AN INTERVIEW WITH FLEUR EMERY
I recently had a chat with the wonderful Fleur Emery!
Below is part of a conversation we had on an episode of the Do Good & Do Well podcast, where we talk about Fleur’s experiences in start-ups, curiosity, and why we need to just start doing the thing.
Sarah
This is Do Good and Do Well with me, Sarah Fox. The podcast where we explore how you can help make positive change in the world without losing yourself. Hello and welcome to today's episode of Do Good and Do Well. How are you today? How's it been? How are you getting on? I hope you are doing well.
I have today on the episode Fleur Emery.
Fleur is a fearless and informed startup expert and founder of REALWORK, an inclusive online membership created to inspire and equip women to work on and live on their own terms. Fleur founded REALWORK in June 2020 to deliver her own brand of practical, no nonsense advice to other female founders and freelancers. REALWORK offers women the space to work on their business alongside their peers in an atmosphere of collaboration and mutual support. Within the community, REALWORKers share goals, challenges, hard gained wins, resources and opportunities and advice. And Fleur is equally as happy to talk about her failures as her successes.
REALWORK is the culmination of Fleur's 20 years experience starting multiple businesses from the ground up. Her first brand went from concept to Waitrose in 18 months. The second from concept to house at the Ritz Hotel in the same timeframe. Fleur held a guest lectureship in business and branding at UCL and has consulted or been a net on multiple startups including Pip & Nut, Me So Tasty and Little Bandits.
Hello, Fleur and welcome to Do Good and Do Well. How are you today?
Fleur
Cheerful, happy to be here.
Sarah
So the first question then is what would you like people to know about you?
Fleur
Can I flip your question and use the opportunity, so instead of what I would like them to know about me, I'll demonstrate what my work is, in action, by saying, what I would like them to know about them. First, this is probably skewed towards women because I just work with women. So you're already kind, you don't have to work hard at being-, you're already kind. Take that off the list, take the wall chart down, take that sticker off the mirror, you know enough to start. And you don't have to deserve things. That kind of comes up a lot. That sort of-, suddenly, I untangled and I help other people untangle. And yeah, you don't need permission, you don't have to ask anyone, just start. So those things that I'd want other people to know about themselves are probably the things I know about myself after a lot of work. And that they're the things that I'd like to pass on.
Have you had that programme on Radio 4, Inheritance Tracks? It's a really short programme, and someone comes on and they say, This is a song that had meaning for me when I was young that I'd like to pass on. And yeah, they would be my inheritance tracks, you're already kind because you don't have to ask permission. You don't have to deserve things. You can start because there's a lot of preparation, isn't there? Once I've done that, I'll do it. I do a qualification, then I'll start the thing. I'll let the kids get a bit older, then I'll start with it. You don't have to wait. You can just do the thing.
Sarah
Yeah. I can certainly imagine, and maybe the thoughts that I probably had at one time and still do. And some of the listeners might be thinking, but hang on a minute, I've got to look after my kids. And I've got to look after my elderly mother who needs all that support. And I've only got a certain amount of time, and I've got all of these ideas. But how do I do that?
Fleur
Shall I tell you the answer? You just start. And what happens is, if you start doing the thing that is for you, and that you're interested in and comes naturally, creates space for you, the way you feel about yourself starts to change. Because this idea that I'm in a uniquely stuck position, because, you know, all of this exterior stuff is against me. So I can't start. That's a belief. And we know from history, we know that women have faced extraordinary difficulties and have managed to create ideas, businesses, value, communities, we know that. So it's just the starting, it starts to change us. And it creates room because it's something that we're excited about and it makes us feel different about ourselves.
Sarah
How did you come to these conclusions?
Fleur
I started my first business was an independent food brand 20 years ago, and there wasn't any kind of culture of community sharing, there was no funding, there was no nothing. We just made it Arthur and me and my sister did it. And we made masses of mistakes. It was great. It was a big hit. And we got the product in Waitrose and British Airways were in the paper, it was a crazy time, it was pre-social media. And the phone would ring and they say, Oh, hello, this is the Financial Times we'd like to come and interview you. You go, okay. Now, it's all like, how do you get PR? How do you get visible? But there were so few independent businesses then that, yeah, it was different. So kind of learned on the job. The editing, actually, in terms of motivation.
I was unemployable, I know that you've talked about being very happy in jobs before and how you have one foot in both worlds, that you're able to fit in organisations and thrive in organisations, but you know, you had an itch to scratch and so you stepped out a-, that wasn't my experience. I'm late in life ADHD diagnosis that I'm off the chart, I'm 100 on 100. I got to a point when I didn't know that about myself. So I tried lots of things. And I was really failing, really, I mean, sort of getting sacked, and I played poker for a living in the end, because I really didn't know what to do. Online poker is a great thing for someone with ADHD because you just get obsessed with it. And you need to work the angles. So I think I came in with-, I really had something to prove, I needed it to work. So I had a lot of gas in the tank. But yes, in terms of how we think and how we feel, those messages to other women. I kind of got there in the end, and I don't want it to be as painful getting there for them.
Sarah
Why do you do what you do now?
Fleur
It's just talking. I really like talking to people. I really like finding out what they're doing. Get really curious about it, always got an opinion. But how you can maybe if you did that, my friend did that. And this is what happened. There's conversations like that. And now, what's happened is I've been doing it for 20 years, I've got 20 years worth of continual conversations like that in my brain, and people pay to sort of access that. And to say, yes, to kick things around and formulate businesses that work, to turn their ideas into a working machine. Yeah, that they can live the life that they want, you know, they can have a business that functions in the way they want.
Sarah
I think you need someone but regardless of whether it's coaching, mentoring, consultancy, whatever, we want to call it, having someone by your side, I was looking at your website, actually. And I saw that you had your guiding principles.
Fleur
Yeah, we worked really hard on that. A lot of my work is very scrappy sauce. I'm the person who says, right, we can write a business plan today, I'm going to help you do it, blah, blah. But with that, no, I mean, I invested in help, education, and that piece of work came about with the whole team sitting there every week kicking things around being challenged, unpacking my unconscious bias over and over. And it wasn't great. You know, I do have a sort of inner Boris Johnson who comes out every now and again. And it's not pretty. And yeah, owning my inner Boris kind of stuff. It was quite hard. But I'm pleased with where we got to, because that document in our statement of values, it's really clear, and it's really usable.
I want things to be different for my kid, I want my girl child to be strong and brave, and know who she is. And then at dinner, say mum, mum, Do you want the chicken or the fish finger? I don't mind and have whatever's left. Is that what she is? Like mum doesn't have an opinion on this. Okay, mum just takes the leftovers. It's alright mum'll do it. What does mum even like? You know, mum is dying. What does she even like? We don't even know.
There's an amazing essay by June Jordan that someone gave me a copy, Many Rivers To Cross. She's a poet, feminist activist in America, who's no longer with us. Someone gave me a copy when I was a student. And it was one of those ones you read in the middle of the night and sort of rocked your world. And she talks about the death of her mother. And realising that, when she died, she died at the hands of her husband, it was brutal death, but at that point, it was like no one could almost tell if she was dead or not. Because she'd been slowly dying for so long. She just abandoned herself so long ago that no one could even just like live differently in our homes. Speak up, don't pass on the legacy of helplessness or whatever it is, in our own cultural lines. For me, the sort of British middle class thing is, yeah, helplessness and superiority. Using feigning weakness to manipulate, I can't manage it's hurting, you know? Or just not passing that stuff on.
Sarah
I'm smiling because the familiarity of that fish finger, chicken.
Fleur
Do you get that?
Sarah
I don't. I'm very clear about my needs. And my boundaries.
Fleur
It's good, isn't it?
Sarah
It is, and I think particularly having a daughter as well, I think. I have experienced a lot of do you want a cup of tea or a cup of coffee? Oh, I don't mind. Whatever you're making.
Fleur
The same thing about your conversation going back in one of your episodes about kindness and niceness because it's not kind to do that. It's annoying because I don't get to know you. If you tell me, do you like classical musical punk music? Oh, I don't mind. Well, what do you like? Well, we could go to either. It's like, well, I don't-, I won't know if you're having a shit time or not. I won't have the experience of knowing you. If you say, oh, I'm curious about punk music but I've never really listened to it. Okay, that's interesting, maybe we could do that or classical music, It's so boring. If you don't tell if-, we need to be known that we use that we need to be known.
Sarah
And I think what you said about not abandoning ourselves is so important.
Fleur
We've all done it many times, you know, women of my generation, we've abandoned ourselves in the rooms in the, in the suburbs, and, men all over the place. And because we didn't have language to take ourselves out of situations, we didn't have the-, vocabulary didn't exist that bus, we didn't have the bus, van, the night bus. And there's all written, there's all kinds of reasons why. We have abandoned ourselves over and over again, but we don't want to do it. We don't do want to do any more. Hence, enough, not be daring to do it.
And if you want to listen to the whole conversation, you can listen to the episode of Do Good & Do Well here.