Nicky Lowe [00:00:06]:
Hi. It’s Nicky Lowe, and welcome to the Wisdom for Working Mums podcast show. I’m your host. And for nearly 2 decades now, I’ve been an executive coach and leadership development consultant. And on this show, show, I share evidence based insights from my coaching, leadership, and psychological expertise and inspiring interviews that help women like you to combine your work, life, and motherhood in a more successful and sustainable way. Join me and my guest as we delve into leadership and lifestyle topics for women, empowering you to thrive one conversation at a time. I’m so happy that you’re here, and let’s go on with today’s episode. Welcome to this episode.

Nicky Lowe [00:00:48]:
The eagle eyed amongst you in my community may have spotted that there’s been something going on behind the scenes with my business. And today I’m excited to share the details with you because these changes impact you. So I think you’re gonna wanna hear about them. And in this episode, I wanted to pull back the curtain share these changes with you and the rationale behind them. You see, as wisdom for working moms continues to grow and evolve, my mission remains at the heart of the business to support women like you to thrive in work, life and motherhood. And as you know, it’s a mission that’s close to my own heart. And now more than ever, I’m committed to helping you achieve more success with less stress. And, personally, I just wanna say, can we take a moment to appreciate how far we’ve come together? For many of you, you’ve been following my podcast right from the beginning, you know, 6 years ago.

Nicky Lowe [00:01:47]:
And the intention was always to empower women, to break down barriers, achieve their highest potential and lead confidently and with purpose while enjoying their families and their personal lives. But it hasn’t always been a smooth journey. And I’ve gone on quite an evolution over those last 6 years, but let’s rewind back a bit. So I think you can join the dots back in 2,005. And at the time I was working in a corporate job as a global account director in the tech sector. And I was managing global account teams and was responsible for selling complex high end IT solutions to large corporate clients. And I was leading teams doing that. And it was a big, big, big job.

Nicky Lowe [00:02:41]:
And I loved parts of that job, particularly the leadership aspect and about having the team and creating a high performing team, but not the selling part of it. And it led me to feel like I was a corporate prisoner, stuck in a role that didn’t quite fit. I was almost locked into this big job with an amazing kinda salary and all the benefits that go along with that, the company card, the stop sharing scheme, and all of that amazing stuff. But in my heart, I knew I wasn’t in the right role. And I kept thinking, do you know what? If I just work harder and learn more, it’ll become easier. And I think I was running harder and faster trying to make it work. And it got to the point where my soul was like screaming out. It just knew that my life force has been drained out of me.

Nicky Lowe [00:03:39]:
And I decided to book an amazing holiday. And you may have heard me tell this story before, but it’s such a pivotal one in my journey that, Yeah. I decided to book that holiday with my then boyfriend, who’s now my husband. And we booked to go to the Maldives, thought, you know, an amazing holiday in the Maldives will kind of sort me out. And it was while on that holiday in the most stunning island, that I received a call a weekend for a 2 week holiday to say that my mum had died suddenly, really unexpectedly. And it was 24 hours before I could get a flight home. And in those 24 hours, I decided I needed to make some changes in my life. And a big part of that was leaving my corporate role.

Nicky Lowe [00:04:29]:
And I’d known at that point that I’d got this passion for coaching. I’d done a training course at work on managing cross cultural teams and they’d done a part on coaching and I’d realized it was my natural leadership style. And it was something that I really loved. And I’d gone off and done some training, some basic training in coaching. And I’d gone out and hired my own executive coach who may have, some of you may have heard me tell that story who I now do work with, the amazing Laura and coaching was life changing, life changing because I knew that I long term wanted to become an executive coach, but had put it out into the distance, thought I just need to do another couple of years in corporate and retrain. And while I was still employed, what I decided to do instead when I got that life changing years that my mum had died, was I took a year out and I retrained as an executive coach. And I launched my business in 2006. So nearly 20 years ago, I launched a business called Illuminate.

Nicky Lowe [00:05:33]:
And so I made that bold move to lead co leave corporate life and set up my own business. And under the brand Illuminate, I’ve been supporting organisations with leadership development and executive coaching for nearly 2 decades now. And I’ve had the privilege to support some of the world’s best known companies. And over the first, probably 7 years of my business, I got to travel the world doing that work. And it was incredible. And then about 11 years ago, when I had my first child, I had to rethink my work like many of you. I became the default parent and what I call the flex point in my family. So my husband also ran his own big business and we decided that it was easier because I didn’t have staff, whereas he had, you know, a big kind of business that it was easier for me to be at the flex point.

Nicky Lowe [00:06:31]:
And that meant that I needed to re shift my work and travelling around the country and overseas was no longer an option. And I refined my work to be more local based, to do more executive coaching than the leadership development stuff, because that tended to take me away from home and overnight. But as many of you would’ve heard, about a year after returning back to work after my firstborn, I experienced burnout. And it was that journey of recovery on burnout to get fiercely curious about how it happened, learning about the psychobiological, so the personal things and the individual things that influenced my burnout, but also those psychosocial. So the systemic issues that influenced it, all that learning became the foundation for wisdom for working moms. And I had this idea about sharing my learning and decided that after my first child, when I got diagnosed with secondary infertility, I was told that I couldn’t have any more children. And I just thought, do you know what? I’m gonna birth this idea into the world, this idea of wisdom for working moms. And so I started to put together this podcast and a blog, and then found out I was pregnant with my second child.

Nicky Lowe [00:07:47]:
So the most beautiful surprise. But it kind of threw me a bit. I was like, oh, I’ve got this idea for a business. What do I do? I’ve now found out I’m pregnant. And I thought if I don’t put this business out into the world, I may never do it. So I launched it literally 6 weeks before I gave birth to my, to my second child who’s now 6. So over that time, I just started off with the blog and the podcast. And the idea was that I was gonna support women personally.

Nicky Lowe [00:08:17]:
So up until that point, my work had been through organisations. So organisations would hire me to come in and coach somebody or support them as a leader. And with Wisdom For Working Mums, the idea was to support women, particularly those that wouldn’t get access to a coach or leadership development directly through their employer to offer them the resources. And so my wisdom for working mum’s brand was always gonna be what I call a business to consumer, business to you as an individual. However, over the years, my work has taken me as much into corporate organizations as it has into working privately with women. And in some organisations, the Wisdom for Working Moms brand hasn’t always felt right. Because sometimes when I’m talking to organisations, the agenda’s more about working parents and the mum element didn’t feel inclusive. And also at other times when I was working with organisations on female leadership, I was speaking with women who may or may not have children.

Nicky Lowe [00:09:22]:
So it was getting a bit complicated around, am I wearing my Wisdom For Working Mums hat or where am I wearing my Luminate hat? So over the past 2 years, I’ve been reflecting on how to, how to bring those pieces together and how to evolve my business. How do I stay true to my purpose of supporting women in thriving in work life and motherhood? How can I help you to have more success with less stress whilst incorporating my wider expertise and experience? And so the work I’ve been doing over the last couple of years has finally come to incorporated under my Luminate Group business. And this integration allows me to provide you with access to an expanded array of really my leadership development resources. But the support can be tailored specifically for working moms and they’re all designed to better serve you. And what I felt was by combining my expertise and services, I can empower you even more effectively as a professional woman, with drive and ambition in your career, who also wants a fulfilling and healthy personal life. And that’s what we really want, isn’t it? So what does this mean for you? So over on the new website, you’ll see an expansion of my services to support you. So wisdom for working moms can be found at luminate hyphen group dotco.uk. So Luminate is luminate-group.co.uk.

Nicky Lowe [00:11:09]:
And if you type in wisdom for working mums, you’ll automatically be redirected to my Luminate Group website. And for those of you that have done it, you may have gone, oh, what’s happening here? It’s not the old Wisdom For Working Mums website. But what we’ve done is incorporate that. And on the new website, you’ll find all this amazing new stuff, including online masterclasses. So I’m gonna be sharing bite size masterclasses in 3 areas around well-being, leadership and lifestyle. And we have 3 masterclasses that we’re waiting to share with you in September after the summer break. But in the meantime, I’d love to hear your thoughts. What topics would you like me to cover in these master classes? So if you could curate your own, like, watch binge list, what would you love to watch? It could be related to well-being, perhaps around burnout or confidence.

Nicky Lowe [00:12:07]:
It might be related to leadership, maybe around how do you effectively network or build your personal brand, or perhaps build and manage high performing teams. It might be around lifestyle, perhaps exploring your core values or how your personality impacts your mothering and leadership style. I’m also gonna be launching my online membership called Empowher. And it’s gonna be a private community for women who want to thrive in work life and motherhood. You’ll get leadership and lifestyle development training, along with integration support to bring that learning alive in your own life. But again, I need your input. What would support you best in your life, work and motherhood? Because by sharing your thoughts, you’re not only helping yourself get the resources you need, but you’re also helping other working moms too. So do get in touch.

Nicky Lowe [00:13:04]:
I’d love to hear from you. You can email me at nikkiwisdomforworkingmums.co.uk, or you can direct message me on social media. Probably Instagram or LinkedIn are the best. And I hope hearing those insights is useful to see how I’m evolving the business. And I’m always evolving it with you in mind. Like, what is it that you need to navigate your life with more success and less stress? Because that is fundamentally what the business is about. And thank you for coming on the journey with me, whether you’re relatively new to Wisdom For Working Mums, or whether you’ve been following me for a while, thank you for being a member of my community. And I’m really excited to offer you even greater support going forward.

Nicky Lowe [00:13:53]:
So together, we can thrive in work, life and motherhood. So thank you for listening. I would love to hear your thoughts on what I shared. And until next time, take care. If you’ve enjoyed this episode of wisdom for working moms, please share it on social media and with your friends and family. I’d love to connect with you too. So if you head over to wisdom for working mums.co.uk, you’ll find a link on how to do this. And if you love the show and really want to support it, please go to Itunes, write a review, and subscribe.

Nicky Lowe [00:14:27]:
You’ll be helping another working mum find this resource too. Thanks so much for listening.