there are things now when I look back, I would just think, gosh, I, I wouldn't have said I would have been able to do that, but I did and I got through it. and so that's about getting through the lows to sort of start to enjoy the highs. And I think you need a lot of resilience on that.

I don't tend to do things, half heartedly. You know, if I don't think I can do it properly, then I'm just not going to do it. And so I do give things my absolute all. and that includes. running a business versus, you know, down to if I want to clean the kitchen, I'm like, I can't do it properly. I'm just not going to do it.

We'll have to wait and I'll do it properly. So I think that, I think that's a strength. I hope that's a strength. It was, it certainly is in certain circumstances. I can imagine that it won't be in every circumstance.I think, well, I'm guessing I should be pretty good at multitasking given the things I've had to juggle, over my career at times.

[: 00:43:30

[: 00:43:44

I feel like I've got a sort of handle on it when there's lots of balls to juggle at the same time. So I think that's probably, yes, that's okay. Multitask.

[: 00:44:05

And then, and then what would your three pieces of advice to your younger self be looking back?

[: 00:44:23

And so I think trusting, if I maybe trusted in my abilities a little bit earlier on, that would be, would have been good, and recognizing that actually. And believe me, it took a long time to get to this point, but recognizing that actually I'm stronger and more capable than I ever thought I was, that's something I would never have said about myself even five years ago, let alone 20 years ago, you know, and I think it's just about just giving myself credit where credit's due.

We're trying to, so that, that would be one thing and maybe just being a lot more open and honest, about who I am. Because I think with my, with my sort of career trajectory, I very much sort of fell into a, this is what you should do. This is how you should do it. This is how people should behave.

This is how others should behave. And. That very much formed the narrative for me, rather than taking a step back and going well how do I think I should behave, and how do I think others should behave, and maybe being less influenced by this is how kind of, we should, you know, this is how it's always been done, we should do this going forward.

And so that's been a real, sort of an area of freedom, I guess, where I've kind of gone, no, just, and I don't like the expression, like, be your authentic self, because I feel like, I don't know, there's something about it that maybe that's what I'm getting at, though. But just to just to be a bit more honest about, not just who you are, but how you think things should be.

And I

think not taking things too seriously. That's probably one of the, that's been the biggest, you know, I think aid for positive mental health for me in terms of just going, look, in the grand scheme of things, what's the issue here? And that even goes back to not just how, what's happening in my life, but also how people are behaving themselves or towards me, you know, I used to get really, disappointed and het up about how people had behaved.

And just kind of going, you know what? You do you, I'll do me. That's fine. And that's okay. and that's actually really, kind of, you can feel like a bit of a weight's lifted off where you just go, those things are not for me to worry about. I'm just going to focus on me and focus on, What I need to do and my integrity and my, you know, my kind of what's important to me, and then others will do their own thing.

And I think a lot of time can be wasted in sort of analyzing and stressing and fretting about those kind of things. So 20 years ago, that would have been probably quite useful.

[: 00:47:52

And I know that's one of your real drivers is being able to open the door to people who weren't necessarily being accepted previously into training contracts and increase the diversity of everyone coming through. the profession. So it's an amazing thing that you've achieved. And just thank you so much for sharing your story with us today.

[: 00:48:26