Simone Roche 00:24
Hello, hello, and welcome to the Northern Power Women podcast in this our We Are More season. I'm your host, Simone Roche and between now and the awards we're going to be talking to our winners and commended and our partners of the Northern Power Women Awards, doing what we do best which is showcasing and spotlighting role models. In case you haven't heard the Northern Power Women Awards are proudly the largest celebration of gender equality in Europe, created to highlight the amazing impact that individuals, organisations, teams and services are having whilst accelerating gender equality and wider inclusion from the North. And at Northern Power Women HQ we are passionate about continuing to build this community of trailblazers and go getters, because we know that what's the phrase I love, 'alone you can go fast, but together we can go far' and my guest today knows all about that Maggie Chen is the founder of Girls In Charge, who were named commended for the Innovation Award at the 2022 Awards back in March. Girls In Charge is an international social enterprise using gamification to help women build confidence and entrepreneurial skills. She is also the Board Member and Chair of the engagement board at Cheshire and Warrington, a local enterprise partnership, and these roles are invited to the House of Lords several times on topics related to entrepreneurship and education. Maggie is an International Keynote Speaker and Educator having previously tutored for Stanford University. She's also the youngest recipient of Cartier's Young Leader Award which celebrates the world's top impact entrepreneurs under 35. Maggie is a firm believer in empowering others and making everything she does impactful, creative, and fun. Welcome, Maggie.
Maggie Chen 02:05
Hello. It's so lovely to be here.
Simone Roche 02:08
Oh, it's brilliant. I'm loving having these conversations with our winners and our partners and our commended. It's brilliant to know, what have you been up to since Girls In Charge was commended at the Innovation Award earlier this year? And has it opened any doors for you?
Maggie Chen 02:21
Well yes, in so many ways. I mean, the award has raised our profile, it's helped us win grants, and definitely emboldened us to think of ourselves as innovative. The award empowered us to be more even more innovative. So now we're looking at setting up a Metaverse version of Girls In Charge, which is really exciting and kind of uncharted territory. And in terms of what we've been up to, we've redesigned our impact programme to be online and offline. So it's just being absolutely crazy.
Simone Roche 02:55
Oh, I love that the idea of a Girls In Charge metaverse is where she can have to keep us up to date on that as well. Because this the thing that we love about these podcasts is there's always a learning to take. There's always something that you can pass on. So it'll be great to hear about your experience. And we'll get you back on to talk about that as you progress with that, Maggie.
Maggie Chen 03:12
Oh, that would be fabulous.
Simone Roche 03:13
Let's take a step back. Tell us about the backstory and the motivation that led you to co-found Girls In Charge. And what have you learned from that entrepreneurial journey so far?
Maggie Chen 03:23
We've got to go all the way back to university. So in my first year of university, I ended up launching my first business which I named Shut Up and Dance through launching Shut Up and Dance which is a dancewear company. I learned a lot. In 2017, which is my second year uni I decided to you know, be like all the other student entrepreneurs and joined an accelerator programme. At the time out of around 40 participants, I was the only girl so I felt pretty isolated and wanted to understand why so few women considered entrepreneurship as a viable career option, or even just to dip their toes into it at university. By third year, I decided to face my fear of public speaking, and started to share my story with my peers at events and workshops, etc. And the really fascinating thing was after every single event, young women, my peers at the same university would come up to me and say what you're doing is amazing. I could never do that. In my head. I'm just like, Why? Why can't you do that you study business. I do languages like my degree had zero links to business, whereas they were doing degrees literally preparing them for the business world. So I decided to ask and having this conversation over and over again with many people.
I kind of categorised three types of answers. The first is one I don't have the personality for it. But is there really a personality for an entrepreneur. Two on the surface a great answer, I don't have a great idea. Well, have you tried to think of an idea? It's not like you go to sleep, and you wake up with an idea. And that's going to be the next Facebook? And generally people just say, well, no, I haven't tried to think of an idea, I just thought, when I have an idea I'll know. And the most interesting one was, even if I had an idea, I wouldn't know where to begin. But have you heard of this thing called Google? In there, it's just a lot of reasons that on the surface sound solid. But actually, if we delve a little bit deeper, we realised that the main problems experienced by young women, when it came to entrepreneurial consideration was actually a lack of confidence, skills, support and community in the world of entrepreneurship, whilst at university with all of those conversations in mind, Girls In Charge was born. Now almost four years on, we've upskilled over 4000 beneficiaries in three continents, and worked with some of the largest companies in the world, like Cartier and Fibre. So it's been an amazing journey. And I think I've learned so much through the experience with Shut Up and Dance because I was a student, I had no money, I couldn't pay anyone to do anything for me. So I had to do the accounting, the website, building, the branding, and all of which were just terrible. They needed many, many revisions. But that hands on experience was absolutely invaluable. It prepared me really well for Girls In Charge to make it what it is today, to be international to be known. And I think one of the simplest, but hardest lessons I learned was to just keep branding consistent across platforms through time, and make sure every single new idea you have linked back to the brand and the message you wanted to send, which is very hard for creative people, because you just come up with a new idea. And it's like, does this actually fit the brand? So yeah, lots of things to think about.
Simone Roche 07:06
Oh, that sounds very familiar, actually, from the, you know, I remember building my first Wix website and going on teaching yourself Canva, teaching yourself CRM, trying to teach yourself free agent, doing all the accounts, it is literally all of the juggling that comes along doesn't it with entrepreneurship, and the fact that you've you know, upskilled, 4000 women across three continents is absolutely just outstanding. Congratulations, you is absolutely amazing. And I love that top tip of keeping that branding consistent, because there is something about waking up without, oh, I've got another idea. Shall we create this? And you have to? You have to get yourself out your own way sometimes, don't you?
Maggie Chen 07:45
Yes, exactly.
Simone Roche 07:47
Well one of the things we built, we built a power platform that sits across Northern Power Women and the Power Collective. And it's, it's all there about building intentionally building and growing your network and showing sort of your skills with us, we passionately believe in paying it forward. And everyone's got something that they can give or gain. And so my only kind of knowledge around gamification is I love giving people the badges. I like, you know, being able to, you know, sort of whether you're a mentor, whether you're nominating whether you're getting involved in the events that we do, or on podcasts like this. So tell us can you sort of give us a speed lesson in gamification, tell me exactly what it is and why you believe it's so important for skills development?
Maggie Chen 08:28
Well, gamification, simply put, is just applying elements of gameplay into things that usually aren't associated with fun or playing. So for example, you mentioned badges. That's one part of gamification. In our case, it's converting traditional soft skills education, like networking and business ideation into a fun learning, by doing dynamic experience. So we combine theory and practical applications through games that we played as children. And our general approach revolves around five levels. So theory, playing, self reflection, learning and feedback. For example, we start off by taking the theory of different thinking styles and gamify it in one of our games, we literally just asked participants to doodle, and then they'd reflect on what they've drawn, and begin to understand their own thinking styles, whether they have a derivative or distinctive thinking process. And this is the learning part, right? But they've got there quite effortlessly, just by doodling for a couple minutes. And the feedback part is the most important. So here we're referring to feeding this new knowledge into daily work or life in order to just up your game. So gamification is really helpful for skills development, because it is hands on, and it's also not daunting. So that is a very key par. It's really comes across in our workshops for corporates. So we've run some workshops for very large companies. And the audience would include you know their Execs all the way down to their Junior Recruits. And often these groups just don't talk to each other. And they'd come in, it's set in their own groups, sometimes quite grumpy and gloomy, because they didn't want to come to a workshop. But a few games in, they'd not only be laughing and joking, but they'd be doing that together. And so this barrier of hierarchy just melts away through gamification. And that's why I think it's just so fantastic. Because it has so much power behind it.
Simone Roche 10:32
I love that. I love that and that just everything you talk about, I love the fact that you have that real emphasis on fun, and demystifying the world of entrepreneurship. Is this what makes you so different and unique, the fun factor?
Maggie Chen 10:45
Well, I'd like to think so because I think I'm still, I'm still a child, basically, I've just never grown up. But by making entrepreneurial skills development, fun, people can play, learn, meet each other and de stress all in the space of an hour, right? It's just very efficient. So one of the most memorable conversations I had was with a girl studying at the same university as me. And I was asking why she didn't consider entrepreneurship as a viable career option, to which she replied, because even just the word entrepreneurship is scary. So when the word itself feels inaccessible, we just have to put a lot more effort into making the thing itself accessible. And time commitment is also a top consideration for people when they want to dip their toes into the start-up world. And of course, mental health is a massive challenge these days, too. So having fun whilst gaining an insight into the world of entrepreneurship seemed like the most efficient way of solving many problems at once.
Simone Roche 11:50
And I need to need to connect you in with the wonderful Sharon Davis who was commended in the Transformational Leader category. She's the Chief Exec of Young Enterprise, again, it's again trying to just demystifying at a young age at a school age. So pre University, the thought of taking the scariness away about the word entrepreneur and I think even in the summer, I think I think Steven Bartlett on his Diary of a CEO, he did an interview with Gary Neville and Gary Neville kind of talks about the fact that he doesn't like the word entrepreneurial. You know, it's almost like it puts the fear of goodness into him kind of thing. So it's, it's really, you know, really interesting. That's kind of just sometimes like language. And you know, you are somebody who sets bold, audacious goals and you're on a mission to upskill 1 million women by 2030. How are you getting on with this really impressive goal?
Maggie Chen 12:39
Slowly but surely. So our impact programme will be bigger than ever this year, there'll be both online for everyone and on campus at a selection of universities. So if you do want to take part in listening to this, do check out our website to sign up. We are also reaching out to a much broader age range. So before we were focusing on universities, and now we're looking at working more closely with schools and colleges, and opening our impact programme up to the general public. So we're also working with women who have taken a career break and are returning to work. We're expanding internationally, and looking to launch the metaverse skills boot camp in the new year. So it's just being absolutely crazy since the awards, and very exciting.
Simone Roche 13:25
It's amazing. And we'll put all the details of girls in charge in the show notes as well. So people can find out more and get involved as well as you build your universe and metaverse. So we talk a lot about side hustles on on the podcast and in Northern Power Women and world and can be quite that buzz phrase. But I know you at one point thought of Girls In Charge as a side hustle. What would you think the value of having a side hustle is?
Maggie Chen 13:50
I think side hustles are absolutely wonderful. So for example, my first business Shut Up and Dance began as a side hustle. And to this day, it still is, but it's become passive income, which is fabulous. And also, more importantly, I think side hustles are just fantastic for gaining hands on experience that you wouldn't normally gain in your normal studies or work. So even with Girls In Charge, yes, it began as a side hustle for me. And for some of the team, it still is today. And I wanted it to be a platform for growth and development. And it really is that you know, be it externally in terms of our services and workshops, or internally where team members are free to choose their projects. Try out roles they have little experience in because we can always find experts to guide them but we truly value the willingness to learn and explore. So one of the first things we say to new members is that AT Girls In Charge failure is fine. And people are always so puzzled by this especially if they're still in education because failing is a terrible thing at school, but in business and in life failure can lead to so much more learning and growth than if things just went smoothly all the time. Right? So, with side hustles, you kind of just can't lose your getting skills or money, or ideally both.
Simone Roche 15:13
It's amazing. It is absolutely amazing. I think there's something around that, you know, fail often fail fast, you know, and I was talking with Liz Ashall Payne from Orcha, who was the winner of our Entrepreneur Award. And you know, she says you don't talk about sort of failing, it was almost about it's about how you get up. It's always about how you get up from these situations. And that so you've talked about the metaverse and watch this space coming in in January. But what is next for you.
Maggie Chen 15:39
Currently my focus and the focus of all of Girls In Charge is fully on the impact programme. After term once programming ends, I will be focusing on building partnerships with scale ups and larger businesses whose values align with us and businesses that you may not see around university campuses, so that we can increase the visibility of other industries among students. So if you're listening and thinking that might be you and your business, do drop me a message on LinkedIn. But you know, it's all very exciting at this point. And lots of different projects for me to be getting on within Girls In Charge and outside of it as well. So watch this space.
Simone Roche 15:39
We'd love to get involved with the Power Collective, we've been doing these sorts of speed, we call them micro mentoring, sort of one hour sessions. The next one we've got coming up in September. But you know, we've engaged something like 20,000 conversations, and it's absolutely about and it's was always really important to us, we have different individuals from different sectors, different backgrounds, different levels, but actually so important that we've got some brilliant entrepreneurs in there. You know, we've got to, you know, you've got to story tell You know, so we would welcome you and your team to be part of that as well Maggie. Thank you so, so much for chatting with me here today. And thank you all for tuning in today. If you want to get in touch with Maggie, please do check out the show notes connect with her on LinkedIn. She's got so much going on in the Impact Programme, the metaverse, you know, and equally don't forget her Shut Up and Dance. Don't forget that's that's there, as well. So, please do. Thank you for listening in today. If you love our episodes, please let us know by rating, reviewing, subscribing, wherever you get your podcasts. This helps us spread the stories of role model to accelerate in gender equality from the North. Reach out to us on all our socials at North Power Women on Twitter and Northern Power Women on all our other social media and let us know what you think all the podcasts that you've transcribed. We always have a cheat sheet as well because there's different ways that you want to engage with us. Join us next Monday when I'll be joined by another fantastic role model from the Northern Power Women community. I'm Simone Roche. You've been listening to the Northern Power Women podcast a What Goes On Media production