How to grow a productive & happy team, Katharine Pooley, Founder & Executive President

With Zippia reporting that happy workers are 13% more productive than unhappy workers, clearly it’s crucial to maintain a supportive and welcoming company culture as you grow your business. Not only will this keep your employees motivated, but you’ll also reap the benefits of higher productivity. 

So, I wanted to find out how to grow a productive and happy team. That’s why I spoke with Katharine Pooley, Founder & Executive President of her eponymous luxury interior design studio. As one of the UK’s foremost interior designers, Katharine has grown her team to fifty people and adeptly balanced maintaining a creative environment with ensuring her team gets stuff done. 

Keep listening to hear Katharine’s advice on how to keep your team happy as well as productive as you scale and why thinking about the octopus effect can really help imbue each and every employee on a daily basis. 

Katherine's advice:
Know your limit in terms of number of employees
The happiness of your team is critical and will spring from:

• Enjoyment of the work
• Good collaboration
• Bonuses, salary raises and perks
• Knowing each other well
• Being allowed autonomy and being trusted
• Having a safe work environment
• A pleasant office with a reasonable commute
• Being trained and having the opportunity for meetings and discussions
• Examining a project after it has been delivered and discussing its good and bad points
• If a team is a happy one, productivity will be the result
• A happy team will be a loyal one and the longstanding employees will be so valuable
• Longstanding members can perhaps each manage their own team
• It’s a symbiotic relationship between employer and employed
• You need each other and ideally will stimulate each other

From the employer’s point of view, when interviewing:

• Try to assess the candidate quickly
• Trust the ones who speak with genuine warmth rather than the well-rehearsed speeches
• It’s important to like your employees
• Avoid ones who chatter rather than answering the question
• Those who can communicate and engage with you face to face will be strongest
• As the boss make sure you tackle your emails every single night
• If you have children be up front with them about what you need to do (and then make the most of your time with them)
• Give yourself goals at the start of the year and check up on them in August
• Remember, your enthusiasm will be infectious to your employees
• Be consistent 
• Always be approachable; make yourself available at all times and respond to requests
• Try to deal with problems yourself rather than handing them down
• Be prepared to forgive mistakes

FF&M enables you to own your own PR. Recorded, edited & published by Juliet Fallowfield, 2023 MD & Founder of PR & Communications consultancy for startups Fallow, Field & Mason.  Email us at hello@fallowfieldmason.com or DM us on instagram @fallowfieldmason. 

MUSIC CREDIT Funk Game Loop by Kevin MacLeod.  Link &  Licence

Transcript

Juliet Fallowfield: [00:00:00] Welcome to season 11 of How To Start Up, the podcast helping you start and scale your business with advice from entrepreneurs on what to do now, next, or never. This season, we'll be hearing about all things productivity from amazing entrepreneurs sharing how they've hacked theirs. Hosted by me, Juliet Fallowfield, founder of the B Corp certified PR communications and podcasting consultancy, Fallowfield & Mason. Our mission is to enable you to master your own storytelling, whether that be via PR or podcasting, all with a long term view.

Juliet Fallowfield: With Zippia reporting that happy workers are 13 percent more productive than unhappy ones. Clearly it's crucial to maintain a supportive company culture.

Juliet Fallowfield: Not only will this keep your employees motivated, but you'll also reap the benefits of higher productivity. With this in mind, I wanted to find out how to grow a productive and happy team. This is everything to me because people make or break any role that I am in. 

Juliet Fallowfield: So it was my pleasure to speak with Katharine Pooley, founder and executive president of her eponymous luxury interior design studio. [00:01:00] As one of the UK's foremost interior designers, Katharine has grown her team to 50 people and adeptly balance maintaining a creative environment whilst ensuring her team gets stuff done.

Juliet Fallowfield: Keep listening to hear Katharine's advice on how to keep your team happy as well as productive whilst you scale, and why your role as a founder will evolve as your team expands.

Juliet Fallowfield: Hi, Katharine, thank you so much for joining how to start up today. It's wonderful to have you on before we get into how you grew your happy and very productive team.

Juliet Fallowfield: It'd be great if you could give a bit of background as to who you are and a bit about the business that you started.

Katharine Pooley: Thank you for having me Juliet. So my name is Katharine Pooley and I am the owner, founder of Katharine Pooley limited, which is a very large interior design company based in the heart of Chelsea. We employ 50 people and we do projects all over the world, literally all over the world. And I've

Katharine Pooley: been going 20 years. 

Juliet Fallowfield: I remember hearing Grace Beverley, who's founder of TALA, and she was on a podcast she was doing [00:02:00] saying when her team got past 10, that felt like a huge stretch. And I've learned less is more. And we got to five or six and now we're back down to three, three and a half. And actually the more people you have, the more annual leave requests, the more pensions you have to set up, the more payroll you have to, and the more revenue you need to earn to pay these people.

Juliet Fallowfield: For you over the 20 years. What year were you in when you found and recruited your first employee?

Katharine Pooley: It was October 2004 and I only had one person and then I had four people so that was quite a good quick growth spurt from one to four and that's including a lovely cleaner who's been with me 20 years. Do you know it's funny about numbers if you don't mind me going straight

Katharine Pooley: into it because sometimes you just grow and you don't know how you got there or why you grew it's just the projects and the time frame and needing the help etc. And then you take on some interns and then you want to keep the interns because they become part of your family. I would never go above 50 ever. I think 50 is my limit. [00:03:00] When you go above 50 it causes all sorts of different parameters. You become a larger size company rather than a small company. Or I think I'm a medium sized company right now. Having said that, I don't think I want to revert back to 10 for me. 10 is too small. I find that in the summer months when like right now the office is quite empty and I always feel, Oh, I don't like it. I feel a little bit uncomfortable. But weirdly then there's that other side of it when everybody's in and it's crammed and we're all desperate for space it's trying to find that balance, but I would say my ideal number is probably 35 but you just go with the program.

Katharine Pooley: Sometimes you just can't control these things but you are right

Katharine Pooley: the more people the more pensions the more PAYE 

Juliet Fallowfield: and problems.

Juliet Fallowfield:  cause people have lives outside work and you want to support them and I think when you're dealing with human beings, and admittedly clients are also human beings, but a different sort, when it's your team, it becomes so important, but for you, obviously you felt the [00:04:00] business was growing at such a pace that you needed more people.

Juliet Fallowfield: Had you thought about productivity and efficiency from the get go, or is it something that you learned along the way and it's a massive question. How have you managed to trickle that down through your company culture?

Katharine Pooley: That's a fascinating one. And again, through COVID, remember when we were all working at home? Funnily enough, there was a lot more productivity being based from home because there was less travel. 

Katharine Pooley: Do I think we could be more productive? Yes, 100%. My team are going to hate me for saying that, but it's amazing as human beings, how much we can juggle multitask. It's about being organised and thorough and prioritising what's important, what's not important. But I, I don't want to overstretch them. I don't want to make them stressed. I think it's important just to keep going. And I think that's where I could have stayed at 35 and went to 50 because I wanted to have a little bit more breathing room to add in more [00:05:00] projects.

Juliet Fallowfield: And there's two things at play here, the productive and the happy. How important is it that your team are happy at work?

Katharine Pooley: Oh, it's everything, Juliet. It's

Katharine Pooley: critical. And don't get me wrong, because your staff can't be happy all the time. We are humans. But, if they're not happy, they're not going to work for you. I think loyalty is actually more important than this happiness. If they're loyal, you know that they will follow you through thick and thin, because there will be bad times. You know, we have had wars, and COVID, and recessions, and politics, and you name it. We've had so many things haven't we that have gone on in the last 20 years. But I, I'm quite proud that, you know, after these 50 people, you know, might have a management board of 12 people. They've all been with me 15, 16 years. I've got two people who've been with me 20 years. The average interior designers being with me eight years and some of the new ones are more six years. Six years in that sort of realm is, quite hard to have.

Katharine Pooley: [00:06:00] So whether we're doing things right, or they like the projects, or they like the team we must be doing something right.

Juliet Fallowfield: Absolutely. I used to work at Chanel for a very long time and the loyalty there was incredible. And when I left, I think my third role with them, there was a big exit of senior employees at the time and all the juniors were like, 10 years. You know, most people stay 20. I was like, guys, Outside of this bubble, 10 years is like a legacy career.

Juliet Fallowfield: Like, no, people change, especially at your age, every year, two year, three years to learn and grow. But that loyalty piece, I think, be careful what you wish for, because I've taken jobs for big promotions in my past before I became self employed, because on paper it looked like an amazing opportunity, but I was leaving an environment that was really collaborative and supportive and wonderful people.

Juliet Fallowfield: And for me, people make or break a job. And I think. Now, when you're self employed, the responsibility to look after your people is obviously huge, but you get to work with amazing people and you can choose who you work with, which is fantastic. And would you say that [00:07:00] the happiness or the loyalty or the mindset of your team impacts their productivity?

Katharine Pooley: There is no doubt about it that we work with a top 1 percent of population. We do get to work on some incredible projects. When you have incredible, incredible projects, you have incredible budgets. With incredible budgets, you get to design and use materials which we never normally have. So I think that's going to be one attraction. There's obviously going to be things like bonuses or salary increases. You know, I have always given, both and I think that helps them, you know with cost of inflation people are always looking for things like that I've also i've also been very good with my staff in the sense that we have lovely Christmas parties or they might have Valentine's box of chocolates, we get doughnuts coming we have gin and tonic nights.

Katharine Pooley: I give them yoga, you know, However, I don't think that's necessarily the most important thing for them. I I think it's more about safe environment not a volatile environment [00:08:00] and it's also, the offices are very nice offices. They're in a very nice area there by South Ken, near the Michelin building. It's easy to get to.

Katharine Pooley: There's a lot of different things. You know, they don't have to travel an hour out. You know, they're not travelling to Coventry. Do you know what I mean? It's really nice. It's really central. It's really close environment.

Juliet Fallowfield: And the work they're actually doing in their day in and their day out is work they'd like to do and they're proud of, which I think when you work for a brand such as yours is incredible 

Katharine Pooley: I give them a lot of autonomy, actually, and I think that's also very important. You've got to be allowing people to go, design, be who they are, and come back. I might criticise it when it comes back and say, you know what, this is great, but I would change this, this, and this, but you've given them that chance to go off and be a person.

Juliet Fallowfield: How, at the beginning, when you started and it was your business and you went from you, one employee to four employees, how did you let go and give them that autonomy and let them have that and trust that it was 

Katharine Pooley: going to work 

Katharine Pooley: don't think I've ever let them go. I'm a bit of a [00:09:00] control freak, isn't that awful?

Juliet Fallowfield: You're in interiors at a luxury level that you have to be. I'm sorry. Speaking as an ex Chanel employee, I know the standards.

Katharine Pooley: We do a lot of training. We do staff meetings. I tell them what I think is right and what's wrong. We always talk about, do you think you learned from it or you didn't learn from it? What would you like from the next project? This is what I wouldn't do. Look, we do that a lot less now with 50 people, but certainly at the very beginning, up to 10 people, 15 people, we were doing that all the time.

Katharine Pooley: You learn. And once we finished a project, we will tell the employee to stand up and do what they call A CPD. CPD is like a presentation on that project. They've just done the pros and the cons, what went wrong, what was good, what was bad, how we could save more money how we could save money for the client, you know, all the things that we wouldn't normally talk about, which I think is a great way of learning.

Juliet Fallowfield: It's huge, I mean, and I went through B Corp last year and part of their process was feedback, feedback, feedback, 

Juliet Fallowfield: like ask your suppliers, ask your team, [00:10:00] ask your colleagues, ask your clients, ask everyone, any stakeholder in your business, you ask for feedback and I had been I'm naturally inquisitive, I ask anyway, hence the podcast, lots of questions, but you learn from the negative feedback.

Juliet Fallowfield: And to the point where I say to my team, I come back from the loo, I'm like, guys, I've had mascara halfway down my face all day. And you didn't tell me, I need you to tell me when I've got egg on my face and copywriting, whatever I do, and hopefully have had this open culture, but it's easy when you're under five people, 

Juliet Fallowfield: how have you managed to trickle that culture down through all of the people? Because you cannot be in touch with 50 people on a daily basis.

Katharine Pooley: It's an interesting one, but you're absolutely right. When you get to 50, you cannot know everybody inside out. I do make an effort, to go around to absolutely everybody, but to answer your question directly, I have a management board of 12 people.

Katharine Pooley: I think I told you who've all been with me 10 to 20 years. So a long time, and they are my octopus legs. So that we now have divided it into teams. And each one of [00:11:00] those members of the board manages a team. So they instantly handle the direct issues, questions, problems, projects. I'm involved in every single client, but they will manage the everyday to day issues.

Katharine Pooley: And when it escalates to a big problem, they will call me and I will go in and try and solve it.

Juliet Fallowfield: Amazing octopus legs, that's going to stay with me. That's genius because it's still connected, it's still all there, but it's trickling down. It's that lovely ripple effect and it goes up as well. But I think with your team, they know you and gosh, time is the most precious resource. But the longer I've had

Juliet Fallowfield: my colleagues with me, the faster things move and the scale is much more achievable. And if I'm bringing new people in is the hardest part because, and someone else said this is that the interview process only ends when they pass probation, not when they 

Juliet Fallowfield: start with the business 

Katharine Pooley: that's very true. 

Juliet Fallowfield: and it's hard.

Juliet Fallowfield: People is hard. It's everyone said it's the hardest part of running a business. How do you recruit the right people? 

Katharine Pooley: I used to work for Morgan Stanley before I joined

Katharine Pooley: [00:12:00] here and I was head of their MBA program. In fact, I was head of equities for Asia and I used to have a lot of people report to me. I think I feel very privileged to believe I have a great connection with people and understanding for people. I can gather information from them very quickly and know what they're like, whether they're, I don't know, hard workers, not such hard workers, or organised, not organised, you know, all those sorts of things. Most importantly, I want to hire nice people. That, that for me is, is really important.

Juliet Fallowfield: You have to like them. 

Katharine Pooley: you have to like them, yeah. 

Katharine Pooley: And do you know what's really important actually in an interview?

Katharine Pooley: Let the person interview you. Do not talk

Katharine Pooley: until you've had a question because that is also one of my pet peeves where you're in an interview and people carry on talking and you haven't even asked the question and you're like, okay, who's interviewing here? Is it you or is it me?

Juliet Fallowfield: I needed a whole series on interviews and recruitment because it's such a pivotal part of any business [00:13:00] and I know the answer to this question, but where would your business be today without this team that you've grown?

Katharine Pooley: Goodness. Well, sometimes I've often asked myself the other question, where would this team be without me? So actually they couldn't have this business without me because it is my vision. It is my energy. I am the one who gets up every morning and I am extremely organised, but equally I couldn't have my success without them.

Katharine Pooley: We are a symbiotic relationship. We feed off each other. I think that's the best way to answer that one.

Juliet Fallowfield: And I don't know about you, but I found me plus one other isn't two, it's four. And me plus three is 10 is exponential growth and job satisfaction when you've got the right people in the team.

Katharine Pooley: There's that saying you can go alone quickly, but you can only go far with a group of people and I think that's right I mean on my own I can [00:14:00] finish anything very quickly and I can go super fast but actually I to go really far and to do it.

Katharine Pooley: Well, you need a team of people.

Juliet Fallowfield: This is slightly off topic, but how do you still have enthusiasm given how hard it can be and how much energy it requires?

Juliet Fallowfield: How do you maintain your get up and go for your brand and your business? I was just talking to my boys are 12 and 14 and he's just picking his GCSEs and I did say to him

Katharine Pooley: you know, what do you want to do when you're older? And he's like, well, I want to be Marine. And I said, you know, it doesn't matter what you do as long as you're happy because you're in your job for such a long time, you've got to enjoy what you do. Don't get me wrong recently. You know, it's been quite a difficult market recently. Oh, I've got to get up and go, but actually. Every day is such a different day for me. I'm meeting such incredible clients and I just, I'm excited. I love my job. I love getting up in the morning. I love feeling I've got to get to the office.

Katharine Pooley: I really do. It's very rare that I don't want to come to the office. You know where they say have a bed day when you just stay in bed. I don't think I've had a [00:15:00] duvet day. I think I've only had one of those. I don't really have those, which is very lucky.

Juliet Fallowfield: Yeah. That's amazing. 

Katharine Pooley: I think that's mindset. 

Juliet Fallowfield: definitely, and you're in the right job because I think that's something that suddenly came off my shoulders when I was self employed is like, I was waking up deluded at three, four in the morning, like full of energy, like, Oh my God, there's so much to do. And it's so exciting.

Juliet Fallowfield: That did wear off because you can't sustain that year on year on year, but that energy and the hunger to learn and do stuff, and then you become quite addicted to it as well.

Katharine Pooley: I would say I'm a what do you call it? A workaholic. And funny enough during COVID, when we had to stay at home, I was, and I'm not a sad person. I was getting sad because I really wanted to get back to the office. So it's funny how after COVID everyone wants to work from home, but actually I really want to stay in

Katharine Pooley: the office. I need this stimulation.

Juliet Fallowfield: you need people around you, they feed your energy. Yeah, but there's this whole, you're introvert, extrovert, it's like, I just like people. I just want to talk to people and have conversations with people and learn.

Katharine Pooley: When we're discussing plans and layouts and [00:16:00] GAs, we need to be able to do it together. When you're doing it via Zoom, look, thank goodness for Zoom because it really helped us, didn't it? But there's nothing like seeing face to face.

Juliet Fallowfield: But it's a different connection you can have with people and friends who are architects say the same as like, I need to be looking over the shoulder of someone to stop them building that on a completely wrong side of the building. And I think it's really difficult because there's lots of businesses that require it.

Juliet Fallowfield: Like I work with a lot of jewellery brands. They physically need to be at a bench next to the safe with the diamonds. They can't really do that from home that often from a security perspective. I'm very fortunate. I can work remotely, but we know as a team, we need to see each other at least once a week to reconnect and just.

Juliet Fallowfield: How was your weekend? Oh, you've got new shoes. Like there's so many, no one knew what shoes people were wearing for a couple of years there. And it's a weird thing to say, but that extra relationship you build with someone is, is more than a Zoom that's just about work. So I completely agree with you. And I'd always fought companies and wanted to work from home.

Juliet Fallowfield: And now I'm like, get me to the office. So be careful what you 

Juliet Fallowfield: wish for.[00:17:00] 

Katharine Pooley: Yes. It's a nice balance.

Juliet Fallowfield: Yes, having the hybrid and the blend is really important. With your experience, are there any big clanger mistakes that you could share about recruiting people or things that people should avoid when looking to bring people into their team?

Katharine Pooley: Gosh, that's a difficult one.

Juliet Fallowfield: Is it knowing yourself first and knowing how you work at work? Yeah.

Katharine Pooley: So a CV is quite difficult to read, isn't it? First of all, it's always glorified. I, I never look at how many O levels, university, school. I don't. I look at hobbies. So if they've done a marathon or the Duke of Edinburgh awards or something or music or a charity, it tells a lot about a person. I think it's all about when you meet them face to face and you start talking to them, how they engage with you. Cause it can be quite intimidating from them. 

Katharine Pooley: We normally interview with, you know, two of us together, which, you know, two on one can be intimidating, but we do that only because of the timeframe. I think how they communicate, how they present, [00:18:00] how forward thinking they are, how they answer the questions, and really about passion. If they're a bit of a robot in their approach to the answers, you can, you know, it's very well thought out. Whereas if you know, they're just speaking from the heart, I think speaking from the heart is what's most important for me.

Juliet Fallowfield: Yeah, especially when you're in a creative industry, it's, it's everything. You want people with that, not vision, but to be able to bring your brand through into the work that they're doing. I just saw the AD France feature that 

Juliet Fallowfield: your client was featured in. It's incredible. And just for listeners to know, to get anything that's above a page in an editorial magazine, and you've got plentiful pages of utterly beautiful work 

Katharine Pooley: 20 years to be in this business, to get into AD. It was, it was a real, that was one of my great achievements. Actually. We're very proud.

Juliet Fallowfield: Congratulations. And how many people worked on that project to have that come to fruition? Oh, 

Katharine Pooley: It was, it was a big project. It was a very [00:19:00] big, exhausting, exciting, great opportunity project. And we had 260 craftsmen working on different bits and pieces for the Chateau.

Katharine Pooley: So yeah, it

Katharine Pooley: was an incredible, and it's only when you finish that you start to reap the rewards actually at the time you're like, Oh my gosh, this is hard work,

Katharine Pooley: but no, it's been a wonderful project.

Juliet Fallowfield: Yeah. Well, it's been recognised in one of the most prestigious interior magazines in the world. So huge congratulations to you and your team. Is there anything else you would like to share around as a founder being productive in your work? How do you manage your time? How do you manage your prioritisation?

Juliet Fallowfield: Anything around that?

Katharine Pooley: I'm writing this down cause I've got so much I want to share and I don't want to forget it.

Katharine Pooley: First of all, kids. So if you are a mum and you're working, I think it's really important to know you're never wrong and you're never guilty. You must just do your best. You're never going to be an exceptional boss or an exceptional mom because it's really hard to juggle both. And if you go into the [00:20:00] mindset thinking, it's okay, I'm just going to do my best and you're not going to feel guilty or bad about how much time that you're putting into it. I think that's really important having your own business. I also think talking to your kids about what you do, because there have been times when we've been on holiday and I've had to say to them, I'm really sorry, I need to manage this.

Katharine Pooley: So, managing your kids is important, but when you do have time with your kids, make sure you really make it extra special. I did kick the can, for example, and camping with the kids at the weekend, so that was really lovely. I never go to bed, without having done all my emails, I make sure that I do every single email in my inbox because if you don't do it today, I promise you tomorrow it will just be overloaded again.

Katharine Pooley: I think that's critical. Give goals every year. Actually I have a diary and I have goals, whether it's health, spiritual, family, finance, work, sports, home, you've got to write down what you want to achieve and then in August take a look at it, see if you've got anywhere close and then try for the next six months to [00:21:00] December to see if you've got anywhere further near the goals and then by January actually you'll see you've done quite well but if you don't challenge yourself and you don't ask yourself these questions I find you just plod through, life.

Katharine Pooley: My, my husband does goals, but they're ridiculous. You know, 20 marathons this year or, you know, sail across the inter I'm like, be realistic.

Katharine Pooley: They can be realistic goals. And you know, some, some years you just say, survive. I want to survive this year. It doesn't matter, but it's a goal. And as long as you set yourself steps, I think that's really important.

Juliet Fallowfield: I love that because it can feel insurmountable and then you do question what you're doing it for because you are working so hard and fast across a lot of different things. You wear many hats when you're running your own business. To tick stuff of success off going, I did that, I've achieved that. It could just be fixing the printer or recruiting somebody new or even firing somebody that shouldn't be a goal, but any fix that you've managed to do within your business is super important to celebrate.

Juliet Fallowfield: And I think [00:22:00] I grew up in luxury brands and typically you can always do more and in communications, you're horribly proactive anyway. It's never enough and I've really had to learn what enough is and what success looks like and it's very different to what I would have assumed four years ago. And for you, how do you enable your team to manage their time and prioritisation?

Juliet Fallowfield: Do you give them complete autonomy to do it or do you say, this is our company culture, we work these hours, how do you let them be the best versions?

Katharine Pooley: I think you give them autonomy, first of all. You see how they cope with that. If they're great and they thrive, then you can let them go off and do their bits and pieces. I obviously am involved in every single thing. I'll sit down with them and say, how are you doing? Have you done that? Or I need it back by the end of the day. Otherwise, I'll let them just go crack on. I think it's a lot of meetings. I think you've got to be super organised. I always say, write notes, write everything down, make sure you've done your to do list. And of course we have a culture and I think the seniors are teaching the juniors, et cetera, and it's going down the tiers. But I think it [00:23:00] starts with you, what you the enthusiasm you show for your business, they are going to learn from it. The same with your kids and your family, you know, it's, it's trickling down the down the ladders,

Juliet Fallowfield: The octopus, I love it.

Katharine Pooley: the octopus, you know.

Juliet Fallowfield: And what we do with our guests is we have the previous guest ask a question for the next guest and it's a kind of like baton that's handed on and the question actually that we had shared has changed because there's a scheduling shift. So to not to completely put this upon you, but I hope it's an interesting one.

Juliet Fallowfield: The question for you is what is the one small action you regularly do to make an improvements towards the bigger mission? gosh. Did they know, did they, did they know who I was going to

Juliet Fallowfield: No, I asked Nnenna if she wanted to know, she's like, no, no, I've thought about this since this question, I often ask a lot of people and I find it so interesting founders because it's actually the small things that matter that add up to be the biggest difference and a lot of people for me, it's like, well, how many people do you employ and when are you going to exit?

Juliet Fallowfield: And I was [00:24:00] like, I can choose my commute and do great work with clients. It's the small things for me that really matter and add up. But for her, it was, is there something that you regularly do in your business practice that has actually made quite a big difference in the long term?

Katharine Pooley: Very interesting question. I would say being consistent is in everything that you do. I think being approachable being obtainable and, and funny enough, Again, some of my staff were like, Oh, we want to be always busy. I'm like, my door is always open. And I think always responding to requests from your staff that day. Again, do not go to bed until you've finished that request. And if anybody will call me, which I get calls all the time, I will not go home. Do what you need to do today, because tomorrow will be a very, very different day. And you need to complete that day.

Juliet Fallowfield: Oh, that's incredible that you're able to achieve that because I don't think, I hope your staff know that that is a luxury and that many bosses don't offer that accessibility.

Katharine Pooley: You tell them that [00:25:00] Juliet.

Juliet Fallowfield: it's on the podcast so they can listen, but honestly, you know, I was at Chanel and Shangri La and De Beers and these lovely, wonderful big luxury brands, but the CEO's door was not open often and fair enough, there's a line of reporting that you go through, but 

Juliet Fallowfield: the times I had access to the CEO, in fact, it was Chanel Australia. He did a breakfast with 10 employees once a month for anyone at any level in the warehouse or the team in head office or the beauty counselors or the fashion assistants to come and meet and chat about the business and what their questions were.

Juliet Fallowfield: And it was amazing. And you could see that loyalty and that commitment and that interest in people really bought much more into the brand. It builds that strong relationship, but those, that consistency of always, no matter how busy you are. And Sam keeps calling me. So I'm sorry to bother you. I'm like, never apologise. Never ever apologise for calling.

Juliet Fallowfield: Like I will always want to have a conversation and I'll call you back straight away, but that consistency little and often every day, it's the same thing of like, if you have a fight with your partner, never go to sleep on [00:26:00] it 

Juliet Fallowfield: because You should always say, for weeks, but that's amazing that you give so much access and you must be very busy.

Katharine Pooley: Well, it's interesting because I am, but I always feel I am, but sometimes they feel that I'm not obtainable and it's interesting. I've written it down. Cause memory's going at the moment, but chairman's office doors closed and, his office door would've been closed because he would be so busy.

Katharine Pooley: He needs to achieve a lot. He does. And I, there's also this saying that it can be very lonely at the top. And I think for me, 2024, sometimes it's better not to share problems, deal with them yourself. I can cope with a great deal of stress. Perhaps your staff can't. So sometimes deal with the problems yourself.

Katharine Pooley: And I think that's very true. It can be lonely at the top. 

Juliet Fallowfield: 

Juliet Fallowfield: you do need to shut the door sometimes to get on with it to 

Juliet Fallowfield: protect the business and they need 

Katharine Pooley: Yeah. You can pop out when you need to share it.

Juliet Fallowfield: Yeah, and you can't, it's protecting yourself and protecting energy because you are putting your life vest on before your teams. And [00:27:00] I think a lot of employees don't, we work in a coworking office.

Juliet Fallowfield: We often overhear other companies, teams and cultures and things like that. And it's interesting to see how people do it, but yeah, if there is no business, there are no roles, so they need to be sort of sympathetic to all the other bits you're under.

Katharine Pooley:  We're getting a bit off piste here, but I do think one of the things for me is it is all about the employee. It's never about the employer anymore. So I'm always finding that I'm, are you okay? What can I do to improve? Do you want to move to have more light?

Katharine Pooley: You know, I don't think in 20 years I've ever had anyone come to me and say, What would you like? And I, that's my goal for 2025.

Katharine Pooley: What can I do to make your life better?

Katharine Pooley: Because actually, if you think about it, as an owner, we are always thinking of other people.

Katharine Pooley: Very rarely an employee will come and say, how can I make your life better? That's my new wishlist. Absolutely.

Juliet Fallowfield: day in your [00:28:00] shoes to appreciate all the things that you are ring fencing them from. And I had an interesting chat with a group of people last week and the assumption that was made of, I work remotely, I travel a lot. It's like, well, you're always on holiday and I'm like, funny one.

Juliet Fallowfield: And people assume things that they ought not to. And I think if they could actually have the insight of. The constant whirring in your brain, that would be great. Or someone, I remember when a colleague first made me a cup of tea and I was like, Oh my, this is amazing. Thank you. I really need, cause I was back to back to back Zoom calls and I was losing my voice and she made me a cup of tea and she just like shoved it over in the corner and I was like, I absolutely love it.

Juliet Fallowfield: It's the best money I've ever spent is you making me that cup of tea.

Katharine Pooley: do want to quickly share one other thing, which I think you've inspired me, is my son told me that the headmistress at his school had offered one of the children to be the headmistress for the day. And I think they all hated it by the way. They thought it was going to be amazing, but they hated it because they realised how [00:29:00] stressful it was. And I think I'm going to offer them all to be the chairman for one day

Katharine Pooley: and to take on to all these responsibilities and let's see how they cope.

Katharine Pooley: That's a brilliant 

Juliet Fallowfield: your diary 

Katharine Pooley: Manage everything.

Juliet Fallowfield: when my brain recalls it, there's a podcast about it. And I think it was Adam Grant, an occupational psychologist. He talked about it, how they were like, great, I'm going to run the company. It's like, okay, one day, magic wand, you can do anything you like.

Juliet Fallowfield: And they ended up at in a ball in the corner on a beanbag being like, we've spent all the money on beanbags and we've got no company left. And they suddenly had a real appreciation of the seat that you're sitting in and everything that you've done to get there. So. I hope that for you too, if not, I will come into the office and I'll make you a cup of tea and I'll show you them how 

Katharine Pooley: I do get teas every day. We've got a lovely lady at the front of the

Katharine Pooley: desk who makes beautiful tea. I'm very spoiled with my teas.

Katharine Pooley: She's just got to encourage me to eat. That's the only problem. I never have time, but they are good.

Juliet Fallowfield: what would your question be for the next guest? Could be anything about starting a business or productivity.

 One of the most important things for me [00:30:00] is the people that you rely on. For me, the two people that I rely on the most are my PAs and I do have two. One is for business and one is for personal because you need to get from A to B. I think the question I'd like to to ask is how important is it for you to trust and how easy is it for you to trust people? Because loyalty is everything, and until you trust people, you can't really embrace loyalty.

Juliet Fallowfield: Oh, it's huge. Trust is everything. And it comes from your team, your clients, any stakeholder in your business. And it's huge and it can really sting when it goes wrong. 

Katharine Pooley: And it can 

Juliet Fallowfield: been, it can. 

Katharine Pooley: it can. So yeah, you've got to really build bridges and forgiveness. Sorry. We must end Juliet with forgiveness because things are going to happen. They do happen in a business and people make mistakes, but try and forgive them and give them a second chance. But do try to forgive.

Katharine Pooley: It's [00:31:00] important.

Juliet Fallowfield: Yeah, it's very wise words. Thank you, Katharine, so much for your advice today. I really 

Katharine Pooley: you're so welcome. That's been great.

Juliet Fallowfield: I really hope you've enjoyed this conversation, you can find a recap of all the advice so kindly shared by guests in the show notes, along with our contact details, we'd love it.

Juliet Fallowfield: If you could rate and review or share this podcast, because it really does help other people discover it. To incentivise this a little, I would very happily offer you one of our PR guides on how to share editorial coverage legally. Just DM us or send us an email, hello@fallowfieldmason.com with review in the title and we'll share it on.