Is International Women's Day "going backwards"?
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Team Transmit spent March 2023 telling the stories of female founders who’ve experienced gender inequality at work and on their entrepreneurship journey. But that hasn’t been true for everyone.
Sam Spoors, founder of Talentheads, has a different perspective and thinks that International Women's Day isn’t all that helpful…
I’ve got a blended family with four children: two girls and two boys. As a mother, I don't want to just celebrate women.
I don't want us to still be talking about the struggles women have, because I don't believe that struggle that has ever stopped me.
Being a woman in business is a very positive thing, and I feel like we've made massive leaps and bounds forward.
Why International Women's Day may not be helping
There are nine of us at Talentheads at the moment and we're all ladies. We celebrate one another every single day.
From my perspective, every time International Women’s Day comes around and we talk about all the injustices, it’s like we go back a little bit. If we keep talking about it as if it's so very different to entrepreneurship for men, that's not helping to make business ownership a normal, accepted thing for women.
I'm 41 and I’m proud to be a mother of two girls whose opportunities are limitless. I would like to be seen on a level playing field with every single other person, rather than just being a female entrepreneur.
Laying the foundations
I always knew that I was a bit of an entrepreneur. I spent 11 years working in different recruitment agencies, international, national, boutique and high street - a very good mixture. I had a very loyal client and candidate base. One of my clients kept asking me to come in-house, and I said: “My children are too small. Let me wait until my children are a little bit older.”
When my youngest child got to an age where I felt I could change direction, I went in-house and spent five years as Head of Talent Acquisition for a large, national, multi-site hospitality business with over 9000 team members.
I took a lot of inspiration from the chief exec, who was a male.
I gained experience of mergers and acquisitions, buy-outs, selling the business, and refinancing. I learned so much that I knew I could take away and use in other businesses moving forwards.
Different priorities
I was on the road all the time, and I loved it, but I got really burnt out. I was doing video shoots in the Lake District one week, then I was in another city doing a graduate scheme. I got to the point where I was actually getting poorly. I wasn't looking after myself properly.
My marriage was really on the edge. I wasn't seeing the kids as much as I would like to see them. I was starting to worry about my long-term health and needed to do something different.
But I didn’t want to work for another business. I knew that with what I'd created over the past five years as a Head of Recruitment, I could pick up what I've learned and provide that to other businesses and help them grow.
I got investment really quickly, and it seemed like a good halfway house between being employed and being an entrepreneur, because the investors had taken all the financial risk. But they wanted to do something different. I learned a lot from that.
Going into a partnership without understanding what everyone's values were and what people wanted to get out of it was not the right thing to do.
Ultimately, when the recession hit and the investors pulled the funding out, I had to make my full team redundant. The sense of guilt was immense.
Quick to start again
It took me six months to get back on my feet and I started my current business in the pandemic of 2020. I had everything branded and ready to go, but I intended to spend those first few months just learning.
I planned to put myself through a lot of courses, and learn how to use software such as Canva. I thought I'd just upskill myself and not have too many expectations of the business, as the pandemic circumstances were completely outside of my control.
I borrowed £25,000 from Transmit Startups and used that to get my website up and running, invest in marketing collateral and the development of what the brand stood for.
For me, getting the Start Up Loan was really simple and the people who supported me with it helped me get off the starting blocks so that I could go out and win work from clients very quickly.
Setting up a business is much more simple than you think, but the first step that's the hardest.
For me, it was like: “I don’t have the money to set up this business, but I believe in it and I've got bags of enthusiasm, so what do I do?”
As soon as I got the Start Up Loan, it was like: “Right, we're in business now. Let's go!”
As we started our first full year in 2021, Talentheads won the Coopland's Bakery account, which was a massive win when it was just me at my kitchen table! I held on to about three or four clients until the summer of 2021, and then I started to recruit. We're up to nine team members and we've got two new starters later this month, which will take us up to 11 in less than three years.
A different take on talent
Talentheads is not a recruitment agency. We go into businesses and work there as team members alongside them, so we understand the values, the culture, the challenges and the development opportunities within the business. Then we help businesses strategically recruit for the longer term.
It's not just sourcing people. It's looking at what their employer brand and values are, identifying how competitive they are to secure the talent they need, and helping them stand out to their ideal candidates. When we come out of the business, they have a plan that they can implement themselves to recruit more effectively for the long term.
A seat at the table
For me, being a female entrepreneur means being able to balance what's going on with the people that you engage with. A lot of our clients do tend to be male, and I go in with a different perspective.
The clients that work best with Talentheads are people who are open-minded and have growth mindsets.
If I thought for any reason they were discriminating based on gender, I’d avoid them because I’m looking for long-term business relationships.
When there are big corporate dinners and awards ceremonies, men are still the majority. But I’ll be there, with my frock on, proud to represent women and sit at that table.
Inspiring the next generation
One of the main reasons I set up my own business was to take control for the future of my family.
I want to inspire my kids to be able to do something that's theirs, and not have to stand in anyone’s shadow.
As this business flourishes, we'll be able to look back as a family and remember how I worked at the kitchen table, interviewing candidates with my daughters reading their schoolbooks in the background. It's a journey we've all been on together.
My daughter has taken GCSE Business Studies, but we’d already been talking about profit and loss and our accounts at home. I want my family to see how hard work pays off.
As a mother, I love being able to look at the kids and say “We're going to Disneyland thanks to Talentheads, because I've worked my butt off all year.”
Has Sam's story got you thinking?
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