Six am.
You're exhausted, but you are sitting in front of your computer for your first Zoom meeting of the day. It goes for an hour, and then you have another eleven of those scheduled back to back. You are literally on Zoom for twelve hours straight without a break, and that is pretty much the story of your working life for the next few weeks. This is what Adore Beauty's co founder Kate Morris went through last year during an investor
road show. Not only did she have to keep her online beauty company running amid the chaos of COVID nineteen, she also floated a door on the Australian Stock Exchange for a six hundred million dollar price tag. So how did Kate stay sane during what was a crazy year? How does she juggle parenting two little people with the huge demands of her role, And what is the head of Australia's largest online beauty retailer do for her own beauty routine? And why was employing a stylist one of
the best decisions that she ever made. My name is doctor Amantha Imba. I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of Behavioral Science consultancy Inventium and this is how I work a show about how to help you do your best work. So I am very excited about this interview
with Kate because she is exceptionally awesome. And I can say that because I've known her for about five years and we're part of a business women's peer mentoring group, and the seven or eight of us meet up once a month to talk business, share business challenges, and help each other solve them. And from my experience of Kate, not only is she an incredibly savvy business woman, but she is also humble, hilarious and always gives me very
good beauty advice. Now in our business women's group, imposter syndrome is something that rears its head amongst us all, and it's definitely something that Kate has experienced.
I think for.
Anyone who has a brain and any kind of humility, I think impost syndrome like it's not all bad, right, you would worry about the people who don't have any of that. I think leaning into that fear has been
quite useful for me as a strategy. And I think also too, I learned another good strategy from a friend of ours mutually actually, sayan who decided that she was going to get over impost syndrome by asking all the questions that she needed to ask, And so instead of worrying about looking stupid by asking me a question, she'd think, well, do you want to look stupid or do you want to be stupid? So you may as well actually ask the question.
Yes, I love that I had sigh on the show.
I don't know a couple of years ago, now, I want to say, And then she talked about that.
I love that idea of.
Not wanting to appeal like the smartest person in the room, but wanting to leave the room being the smartest person. I think is how she put it. And I know for you that voice in your head that I'm sure a lot of listeners are familiar with when it comes to imposter syndrome, I believe you've given the voice a name.
Is that correct?
Various names, because there's a few different themes that can come up right, and I find it's often useful to name them differently, which makes me sound which makes me sound a bit cuckoo. Bit no. I think we all have those voices of negative self talk, and I find it useful to sometimes go okay, right, well, is this a useful story? Is this a useful thing that I want to be telling myself? And if not, well, you know,
thanks very much, Kevin. But I'm not really interested in your feedback today because you're not getting me where I want to go, and I'm not listening to you. And so I'm sure we've probably can all even pin it back to exactly whose voice it is, you know, was it your auntie or was it one of your teachers at school or something like that, So where all of
these internal naysaying voices come from. Or you're not good enough, you can't do this, blah blah blah, And it's useful for me to just distinguish it as being just blah blah blah. And I don't want to hear that. Thanks.
That's right.
It's just words and they don't have to mean anything if you don't want them to. Now, with these names, though, are they named after real people that have been in your life that you've internalized those voices or are they more like these archetypal characters that you named.
I'm kind of I'm looking for examples.
Obviously, if they're real people, you can give fake names, but I want to know specifics here.
One of them is a real person. I think there's some journalists that could have names. Usually I just make them up.
I won't ask you to name journalists on the show. Now. I know that the last twelve months have been.
Crazy for you for obvious reasons, but also because you thought, why not make the year even more challenging and let's take a door beauty public And having caught up with you through our women's peer mentoring group around once a month, I know that it was a full on year. And something you think about is rather than thinking about managing your time, you think about managing your energy. Can you tell me a bit about what that looks like.
Yeah, and that was something that so I find actually usually being busy kind of works for me to drive my energy. I find my energy will often kind of airb a bit. I there's nothing on that's exciting, or I have things on my to do list, but they're not things that I'm super excited about doing. Than that, I find that kind of an energy suck fun I'm
less productive. Whereas during the IPO, I mean I remember looking at the schedule that the bankers had presented to us in terms of the timeline and when we were supposed to be doing all these things, and I just looked at it and just went, you know, a mental just insane. You know, I think there must be a mistake here because you have me on six back to back days of twelve hours of zoom calls every day. I think you've made a mistake. And they said, no, no,
that's a road show. And I just looked at that and went okay. And so it wasn't really about managing my time during that, because my time was, you know, clearly very well managed. I mean we were on this, you know, every fifty minutes another call started, so my time was well and truly managed. But trying to manage my energy through all of that was really going to be the key thing so that I didn't sound like an absolute robot or just be in the fetal position
under my desk by the end of it. And for me, the way I managed my energy was to keep going back to purpose what was I really trying to achieve here, And what I'd done was put a little sticky note on the bottom of my monitor that I was going to be staring at for twelve hours a day, and the sticky note said, making history, because what we were trying to achieve with this IPO was going to be the largest ever Australian IPO with a woman founder and woman CEO, and to me that was something worth it.
And so I'd take that five minute break that I had between each call and have another espresso shot and eat too many jelly babies and then remind myself that we were trying to make history here and so that I could then start the next call of being asked all the same questions and delivering the same presentation and trying to do every every single one like it was the first time and like it was fresh.
What gave you the idea to have that sticky note and have that you're kind of guiding light through this?
That was the exec coach that we use at a door actually, so he had suggested that to me because I had a ranto him going, I don't know how I'm going to do this, and we're in lockdown and so there's certainly no safety valve or you being able to go out with some girlfriends and blow off steam afterwards, and I don't know how I'm going to do it. And he said, your purpose will give you energy you need to keep reminding yourself why are you doing this? And it was a useful reminder.
What other things did the coach share with you? Strategies that you did end up applying and that you found really useful.
A lot of it is about his particular style anyway, is looking at your own personal values and your personal skill set, and where those things interact is your zone of genius. And so I'm making sure you get to spend enough time doing those things that both excite you and that you're really good at, and that just general in life is a good place to be and a good thing to aim for the.
Zone of genius. So how did you figure out?
And I guess how can listeners figure out what their strengths are and what their key values are? Was there a process that you went through to make that clear?
Yes, he did get me to do. Oh, there was a bunch of sort of questionnaires. Clifton Strengths was one of them, and then there was another one that I forget the name of. And then we also went through a process of working out my personal values in terms of what are the things that are important to me in the way that I want to live my life At the moment.
How did that work.
Was that the coach asking questions of you or was there some sort of assessment to get clearer on your values? Because I think it's one of those things where everyone knows that if you are clearer on your values and you live a life according to your values, you.
Will be happier.
But most people, I think, actually one hundred percent clearer on what their values actually are.
I think it started with a process. It was a little while back, a whole list of words, like maybe sixty or one hundred different words, and for you to go through initially and circle the ones that immediately spoke to you was things that were meaningful or things that you wanted in your life, or things that you felt that you'd used in the past to make decisions that
you were happy with. And so then you'd end up with a short least and then you'd go through and try and rank them in which terms of which ones you thought were the most important or and some of them would end up being grouped together. And then yeah, slowly go through and refining that until you get three or four or five that make the most sense to you and that you felt okay, Well, if you were getting these things out of life, then you would feel pretty good about that.
So with your values, can you give me an example of, say, what one of those values emerged as being and then how that translated to essentially improving your workday or managing your energy better.
So one of the values for me, and this is this is a fairly personal question, Amantha, but oh my friends, so let's go there. You know, one of them for me is spark. So for me, I really thrive and get a lot of energy from those moments where I feel like I'm having a conversation, for instance, with a mentee and where you identify places where my experience and
skills can add value to that particular person. And so it's you know, those meetings that you have where you end up bouncing off of each other and you realize that one plus one equals seven because of the alignment
of values or the alignment of goals. Like for me, I get a buzz out of that, and so I guess what that's equated to for me is making sure that there's enough of those moments in my week that I can kind of balance that up with the times where, for instance, I have to sit down and read really boring commercial contracts, which sometimes is part of my job, but I don't get a buzz out of that, And again it becomes about managing your energy and making sure that I get enough of those moments.
It reminds me of a guest that I had on quite a while ago, Marcus Buckingham, who's global expert on employee engagement, and he talks about research that he did that suggested that you only need to be doing stuff that you love twenty percent of the time to actually be really engaged at work, which surprised me, and I'm wondering, what do you reckon it is for you on any given week, Like that percentage of tasks or meetings or activities that energize you versus things that are less energizing.
It varies week to week, right, Like don't ask me on a week where I'm doing investor road shows. But although actually even mind you some of those, like when you're talking to people who really get what you're doing and can actually you know, give you new ideas, then spark happens there too, Right, So I think twenty percent is I think if you're getting twenty percent, then yeah, that's actually that's actually pretty fun.
When I heard that, I thought twenty percent, that's quite low, But then in a lot of people's working lives, that's probably somewhat realistic. So one of the things that I know you did last year when COVID hit is that you started an e retailer's Slack group. Can you tell me about what prompted that group.
Yeah, look at the very start of COVID, where every day we were getting new information and we didn't really know what was going to happen yet, and what was it going to mean, and was it going to affect us, and what was going to happen to the business, and just this huge environment of uncertainty, And we were at the stage in my business where we'd started We've thought, Okay, I think this is going to become something that we're going to need to deal with, and we need to
perhaps build out some scenarios. And you're simultaneously scenario planning for being really busy or twice as busy as you thought you were going to be, or having to shut down your business. There was not a lot of information coming through about what we needed to be doing to keep our team safe. There was sort of a little bit of information about social distancing and hand sanitizer, but
aside from that, very little. And I'd had a couple of conversations during the week from other online retailers who'd just been texting me, going, Hey, what are you guys doing about your warehouse or what are you doing with your teams there, or how are you thinking about getting things in from China and all of that kind of stuff, and do you think we should maybe get a few
of us on a call. And I was walking to work one day and thought, no, I think we need to get all of us on a call and try and work through this and see if we can share some knowledge. Because also to a lot of the people that I knew that were calling me were people who were pretty much sole proprietors and had maybe you know, eight or ten direct reports who were all looking to them for the answers, and everybody's very frightened and they were freaking out about what was going to maybe happen.
And so yes, put together this slack community when I got to work and took me I don't know, half an hour to whip that up and sent an email out to all the people that I know you in the online retail community, which is actually fairly close knit, like kind of everybody knows everybody, even though you have certainly you have very big retailers. You know, you have Booketopia and Temple and Webster in the Iconic and all
of those. But send an email around and just said, hey, look, if you want to, I've put this group together just so that we can all chat and share resources and if anybody has any information perhaps that others don't have, that we could share that. And we really times like this, I think we all just need to band together and yeah,
put that together. And I'd say within a week we had about one hundred and fifty retailers on there, and I'm probably three hundred in another week or so, and it just became this really valuable resource in the very early and information light days. I mean this is pre job keeper or anything like that. And so people would genuinely frightened that they were going to have to stand
their stuff down. And you had retailers who were very busy like a door was, and then you had others, for instance, in the one selling party addresses, who were suddenly very quiet and were very concerned about their staff and their ability for the business to survive and for people's jobs to be able to survive, and so they were doing things like swapping staff. So people would jump on and say, hey, look I've got five pick and
packers here in Brisbane. If anyone needs an extra hand today to get the orders out, they're keen for extra work. And so it was really great to be able to just share resources and I think help everybody feel like at least there wasn't some sort of secret font of information that they were missing out on least, everyone regardless of the size of their business, felt supported and like they had access to as much information as there was.
There are a couple of things that I really love about that.
Firstly, you make it sound so easy to set up this community of three hundred people, and just hearing you talk through it, well, you set up a Slack channel and you invite people via email, and then presumably you moderate the chat a little bit so it feels doable. But what I also like is that it's competitors helping each other, which I feel like it is quite a novel concept to a lot of businesses. I remember I first became aware of this idea of oh goodness, like
you can help your competitors. When I went on this tour of Silicon Valley maybe four or five years ago, and what I was finding is that a lot of the leaders of the different tech companies would actually have meetups, like the heads of engineering would all meet up together, and that all be competitors, but that still share different strategies and challenges that they were facing and so forth.
So I really love that, Like, how does that dynamic play out when you've essentially got three hundred businesses online and a lot of them are competing for the same consumer dollar.
I think it's really a thing that found its place in a time of crisis, right where you need to rights above the fact that everyone's competing for a consumer dollar and just come back to higher purpose in the sense that we're all business people and we're all actually all just people, and everybody needs a bit of support here. And also there's a lot of jobs at stake, and we are kind of all in this together, and if we all band together at this point, then maybe we
all stay afloat. And I think that's a pretty Australian thing to do, is banned together in a time of crisis, And we saw that happen during the bushfires and things as well. So it's not like there are competitive issues
that you don't have to consider. I mean, we actually had a lawyer who found out about the group and said, hey, it's great that you're doing this, but you probably also need to be really careful that these sorts of conversations are not happening between competitors, because then if you're hosting those,
then that would be bad. And I went, right, okay, well that's something I didn't think of, but yes, okay, okay, So we just had to make sure that we've dated the group rules and say, hey, don't anybody be talking about what your Google AdWords bids are.
Of course a lawyer, lawyers, lawyers on the parade.
Yeah, but look, I think by and large it was really a very very supportive and can community oriented atmosphere, particularly the time where information was security, right at least if you knew what was happening, you could do something about it.
How about internally, what sorts of things did you do practically to keep your team at a door motivated because a lot of them, you know, outside of the warehouse stuff, were working remotely and.
Look, it was really tough I mean it, certainly it's tough for me. For everybody, this is really hard, and particularly for those of us who thrive on those moments of connection as humans generally do. Then it was even harder.
I mean in the early days, the crisis management phase, a lot of it was just around communication and regular communication and passing on information as soon as we had it, and also to being very clear about what sources of information we were going to rely upon and what we weren't.
There was all kinds of rumors and sorts of things in the early days, and so we set out very clearly early on that we were going to be listening to Work Safe and the Victorian Department of Health, and those were the directives that we were going to be following. And whatever the herald sign might have said that day,
that was not one of our information sources. And so that was just to be really clear about what the definitions of actionable actionable information were as people were freaking out right and then also too so my co founder James and I would just make regular video updates that we would share with the team via Slacks or we
use Slack for our internal comms. It at a Dora as well, and so anytime we had new information that we needed to act upon or that change the way that we were doing things, that we would go out
and communicate that to the team in a video. And the feedback that we had from the team was that they really liked not just getting the information but also hearing it from us as if we were there, and that I think at least that gave them a bit more of a sense of security that the grown ups were in charge, even though it did not feel that way. We didn't always have the answers, but at least we could come out and say, okay, right, well, this is
the new information today. I know you've all asked about X y Z. We still don't know. But the regular comms was really helpful in terms of keeping people motivated ongoing. We tried all kinds of things. Something we tried, you know, our head of recruitment took it upon herself actually to just post a fun little conversation starter in Slack every day.
What's your favorite Tom Cruise movie or what is the album that you loved when you're in year twelve, or just fun little chit chat every day, which I think that was one of the things that we really missed about being in the office. I mean, you can transactionally complete all of your tasks, but it's not the same as actually just having incidental chitchat, so tried to put
that in there. We did a few sort of virtual events and virtual trivia nights and Zoom drinks on a Friday, and I think in Melbourne we all just got a bit exhausted of that. Even by the end of Lockdown number two. I don't think anyone wanted to see another social Zoom call, but even sometimes for people who were within the five k radius to meet up and do socially distanced walks just with another staff member who lived near you. But it was challenging. It was a difficult time.
I mean, we certainly managed to be productive, but I think everyone really did use all the energy they had to get to the end of it. So we actually had to start incentivizing people to take a couple of days off because nobody was taking holidays because you can
go anywhere. But of course people were getting really burnt out, and so we did up these kind of little virtual holiday packs and you could choose your itinery or you could pretend to go to Tokyo and they would get like a sushi making kit to make sushi at home, or or face mask kit, or you know, just try and get people to take a day off.
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We'll be back after this short break. Now.
Whenever I see you.
Kate, and I think I first met you during the Telstrap Business Women's Awards. I remember you were sitting on a panel. I think you had won the Innovation Award.
The year prior.
Yes when ye, yeah, yes, yes, And then I think it was twenty and sixteen that I must have been fine and I remember meeting you then And whenever I see you, which pre COVID was more frequently than now. You always look so stylish, like so just gorgeous, well put together, and so it really surprised me when I learned that you actually employed a stylist a few years ago. Here I was thinking, it just comes naturally, So can you tell me why did you make that decision?
There are realities, I think for women CEOs of women business leaders, in the sense that people look more at our clothes than they do it all the men who are just wearing boring suits and wear the same suits
all the time. And I was very aware of that, but then also felt like I didn't really know what I was doing on that front, and so every single time I had to go to some kind of business event, I would just basically in the week building up before it, just have this massive wardrobe crisis and never feel like
I had the right thing to wear. And I guess I would end up going to the event feeling not like the best version of myself or not how I wanted to look all the image that I wanted to be projecting, and I thought, you know, I'm just like, it's just really exhausting having to think about it all the time, Can I not delegate this is there must be someone who knows how to do this, and there was, and so yes, I enlisted a stylist who came to my house and went through my entire wardrobe and made
me throw out all the things that were dorky and made a list of what I needed, and she took me shopping for three or four hours, which is probably it's more exhausting than it sounds, actually, and just basically helped me to put together a wardrobe wear everything matched
with everything else. And there was formulas that I could use that understand, okay, well if you're wearing this kind of pant, you need this kind of shoe, and that I had all of that stuff ready to go and it was, oh gosh, it was one of the best things I ever did, actually, because now I had the right things to where to whatever the occasion might be.
And I think also too, she acknowledged that it wasn't just about oh, well, if you're going to a business event that says business attire, like what was business attire for me? Because if I was just wearing like a Hillary Clinton kind of pants, would I feel like myself? And in the end we decided not, and so I actually end up wearing jeans to most things. But also I feel confident doing it, so I think, yes, having And it's similar to the way I feel about beauty right.
It's like the whole point of it is not to look a certain way, but to feel a certain way. And for me, the stylist was just a path to making sure that I could feel like the most confident version of myself whenever I went to these things.
And I'm imagining it must have had an impact on just the time that it took to get ready and just minimizing decisions.
Is that fair to say?
Absolutely? I felt like I delegated the angst was great, someone else had already thought about this, and I'd had a third party umpire check that my outfits were acceptable, so it was all good.
I want to talk about your skin care and beauty routine and what you're currently doing, because I think about how you were describing the road show where you're doing twelve hours of zoom meetings like exhausted, but you need to be looking fresh and feeling confident. Can you take me through what does that morning routine look like for you, particularly when you have not had a big night's sleep and maybe not feeling your freshest.
Well. Look, I don't know if your podcast is actually long enough for all of you, Romanta, but look, I think as a general rule, for me, skincare is self care, and so I guess I don't see it as like an annoying thing that I have to do at the end of the day. I see it as a way of preparing and that's my metime and I find it relaxing. So I enjoy doing it in the morning as a
part of preparing myself mentally for my day. And I also enjoy taking my makeup off at night, like I don't be leap my makeup on ever, and I don't use those face wipes because they're just rubbish. So cleansing properly is really really important. I'm a big fan of serums, and usually I would layer probably two or three in the morning. So the skinceutical Sea for Ulix, this serum is one of my favorites. It is not cheap, but
it is really really good. So I apologize to anyone who goes and buys it after hearing this podcast, because you now have a really expensive habit. I'm very sorry. Yeah, it's a bit addictive. So yes, I usually layer some kind of active serum lots of hydration, so you basically can't have too much hydration. So hyaluronic acid serum is
really important. And I wear sunscreen every single day, and the one that I like at the moment is Ultraviolet Supreme Screen because it's been all in one, so I would just pop that on over the top of my serums. Is very hydrating, so I don't need to use another moisturizer as well. But even if I'm sitting zoom all day, I'm still sitting near a window. And as Australians, the biggest anti aging thing that we can do for askin is to protect it from the sun, so that's super
duper important. But then getting ready for zoom calls. Honestly, it's like there's nothing concealer can't fix. Concealer and blush are your two very best friends in terms of looking like you are awake.
I love that suncream that you use. I think you put me onto it and I use that every day.
I love it.
Yeah, yeah, so good, so good cleanser. What brand of cleanser are you currently using?
I usually have a few cleanses on the go at any one time. Actually, I like the Asap gentle cleansing gel. I like the Dermalist lactic acid cleanser, which is a bit more of an exfoliating ones. We don't necessarily use that every day. And the Sadashi lavender cleanser, which is just like a beautiful creamy It's actually got like a like a mineral clay base to it and it smells like a day bar. So I use that when I'm sort of giving myself a facial or something on a
Sunday because it just smells amazing. It smells like the day spar at qualia actually, which is heaven. And particularly during lockdown in Melbourne, that's where I wanted to pretend that I was.
And you mentioned a hyaluronic acid serum. Any go to brands with that one?
I would usually use either the Skin Suticles hyaluronic acid intensifier, or there's a PCA skin one. It's a bit spendy, but it really like makes your skin just look super plump and bouncy.
And now you mentioned concealer and blush. Where should we be putting conceala and what's your go to Conceala.
There's a couple that I like, and that's sort of various levels of intensity depending on how little sleep I actually have had or how much help I need. There's a Clarence one. It's like one of those little wind
up clickie pens. That's my basic every day. And then there's also the Makeup Forever Ultra HD Conceeala, which literally that's like the nuclear option that covers everything, but it doesn't crease, and so for me, I get shocking dark undry circles, and so I make sure I put it got my temples on either side of my nose, like there's that's a lot of people miss that bit. They put it just under their eyes but not in the
dark part to the sides of your nose. But that one's great because it doesn't crease and super amazing coverage and lots of shades.
Amazing.
I will be linking to all these in the show notes. By the way, and you mentioned blush and you go to blushes.
Yes, I really like. There's also Makeup Forever. I like a cream blush. I think it looks more natural than a powder blush. So the Makeup Forever makes a cream blush it comes in like a little refillable compact thingy, so you buy the compact and the little refills separately. And there's two shades that I like. One of them sort of a like a a brighter poppy coral, and then there's another one that's kind of more like a bricky shade. But they're both great, very easy to put on.
I just put them with my fingers.
Awesome.
And in terms of face masks, I know that you are a face mask fan.
What are your go tos for that?
I quite like a sleep mask because it's easy to put on at night and then you don't have to remember to take it off. You can just whack it on and sleep with it on. So the Aspect Probiotic mask is only one of my favorite sleep masks that's really really fab. I also like the Cedarshi brightening marine mineral mask again also smells like a day spar. I've been through jars of that stuff because it's just it's
a good all round. It's a bit deep cleansing and it's a bit moisturizing and brightening and just generally when you've just got that sort of my face just needs to look better. I use that one, and then if I'm being really splurgy, then the SK two sheet masks are quite delightful, but it's spendy.
Yeah, I know you've put me onto the Sadashi face mask because I often will ask you annoying questions because I know you've got nothing better to do than replied to, hey, Okay, what mask should.
I be using? So I do get onto that way? Thank you?
Yeah, yeah, I know it's what you want to be doing with your day. I want to talk about managing work and life because you've got too little people at home as well as a husband who is a co founder. How do you manage your non work life and just all the logistics that one needs to think about when when they're a parent but also looking after an absolutely huge business.
Look, I think it's actually, in some ways been a bit helpful that that we work together, because at least we get to kind of make up the rules for how we want things to work. So that's been handy. And I know it's not always so easy for people who were in different paid employment with their partner, and some employers are happier to be flexible than others. But we've been lucky to be able to make up the rules.
So I mean, for instance, when I came back from maternity leave, and I had very little maternity leave I think six weeks with the first and three weeks with the second, which you know, there's my choice only because I was climbing the walls and I'm just not the sort of person that can handle being at home with a baby all day long. That's just that's not for me. And so pretty much ever since then, we've always just
done things fifty to fifty. And so the thing that really throws a family routine off is if the kids get sick, and particularly now, you can't send them to jog here with a running nose in the way that I'm sure all parents have done in the past, not anymore. So with that, we'll just basically each look at our day and try and go, okay, right, well, I can have her in the morning, if you can have her in the afternoon, and we just split it up that way. We do. We have a lot of things outsourced in
our house. I'm very open about the fact that we have a lot of help. I'm not superwoman by any stretch of the imagination.
So what do you outsource?
Because I think this is great to know because from an external point of view, it's so easy for female leaders like yourself to look like superhuman.
But where are you getting help?
No? No, we're not no. And I think that's really important because I think a lot of women sort of judge themselves and go, well, I don't know how she's doing it because I can't do it, and you can't possibly do it, or you can't I mean just the laundry alone. It's one of the most horrific realizations of parenthood for me is to say, how much laundry there is?
So look, so we haven't nanny three days a week, which you know is an extraordinarily is an extraordinary privilege, but that's one of the key reasons that our house is functioning. So she will, you know, do laundry and school pickups and bits of grocery shopping and things during the week when we've run out of milk and I haven't had time to go and get any and she's just absolutely amazing. She's like a superhero. So that's great.
And she willn't even do doing things like taking the youngest to swimming lessons and that sort of stuff, because I think it's you know, you want to do all these things for your kids, but then also you can turn your weekends into these sort of terrible nightmares and running around from one task to the next. So we're lucky on that front, cleaning, gardening, what else. James does
all the cooking, So that's lucky for me. Yeah, for any working parent, and particularly for mums that don't have a lot of support from their partners, I think it's just it is extraordinarily difficult. And I think when we start asking why is there still a pay gap and why aren't women's careers progressing? I mean, oftentimes that's a big part of why is that just carrying the entire load of parenting and then also trying to successfully execute
a career that's not possible. There's not enough hours in the day for that.
What's your decision making process on what to outsource and what to do yourself?
I think for me, it's about trying to value my time as a resource to both my business and to my family and going okay, is it the way that I want to spend my time. Is this a valuable use of my time for me? For me to be clean the house or whatever, it is is that or given the amount of time that I have for my family, would I rather spend that time engaging with the kids or getting some exercise done or that kind of thing. And I get it, it's not a choice everybody has
the option to make. But for me, it's how do I want to be spending my time? What are the tasks that I can add value to, such as playing with the kids, and what are the tasks that it doesn't add any value to that task for me to be doing it. So, for instance, like I used to have this whole thing about like I really wanted to bake all the kid's birthday cakes myself, and I had this whole idea that I was only being a proper
mom if I baked all the birthday cakes myself. And it just got to a point one year where I was just like there was just too much on and I said to my daughter, I said, look, I'm really sorry, I just I'm not going to get time to make your cake this year. But if you like, here's a website where we can ad some off and you can pick which one you want. And she's like sweet, okay, and picked one that was like a unicorn that I could never have made and I said, I said, I said, honey,
I'm so sorry. Is it okay that I didn't make your cake for you? And she just looked at me, like with this kind of dull look on my face, and she's like, I don't care.
So I get a unicorn cake.
I get a unicorn cake. You would never have made me a unicorn cake. And I thought, no, that's true. Better mothers might have perhaps, But.
I look, I think it's so useful for listeners to think about.
I think I personally believe that there's always ways to think about spending your time more wisely and using money so that you can do that. And an example that I've given maybe a couple of times on the podcast
is pre covid. I found that every weekend, my daughter and I would have a ritual where we'd go to the markets, we'd get all our fruit and vegs for the week, and then I would proceed to spend like a good two hours doing food prep where I'd be stuck behind the kitchen bench doing the mind and I'm being task of cutting things. And so I thought, maybe
that's something I could outsource. So I ended up finding someone on air tasker and paid her fifty dollars to basically do all the food prep for the whole week, and fifty dollars like that's a dinner out or maybe an Uber eats in, And that just brought me so much more joy and brought me two hours of quality time with my daughter Frankie that I wouldn't have otherwise got. So I feel that there are like levels of outsourcing, but I feel like even a little bit of outsourcing is possible.
For almost everybody listening.
I would imagine, and.
I think equally you might have people who would go, actually, I really enjoy that food prep time because I'm going to stand up my daughter and I are going to do it together and we're going to have this little cooking session and I'd rather just have my Uber eats during the week because that's something I really want to
do it. It's just like, Okay, well, everybody's different in terms of where that exchange of time and money comes in, and you've just got to decide, like for me and for my family, what's the decision that works?
Absolutely, And my final question for you, Kate, is for people that want to connect with you and adore in some way, shape or form.
What is the best way.
To do that? Sure, you can find me on Instagram, So I'm Kate Adore Beauty on Instagram, or I'm Morris Underscore Kate on Twitter. Or you can come and find me on.
LinkedIn Fantastic or go to Adore Beauty dot a Door Beauty on all of the channels.
Excellent, excellent.
I linked to all that in the show notes, Kate, it has been so fun chatting with you and learning all about how you work. I've learned so many new things about you despite having known you for quite a while, So thank you for sharing.
It's been awesome.
Oh my pleasure.
Hello there.
That is it for today's show next Thursday, on How I Work. I am looking at imposter syndrome and I've gathered a few clips from interviews I've done over the last few years about people talking about their experience with imposter syndrome and how they manage it and even how they use it to their advantage. So if you have been known to suffer from imposter syndrome, you might want to hit subscribe or follow with wherever you're listening to this podcast so that you will be alerted when that
new episode drops. How I Work is produced by Inventium with production support from Dead Set Studios. The producer for this episode was the amazing Jenna Coda, and thank you to my dad Martin Nimba who did the audio mix and makes everything sound better than it would have otherwise. That is it for today and I will see you next time.