Kate Butcher
Hello and today I would like to welcome Wendy Wood to the podcast. Wendy is somebody who I have known for probably, I don’t know, maybe over a year and been working with, probably for about six months now. So Wendy and I initially met, she came on to a networking meeting that I co host and came on as a guest speaker and I was really, really inspired by the talk that she gave us. And, as such, connected up with Wendy a little bit later and have been part of her group coaching programmes since then. So Wendy, I am going to ask you to introduce your business but just to give everyone a brief summary and I’m sure you’ll correct me, correct me if I get this wrong and I did just check I got it right, Wendy is the co founder of The Little Birth Company where she trains people in hypno birthing and it’s also a birth worker and she is also a women’s business coach in Wendy Wood Coaching which is her second business. So Wendy, start off please by telling us a little bit if you will, about yourself and your business and your family and how they all fit in together.

Wendy Wood
Yeah, so, yes, I’m Wendy. I’m from Manchester, born and bred there, and started off my sort of working world being a midwife. So I’d always wanted to be a midwife, trained to be a midwife in the 90s. And that led me into many years of working as a midwife. Birth is one of my first passions, pregnancy and birth, absolutely, blows my mind, fascinates me. I think the capability we have to grow and give birth to babies is just astounding to me. And so I love to be part of that journey. So I did that, initially as a midwife. And then for several reasons left Midwifery, and moved into sexual health, which became my day job for quite a number of years. 

But I’ve always had a real pull away from this sort of typical nine to five job or not that midwifery was nine to five at all. Or even then we work in shifts and things. And that structure that’s embedded sort of in work, in life. Just never felt like it’s suited me. I wanted to sort of have more control over my day. I felt like I was just going to work to live and not really having the time to do the things I wanted to, and that that sort of structure really works for some people, but I think for some people, if you’ve got more of an entrepreneurial spirit, maybe, you can really struggle in that environment where things are so restricted, it feels like, you know, when you can have days off, what hours you work and so on. So, I over the years through sort of my work as a birth worker, I ended up looking after family who were hypno birthing, and this was before, was this before? Yeah no, I’d had my oldest son at this point, Charlie who’s now 12. And then sort of after maternity leave, that’s when I did a few more midwifery shifts to decide I still wanted to be a midwife or not. And I ended up supporting this family with hypno birthing and was just completely blown away by the whole experience that they had the difference that hypno birthing made to their experience, and that was really the start of my journey into sort of this world but also into realising that you don’t have to do a nine to five, if that doesn’t suit you, and it didn’t at that point, particularly as I had a little one, and I started, he was only little at that point, but I’ve also just started to think about when he goes to school, am I going to be able to be there and be able to take him and pick him up and go to all the school plays. So I ended up training to be a hypno birthing teacher, that swiftly followed on training to be a doula and birth trauma specialist and several other birthy qualifications and just absolutely loved it. And I did it. I built that business around my day job so I was working 30 hours in the NHS and sexual health, had my little one, and was building up this hypno birthing and doula business on the side of that. And at the time, it was a bit, it was probably at the beginning about doing something that I loved next to a job that I didn’t really love. But it also gave us like that extra bit of money each month for that fun stuff so that we you know, things were a bit easier each month. 

But it wasn’t easy, and when I started almost 12 years ago, social media in business wasn’t really a thing, or at least I wasn’t aware of it. So it was very much, I never thought that it was just gonna be easy to build a business. I never thought I just had to do, you know, couple of posts or speak to a couple of people and that would be it and the thing now when I look at people if it’s there sometimes I think there is that perception because things are so instant in life now. I think people think “oh, I can just do training or do this, whatever and then, you know, that’s it. I’m gonna have a business like landed on my plate”. And I think that’s one of the key things that I try and get out to people, it isn’t, if it does happen that quick and easy then wonderful. But I think for most people, it doesn’t and I think it comes with a bit of a shock for people when they realise there’s that consistent effort involved. But I was I was really happy to do that. Because I knew it was something that I loved and it gradually started to become more than just that extra money each month. And I started to wonder maybe this could actually be what I do, you know full time and that coincided with my son getting old, you know going older starting school, having our second son Alfie, and really started to have this huge belief that I could turn this into something more so that I could spend my days doing something that I loved. I could have the freedom in my day to be there for our boys and for our family. And so that’s what I did. I absolutely sort of set to work on making sure that this could become a reality. So I did that for quite a number of years. 

And then four and a half years ago, I met my business partner Melissa. We’ve known each other before then online. And we met in person and sort of had the same ideas about what we wanted to do. I’d already started to put down some work about creating an actual hypno birthing teacher training programme. And then we came together and The Little Birth Company started. And it was the creation of that really, plus my own sort of hypno birthing that I was still doing, that brought me to the decision where I knew that I was going to be able to leave my day job, which was the scariest thing I’ve ever done, leaving that, you know, that guaranteed wage, or it was it was at the point where it was scarier to stay because I was not feeling it at all at that point, you know, the school runs were just a nightmare. I would felt like I was flinging my children out of the car door and zooming off to work and was always late and, and rushing at the end of the day to get back to them and shipping them off to childcare all over the place. So I left and it was the best decision that I’ve ever made and one that I’m so thankful that I was brave enough and that had the support, like from my husband to do as well. So yeah, the last four and a half years have been me, running The Little Birth Company. So we train instructors all over the world to become hypno birthing teachers, and then they go forth and teach our hypno birthing programme to pregnant families. I continue to teach hypno birthing myself and then I think what became really apparent over the last couple of years was the love I have of supporting other women. I know that, what it is brought to my life having my own business, the freedom it’s bought, and the joy it’s bought. And yeah, I see so many other people struggling in particularly those early days or even a couple of years. And then they get to a point where they feel stuck and things aren’t going quite how they thought. And it really started to become obvious to me that I just love off to sharing the things that I’ve learned and you know, I never profess to know everything, we’re all learning all the time, and we should be. 

But I felt that I had something to offer and I found that people were coming to me anyway, sort of asking for advice and support and thought, yeah, this is something that I would love to sort of, you know, add in as an extra, you know, offering that I do, that I support women in business so that’s kind of how Wendy Wood Coaching started. And that’s about, it’ll be two years in, at the end of this year I think, and that’s gone quickly that I’ve been doing that and it’s supported so many just wonderful, wonderful women and I think there’s a real, there’s a real theme amongst the people that I work with where many of them will kind of not have the belief that they can do it, and they’re looking for that extra support to sort of really plug them into the fact that they can do it and they can achieve whatever they set their mind to. So yeah, that’s how that’s kind of the journey to where I am now.

Kate Butcher
Amazing, and I think, one of the reasons that I was really drawn to you, in terms of the coaching, is, that really resonated with me is that you talk a lot about working at your own pace and not feeling pressured to do things in business, the same way that other people are doing them, or feeling the pressure to aim for the six figure number that so many coaches are always talking about and to do things your way and that your pace, and that there is no hurry, and that there is no pressure and to do business in a way that works for you and fits in with your family life. And that really resonated and it was one of the reasons that I was really drawn to working with you. And I think you’ve really demonstrated there in explaining your journey, how you have made your business fit in around your life rather than the other way around.

Wendy Wood
Yeah, absolutely. I think your social media can be a wonderful addition to growing and supporting your business but it also has a few questions to answer, l in that I think it, you know, people spend possibly too much time on social media when they’re building their business and it’s so easy and when when you start scrolling to come across other people and start the whole, you know, comparing and look where they are and why, why am I not that far on? You don’t necessarily, when you look at somebody on social media, you don’t necessarily see their whole journey. You don’t know how hard they’ve worked or how long they’ve been doing it or whatever. You just see what’s in front of you in that moment. And that can just, you know, panic people and stop people in their tracks. And we’ve got to get out of that, we need to be so attached to our own sort of vision of what we want for our business, that we’re not distracted by what other people are doing. When we see how well other people are doing or what they show us you know, we don’t always know the truth behind the images. I guess. But we need to use that as inspiration of what’s possible, not as a way, a tool to knock us down with and think well I’ve not achieved that, so maybe, you know, I’m not worthy or it’s never gonna happen to me. I think if we’re not doing it in our own way, then there’s no point, I might as well be in a day job, in a nine to five doing, you know, in my job what I’m told every day doing something that isn’t for me. So I think it’s super important that people make sure they’re totally aligned to why they’re doing it and stick in their lane. And find ways of doing that. So things like you know, if you’re using social media, making sure you’re using schedulers to do your social media rather than be there scrolling on the app for hours and hours. But yeah, it’s really important to me that people, people do them, you know, you need to do what’s right for us. And what brings us joy.

Kate Butcher
Absolutely. Yeah. And I know that you’ve had an absolute nightmare with social media as well, haven’t you? Is there something that, that you’d be happy to share with us?

Wendy Wood
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yes. So in, we have worked really, really hard to build our social media following because The Little Birth Company is a global company, social media is an integral part of us reaching our audiences and, and so it’s something that we have worked really hard on alongside all the things that are important in a business, but we’ve put a lot of hours and energy into it, and it, Christmas, actually, on Christmas day, we had some rather strange emails coming in through our business email. And it turned out, to cut a long story short, that our Facebook for The Little Birth Company had been hacked, and the hackers had got into our ad account and it started to take a significant amount of money through the our Ads campaigns, out of our bank account, basically. So our, because of how they’d hacked us they’d actually posted some explicit illegal material on our Facebook which had made Facebook shut us down. But the shocking thing is, is that there is actually no way whatsoever for a human being or business owner, who is also a human being, to contact Facebook to let them know you’ve been hacked. There’s absolutely no way so we just had a message telling us that we shared illegal material, explicit material and that our account would be shut in, I think it was 28 days, unless we appealed but the appeal doesn’t let you say we’ve been hacked. It just says please don’t close our account. So we got absolutely nowhere and it took me having to contact my MP. And it was only our MP who had a way into Facebook to contact their, I don’t know, complaints team, whoever it is to sort it out but it took about a month and at that point we thought we’d lost everything because it shut down our Facebook, our Instagram, everything and they’re the channels that we not only use to communicate with pregnant families, with potential new trainees, but with our existing family of trainees as well, so we had no way to communicate with all of them. So yeah, my biggest advice from all of that would be do not build your business solely on social media, that you need to make sure you’ve got other methods of maintaining that relationship with your client base. And that might be through email campaigns, through you know, whatever it is you have in a mail list set up is probably a really sensible thing to do. But also making sure you put in equal focus on things like your website, so that that’s a way that you know, people can find you as well. Because if you lose that and everything’s on it, then you’re back to square one. And that’s not, not a fun place to be after you’ve worked so hard.

Kate Butcher
Yeah, absolutely. And when you spent so much time building it and am I right in thinking you just got your Instagram over a certain –

Wendy Wood
Over 10,000 followers, which is not all about the numbers is it, but it is a bit of a milestone and it always did signify the work that we’ve put in and that we were supporting people and it was helping other people so to lose that, to lose that platform for supporting pregnant families was really, really gutting. Yeah, it’s back, touch wood but there is always a little bit in my head of like, what if it goes again, so now you know, we’re doing our best to try and make sure we have connections with people in other ways as well.

Kate Butcher
Absolutely. Yeah. Like you say having other platforms as a way of communicating is, is just so important. And I was gonna say, it’s something that a lot of us take for granted. I will completely hold my hands up. I have a mailing list, but I don’t do anything to actively engage people with my mailing list at the moment and I don’t actively use it. Both of those things have been on my to do list for about two and a half years to get those things up and running properly and as they should be, but they’re not things that I do actively and we all should be doing that without, I do it for other people, I’ve got clients who I do that for in my virtual assistant work, but I don’t it for myself. And it just, you know, we should, we absolutely should, it’s essential isn’t it to do that because like you say they can just pull the plug with no notice and that’s potentially all of your, your client base.

Wendy Wood
Yeah, and I’ve heard more and more people it happening to as well. And they haven’t got it back as well. So we were fortunate that we did manage to get everything reinstated, but Christmas day wasn’t wasn’t the best day.

Kate Butcher
Absolutely, gosh, no, not the best way to celebrate Christmas finding out you’ve been hacked. Wow, and I think actually it is sad to say, but a big part of it is because as more and more people start to use Facebook and the other social media platforms fraudulently, and there is more people who are out there trying to hack accounts and do things like that, the more accounts are going to potentially end up being shut down as a result of that, or I’ve heard multiple occasions of people who have posted something completely innocent, actually particularly in the birthing world, you know, when there’s comments or talk about breastfeeding or, you know, images, that gets shut down for being indecent which often, you know, the appeal process is so time consuming and exhausting.

Wendy Wood
I mean, yeah, I mean that’s a whole other thing, me getting into images that are seen as indecent. When you see some images that are on social media that really, some people might say are indecent, or you know, bordering on it, and then you compare it to an image of someone giving birth, or breastfeeding and that classed as indecent it’s like wow.

Kate Butcher
Yeah, especially when a lot of those pictures are generally, they’re not indecent in any way, shape or form. You know, they’re generally done without anything that’s showing that people might be offended by, but like you say, there’s all sorts out there that potentially could be classed as indecent in a different way. And that’s allowed, and actually there was a story, ironically, on social media a while ago about somebody who had a, I think it was a dairy farmer or someone, someone who for some reason had cows as part of their business. And they had a photograph of a cow and it got flagged up for nudity, because, and they got it, the post was appealed and it got allowed but you know, that post was blocked for being indecent for having nudity in it because it was a cow, that brilliant. But it’s it just goes to show, it’s a computer that makes those judgments those decisions, isn’t it and an algorithm rather than a human being who can make that call using their own discretion.

Wendy Wood
A business as massive as Facebook or meta metre now isn’t it or whatever it is, has to, how they do not have a proper system in place for us as the users of that business, you know, the users of that platform to be able to contact them when such things happen is beyond belief really. And does need, you know, needs to be changed, but how that will come about? Who knows?

Kate Butcher
Yes, and whether it will? I don’t know. But –

Wendy Wood
Yeah.

Kate Butcher
Yes. So I was going to ask you about why it was that you decided to start your business but you gave us a really good rundown of your background and how you got to where you were which, which was a pretty good indication of why you started your business as well, and I think a big part of that, again, a bit that really stood out from what you said, was talking about having that that flexibility about the fact that you are rushing around all over the place and so many people as you said, you can see us struggling to manage work and, you know, potentially doing something on the side for themselves plus trying to manage parenthood and it’s such a juggle and such a challenge, and for you, a big part of starting your own business was to give yourself that that flexibility and that freedom to have the time that you wanted so you don’t have to rush off at the end of the day for the school run you, you can fit in your, your work and your day around that kind of thing. So yeah, how would you say you managed to sort of work your business out so that you did get it all fit in around your life?

Wendy Wood
Yeah, I think it’s just been a process really, an ongoing journey of getting it to work and it was harder when I was doing the day job as well because it would be a case of like coming home from work, having the, you know, the pickup time from school until bedtime with the boys and being there for them. And then being really committed to then in the evening, and not every evening, but I would say probably three to four evenings a week, not every week, but most weeks I would sit with my laptop for half an hour or an hour and get things done that I needed to do. I made use of like, I had, my hours were worked out that I had at one point I had two days off a week. And so I would, you know, make sure, for me, like start building the business was it was really important to connect with people in my local area as well, I didn’t just want it all to be, like I said, I didn’t really use social media in the early days. So I would make those opportunities then take, you know, take advantage of them to go out and meet people for a cuppa who, you know, we could connect and build friendships and then support each other in our businesses. So that’s kind of you know how I did it in the early days, but it did take that commitment and that showing up and being really intentional with the time that I had. I had really limited time, but I find that I can get stuff done quite quickly because I focus on it, I write lists, I have like my planner every week of what I need to do. If I didn’t have that I can imagine I would just drift through and suddenly get to the end of the week and think Oh my god, I haven’t done this, that or the other. So I think at the start the week, what do I need to get done this week? What do I need to achieve? And then I break it down into achievable tasks. And now I mean, you know, I have all day to work on my business, but when I didn’t and it was just evenings or, you know, 15 minutes at the weekend or something, I would really need to make sure that I made the most of that time and got done what I needed to do. But now like I work, I work three days a week on The Little Birth Company, and Thursdays is my coaching day and then I got bits of coaching in amongst the other days as well when I can, and it is just a case of, you know, knowing what you need to get done, knowing where you going, reviewing like your goals frequently because you can have a goal and, you know, it can change and you’re maybe not quite aligned to that yet. So it’s important to keep reviewing those things and just, you know, take the actions necessary each day to get the work done and get the job done. I think, well one thing that I love about working for myself now is that, when I was in my day job, there were, it’s not that you want thanks every five minutes, but there was very little appreciation of how hard that you work. And I worked really really hard in my day jobs. And it felt all the time, like who am I doing this for? Like I worked my backside off and it was, now to know that I work hard but I’m doing it for us, I’m doing it for my clients. It’s directly benefiting us, but then it’s also benefiting the people that I care about, like pregnant families or women in business, which you know, makes it so much easier to work hard when you’re doing it for a reason that you love. I think.

Kate Butcher
That’s true. Having a passion is what gets you through and actually if it’s your business, then you’re you’re gonna start a business for something that you’re passionate about, around, based around something you’re passionate about. Whereas if it’s a nine to five, it’s usually about someone else’s passion or something else. That’s, and that’s not to say that you can’t be passionate about a job that you do. But when it’s your own business, there’s no doubt that you’re going to have the passion and the drive because you’re the one that wants to make it work and to achieve something with it. Absolutely.

Wendy Wood
And it’s all down to you, isn’t it, at the end of the day? And I guess that can be a difficulty sometimes in business that you feel that, you can feel that pressure absolutely that this is you know, the buck stops with me this is down to me to make it work, and that’s the pressure sometimes it’s something that we have to work through and, and be okay with things like you know how making sure we’ve got boundaries in place and, because I think when you do run your own business, you feel, you have that responsibility for it, and you can feel that 24 hours a day. So I think that is a difference than a day job where potentially is, I think it’s easier, depending on what you do, but to come home, you know, leave work and you’re home and you switch off from the day job. Whereas when you run your own business, I think switching off can be more challenging and it takes more practice to get good at that because it also, you know, people can contact you all the time, can’t they, you know with with WhatsApp and, you know, Messenger and emails and all of that, and it’s much easier to have less defined times to look at, you know, incoming communication to feel this like oh my goodness, I must respond immediately can be, you know, setting your boundaries and sticking to them, for me definitely has been challenging over the years. I think I’ve got a lot better at it but you still need to sort of think about it and make sure you sticking it.

Kate Butcher
Most definitely. Now that’s definitely one I struggle with as well. I really struggle to switch off from work mode. I’ve got my little desk in the corner, which is normally where I do my podcasts, but the internet connections messing about at the moment and it’s more inconsistent over there. So I’ve moved to the dining table today. But yeah, normally I’ve got my little corner in the office and I find myself sneaking off there in between tasks or if the children are playing nicely, I think oh, I’ll just get an extra few minutes of work in and, and that back home and, and work boundary does blur, definitely. Without doubt, I definitely find it easier now that I’ve moved, although I still have my office in the corner, I have actually moved my main office out of the house now and I have an office elsewhere where I physically go out to work some days now. And that makes a difference by having an office off site. Definitely, but, you know, we can’t can’t always do that. So it’s not always practical. So Wendy, you what would you say is the best bit of advice that you have been given since you started your business?

Wendy Wood
I think, it’s a good one this, I think there’s probably been so many little snippets of advice over the years, but I think, in conversation, just you know, in conversation, not necessarily somebody saying, Oh, this is a bit of advice, but really realising that you need to be true to you and to do what’s right for you, and we and we touched on this earlier but not following what everybody else is doing, staying in your own lane. Because if you’re there working to somebody else’s goals, then, you know, that, how is that fitting into you and what you want to achieve? You’re thinking, well, they’ve done that, so maybe that means I should be doing that. And I think that can be super distracting, it can, you know, the overwhelm can kick in and all of that. So I think just figuring out what it is that you’re passionate about, what do you need to get to that sort of money and sticking to it and being consistent with it? I could go on there’s so many, but yeah, I think learning that and seeing that is some of the people that I probably have worked with over the years, of how true to themselves they are. I think it’s probably a key bit of advice that I got.

Kate Butcher
That’s a good one. Thank you. Do you have any favourite business tools that you use within your business as well?

Wendy Wood
Yeah, tools probably, I think probably scheduling planners that I use for social media. I think otherwise, we, if people are going directly onto the social media platforms to do their content creation and you know, posting their posts. I think it’s very easy for people to suddenly get into the scroll and you know, that precious 10 minutes you had to do a post maybe is gone with you looking at what everybody else is doing. So starting to use social media planners, and I think it’s probably only in the last year to 18 months that I’ve used them myself, has made a massive difference, I think on my mental health as well, because, you know, we need to look after that if we’re using social media for our business, and just on the time and the efficiency in my business of getting things done. You can go on and like schedule a whole month of content in a morning and, and it’s done and then you can put your focus to what it is that you love, which is not creating social media. But it’s, you know, you can make it a more enjoyable experience, I think by staying off the apps and just getting it done and being creative with your imagery that you use on there and your words and so on. So yeah, it would be planners definitely.

Kate Butcher
It would be planners, which social media planners do you use specifically within your business?

Wendy Wood
I used to, I use Planoly for The Little Birth Company and I use Later for my coaching business. Yeah, and they’re both, you know, they’re both good. There’s different, there’s a few different functionalities, possibly in Later I think, where it has hashtag functions and things that you can use easily, it helps you find the hashtags you might want to use. So yeah, but they’re both pretty much, yeah, pretty much the same and both really useful.

Kate Butcher
And do you use both for, I mean, both of those are mainly set up as Instagram planners. Do you use those as well for the for your other social media platforms to cross posts across to Facebook and things like that?

Wendy Wood
Yeah. Whatever makes life easier, so yeah, a bit of cross posting never hurt anyone. Just makes it so much easier. So yeah, does it across, I think, our Twitter and our Facebook as well?

Kate Butcher
Fantastic. Yes. Now like you say if it makes life easier, and I hear so many people saying you shouldn’t post the same content on different platforms. And when you speak to a social media expert, they will say, well, you’ll get different responses on different platforms, different content works better on some platforms than others. And all of that is true, but sometimes you just have to do what makes life easiest, don’t you? And I know, for me, that’s cross posting. And at some point, when I have loads of time available to me, whatever that might be, then I might spend some time sitting down and analysing what works better on different platforms. But yeah, for now, the cross posting works absolutely fine for me.

Wendy Wood
I think the only important thing to bear in mind is that if you use the schedulers, that you don’t, that you do take some time and you do, I tell myself, it’s my job, I’m not just messing about on Instagram. It’s my job to go on and connect with people, because ultimately, the platform is about connecting with people. And while planners do a great job of getting your content on there, I think it is important that people take the time to go on and connect with other people, support other people. Which I always try and do. And you know people are commenting on your posts to make sure you’re going in and responding to that and and showing up on it. So we do need to have an element of that alongside the planners, but the planners can just take away that initial, you know, that job?

Kate Butcher
Exactly. Actually, there was a strategy that I learned on a, an Instagram day, gosh, maybe three, even four years ago, probably a good four years ago now, where a lady just said suggested putting aside, there’s a lady called Emma Wyatt, who is a social media manager and I think her main focus now is LinkedIn. But she suggested on Instagram that you just spent half an hour, set aside half an hour at some point every day and you spend that time connecting with the people who’ve commented on your posts, as you said, and responding to anything, but also spend some of that time going out there and connecting with people who are your ideal client as well. And actually commenting on some of their posts and engaging with them and getting that engagement up as well. Because that side of it is so important.

Wendy Wood
Yeah, so support other people in their business as well, and you know, it’s super important that we they were all doing that as well.

Kate Butcher
Exactly, and actually I think, sometimes just understanding the social media algorithms can be really helpful because you can then know that you are supporting other people in their businesses, just by giving them a like sometimes or, or not, you know, if you know that you’re not somebody’s ideal client and they, you know, you’ll probably mess with their algorithm by giving them a like, and I’ve got certain people who keep you know, family and friends who I know are just completely not my target market. And there’s a couple of times I’ve had to say, thank you so much. But please stop interacting with my posts because you’re really going to mess with the algorithm and, I don’t want middle aged men looking at my Business Foundations for Mums, but thank you. So it’s understanding that stuff so you can support people effectively. Yeah, absolutely. Definitely. Thank you. And finally, do you have a favourite business book that you would recommend to other mums in business or a favourite book? It doesn’t have to be a business one.

Wendy Wood
I have been not that great in spending time reading. It’s one thing that I need to do to, I don’t know, I think something gets so drawn into your business and getting stuff done. But not, that not, but what I tend to do, rather than reading at the minute, is making sure that I’m following people who are inspiring in what they talk about maybe on their social media. Because I feel like I have more capacity to do that and to you know, see little snippets rather than sit and, I have almost like a guilt sometime, if I sit and read a book, that I should be getting on and doing work and that’s not a good you know, that’s not a good thing. I should be making time to do that. For me it feels more achievable just to fit in sometimes, there’s a few, few people that I’ll follow, that I just get inspiration from and that will be different for everybody. So I think just, you know if you are using social media, have a few people you find inspiring and who, you know, learn from and take really useful stuff from and all follow the ones who, and don’t follow the ones who trigger you.

Kate Butcher
Yes. Absolutely. Yeah, no, that’s fair enough. And actually one of the things about reading books, I don’t have time to sit down and read a book and I love reading but I found that since having children, I don’t have, I just don’t have the brain capacity for it. And if I sit down to read a book, I just fall asleep. I’m always tired. I mean, I have been for the last nine years since having children and before that when we had a pub. So I would sit down to read and and I would, I literally fall asleep if I try to read a physical book. So I’ve actually converted to audiobooks now. So I always have a book that I listen to when I’m going out for a walk with the dog or if I’m in the car, there’s always an audio book playing or if I’m cooking or folding washing or something. I’m always either listening to an audiobook or a podcast, one or the other, because that’s the only way that I can actually take in that information. It just doesn’t happen otherwise.

Wendy Wood
Yeah, I’m exactly the same, and it is since having children I literally, I start to read and I can just feel my eyes, and it probably is a wonderful book, it’s not the books fault, I just literally can’t keep my eyes open. But yeah, using audio. I did that for a while a couple years ago and then just got out of it but I, definitely should. Yeah. Get back into that because it is such a much more easier way of doing it, isn’t it? You still getting all that lovely stuff out of the books and stuff but you’re not falling asleep while you’re doing it.

Kate Butcher
It’s a good opportunity for multitasking.

Wendy Wood
Absolutely. it’s key, isn’t it?

Kate Butcher
It certainly is when you’re busy. Although they, you know, I’ve heard it, I’ve heard it said as well that multitasking is actually not great because if you can’t focus, you can’t focus effectively on any of the things that you’re focusing on. So certainly multitasking whilst working is never a good idea. But actually, I find I don’t need to focus that much on folding the washing, that should be all right. It doesn’t matter if I don’t do that brilliantly, you know, and likewise, listening to the book, as long as I’m taking in the vast majority of it. It doesn’t matter if it fold the washing at the same time. You know what I mean? It should be all right. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for the pearls of wisdom that you shared with us today Wendy. Before we totally wind up, please can you let us know where, where we can find you. If somebody wants to look you up? Find out more about you. Where will they find you?

Wendy Wood
Yeah, so if anybody wants to connect with me sort of about business coaching or just, you know, for inspiration in relation to business, then you can find me on Instagram at Wendywood_coaching. And my website is www.wendywoodcoaching.co.uk and anybody who is in the birth world, who’s interested in training to be a hypno birthing teacher, we are at The Little Birth Company or www.alittlebirthcompany.co.uk so do reach out, I’d love to, love to connect.

Kate Butcher
Fantastic and I have to say, anyone who doesn’t follow Wendy Wood for her coaching already, should do, because I really enjoy following your Instagram, I find your posts really inspirational and really enjoy watching the reels and things that you do. I haven’t had, I haven’t managed to get myself to do, I haven’t been able to bring myself to do a reel yet, I just can’t figure out anything that’s vaguely creative enough in my head to make it engaging for people, so, but I always do enjoy watching yours, and I find all of your content really engaging and inspiring, which is what drew me into working with you in the first place. So yeah, absolutely. Well worth a follow for, for anyone who is listening. Thank you again so much for your time today. It’s been lovely chatting to you.

Wendy Wood
And you Kate.

Kate Butcher
And we will wind to a close there. Thank you.

Wendy Wood
Lovely. Thank you. Bye.

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