Chief Change Officer - Irish Mother of Three Lucy Gernon: From Biotech to Leadership Coaching for Ambitious Women

Episode Date: July 6, 2024

Who’s been rocking the podcast charts? We have! Since our launch, we’ve attained the highest rankings in Ireland—#1 in Careers and #2 in Business. And believe it or not, today we’re hosting our first ever phenomenal Irish guest! High time our chart-topping success met some true Irish flair. Based in Dublin, Ireland, Lucy Gernon is a dedicated mother of three and a millennial who brings a rich background in biotechnology and an extensive career in medical science to her recent entrepreneurial endeavors. She focuses on coaching both emerging and established women leaders. This podcast aims to do more than share success stories; it delves into real, lived experiences that include triumphs, challenges, unexpected events, and significant shifts. Lucy’s journey perfectly illustrates these aspects, providing deep insights that extend beyond her professional achievements. Episode Breakdown: 01:39—Meet Lucy Gernon: Two Decades in Biotech to a Two-Year Leap into Leadership Coaching 06:14—The Turning Point: How a Sudden Loss Rewrote the Script 10:39—Balancing Acts: Real Talk on Juggling Startups, Family, and Finances 14:48— How Being Coached Improves Her Coaching for Under-Confident Women 16:43—Defining Confidence: Lucy’s Take on an Overused Buzzword 18:59—Why Executive Presence Matters for Ambitious Women: Lucy’s Masterclass 22:59—Finding the Ideal Client: Lucy’s Journey Through Misses and Trials 26:28—AI vs. Human Touch: Lucy Explains What AI Can’t Replace in Coaching Connect with Us: Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Lucy Gernon Chief Change Officer: Make Change Ambitiously. A Modernist Community for Growth Progressives World's Number One Career Podcast Top 1: US, CA, MX, IE, HU, AT, CH, FI Top 10: GB, FR, SE, DE, TR, IT, ES Top 10: IN, JP, SG, AU  1.3 Million+ Streams 50+ Countries

Hello, welcome everyone. Welcome to Chief Change our first guest from Ireland, Lucy Garner. Lucy is not only a mother of three and a millennial, but she also has a background in biotech and has spent many years in medical science. Yet, in the last few years, she made a bold leap into entrepreneurship, now coaching emerging and established women leaders. Here on my show, I don't share and tell success stories to glorify success. I dive into real, lived experiences, complete with successes, setbacks, surprises, and all the twists and perks. Lucy's story is exactly that, and it's one I'm excited to explore beyond just the accolades she's received. Let's begin this journey together, now. Oh, thank you so much for having me, Vince. I'm so happy to be here with you today. Lucy, let's start with the juicy part of the interview with you telling us about your journey from biotechnology to woman leadership coaching.

Lots of twists and turns for sure, everybody in life. So yeah, so my name is Lucy Garnon and I am a triple certified multi-award winning executive coach. And I work with women in leadership roles to support them to achieve their leadership career goals with more confidence without sacrificing work-life balance, work-life harmony, work-life blend, whatever you want to call it, because it really is possible. And the reason I started my business is, like you shared, I'm from Ireland. I studied biotechnology. I was actually a microbiologist for a long time. I worked in the food and beverage sector for a while. And then I spent the majority of my two decades in American multinationals, primarily in the pharmaceutical industry. And I ran the microbiology department on a sterile manufacturing site. I had a team, I was involved in a lot of managing teams across different time zones and trying to coordinate

stakeholders across different time zones and things like that trying to get projects over the line and run the day-to-day operations as well and while I absolutely loved what I did for a certain period of time I always knew I had so much more to give so I always wanted I was even though I was a scientist my passion was always people and I've been told like there's a story from when I was seven years old I'm a Catholic and I remember we have the first holy communion where you get dressed up in your pretty white dress and you go up to the altar and you know all that good stuff and I was asked to do a reading at the ceremony and there was a boy from the other class and he did the first reading and I did the second reading and I remember even at that time being like oh I wanted to do the first reading why is it that it's the boy that gets to do the first reading he was really nervous

and actually the teacher recruited me to motivate him to he was so nervous he didn't really want to do it and even from a young age I always wanted to help other people so I remember being in my pretty white dress and he was looking at me terrified to go on the altar and there's a video of me smiling and nodding at him you can do it go do it and he did it so from a young age I always wanted to empower and support other people but I fell into science so long story, I spent my career in the pharmaceutical industry and I noticed a few problems when I was there. Number one, a lot of leaders, while they may be very technically competent in their field,

there's been a huge change and a huge shift in terms of what's expected today in leadership. And there's a lot more expectation of leaders to be inclusive, to be real, to be authentic, to all of this stuff. And I noticed there was a lot of conflict happening. There was a lot of women in particular, too, who weren't really owning their value and they knew inside that they could maybe climb the ladder and get up to those more senior roles but I'd see them people pleasing and playing small in front of certain dominant characters and then in other meetings they would be completely different and I had personally struggled with depression, anxiety, I had been a total people pleaser myself I didn't want to rock the boat with my superiors I certainly would never have gone on camera or spoken on stages or anything

like I do right now and I had done all of this work myself through going to therapy working with coaches and all that stuff so So in the end, bringing in all of my corporate experience, the challenges that I saw other leaders, other women in leadership facing and knowing I had this gift to inspire people, I had all of these frameworks and tools I had created myself that had helped me along my journey. I decided to basically start my business, which was the scariest thing I ever did in my whole entire life, but it's paid off. So that's it in a nutshell.

So you have this hidden burning fire inside you for long. Yet, I recall you told me once that when you share your first post on LinkedIn, that was the scariest moment in your life. So tell us more about how this transformation of you unfolded. I suppose I had always had this burning fire inside me that I knew I was capable of more. But of course, we all have inner critics, some people louder than others. And my inner critic was so loud. I didn't think I was good enough. I didn't think I was smart enough. I thought other

people knew more than me. And as a result, I played small. And what happened was in July 2020, so this time, literally actually this week, I think it was four years ago, I was in the kitchen with my husband and he got a phone call. I'll never forget to say that his dad had gone into hospital. His dad had like a pain in his shoulder. And his dad was a painter. He was 66 years old. He was full of life and vigor and youth. Really good fun. Somebody you could have a drink with and have a good laugh with and have dinner and stuff like that. And we didn't really think much of it.

But it transpired that he actually had an incurable brain tumor. Within six weeks of his diagnosis, he had sadly passed away. And it was in that moment when my father-in-law Richard passed that I realized that I had been living my life to please other people. I was afraid to really follow what I wanted to do because I was afraid it wouldn't work. We spoke off air that I've got three children. Jayden is 16, Sarah May is 12, Kate is 8.

I have a husband and a mortgage, but obviously we're equal partners in the marriage. And trying to make a decision about, I can't start a business. I haven't got an MBA. I don't know how to run a business, even though I'd run areas of business in the corporate world I wasn't sure if what to do it was a huge risk but when my father-in-law passed away it really made me realize you only have one life and you only get one shot to follow your dreams and I believe each and every one of us are here for a reason we're all here to experience something in this life to add value to have an experience to do something and what I've learned is that while I always had a desire to start a business I know

I actually tried to start a business 16 years ago an event planning business but I didn't know what I was doing so it didn't really work I always had a desire to be an entrepreneur I always wanted to work for myself but I didn't think it was possible and I want you to know anyone who's listening that anything is possible when you set your eye on your intention, when you get crystal clear on what you want, and when you take imperfect action. So I'm all about imperfect action, which is we can't wait for the time to be right to have the conversation or for the mortgage to be paid off before we do the thing that we really want, because tomorrow is is not guaranteed so I believe that you need to tune into your head heart and gut listen to your inner your soul your inner calling why are you

here and follow the path that it's trying to lead you on and I think I'm living testament to the fact that fast forward a couple of years into my business we had, we had been nominated for 17 different business awards. We won four, including best startup of the year in 2022. I've been featured all over the media, including big publications like Forbes. I have quite a full host of different Fortune 500 companies that I work with, Google and Pfizer and women from all the big brand names. And I've created something, I have a team of seven people supporting me too, part-time. And I've created something that was beyond my wildest dreams that I really wanted, but didn't think was possible.

You are a model of three and you're an entrepreneur. You've really shown us how to balance a family in a business. Many of our listeners face similar challenges. Worrying about mortgages and stable paychecks. Understanding that success isn't just handed to them. With your impressive journey, if you could share some practical advice for those dreaming of starting their own business, what would it be? How can they make that leap while still managing family commitments? In terms of my move, it wasn't an overnight decision. In my story,

I probably made it sound like I quit. It was very strategic. So I would advise anybody who is thinking about quitting, there's a few things you need to know. The first one is you need to be highly driven. I'm a highly driven person. And if I set my mind to achieve something, I achieve it. I've always been that way.

And I think if you've got that kind of mindset of, I have grit, I have resilience. I didn't have resilience, by the way. I think you need to be very resilient if you're going to step into entrepreneurship because you hear a lot of no's, there's a lot of setbacks. But I think it's really important that you have a drive and that you have a vision and a mission that are bigger

than you. I had a vision of a world where there were more women in senior leadership, where there were more women at those big, those board meetings, those C-level meetings, making decisions in tech companies and STEM industry and pharma and all the big financial companies that rule our economy, honestly. And a lot of those decisions are still being made by a board of white men in suits. I saw a lot of leadership teams really working in silos, creating awful toxic workplaces for their employees. When you're dealing with different time zones, a lot of people are dialing into calls at 1am to to accommodate time zones and nobody has the we haven't been taught skills and tools Vince to handle conflict to set boundaries to collaborate to say no but also to support your colleague I'm really good at conflict management

leadership all of that I started small so I started with as a side hustle so I said right in September 2020 I started coaching and I did the course and I started coaching straight away and then for the next 18 months no sorry for the next 13 months I started doing it on the side so I was coaching in the evenings I was coaching at the weekend I was testing the waters to see was there a market there was there actually a demand could I actually get paid to do this kind of work I did a lot of market research I did a lot of business courses so I really upskilled myself while I was still working in the corporate world I saved some money I didn't have a lot of money, but I knew I got to a point in October 2021 when I just couldn't do it anymore. I had it. I knew I could make it work. I had enough kind of social proof behind me. I had testimonials and

things. And then I left at Christmas that year and I went full time in my business in January 2022. So it was a journey to get to that place and you can absolutely do it once you have a strategy and the best thing I ever did was invest in coaches and mentors to support me so I invested heavily like I've invested I think over over the last couple of years I'm afraid to even say the figure but I've really upskilled myself in investing in mentorship coaching and different courses to get me where I want to be faster so I think if anyone is considering a career change I think don't be afraid to invest in yourself smart people hire other people who

are where they want to be to show them the fastest easiest quickest way to get there possible because if I can get a shortcut and I can pay somebody to do, that's what I'm all about. So that's my advice. You are a coach yourself now. Ever been on the other side of that? Being coached? How has being coached

helped you become better at helping your own clients? Great question. So I've invested heavily in different coaches and mentors and each of my different coaches has taught me something different. When you undergo a coaching certification, you change. So I always say there's Lucy before coaching and there's Lucy after coaching. And the biggest thing I learned from my very first coaching course was to love myself, was that I had a lot of limiting beliefs from childhood that were holding me back. My childhood conditioning was the reason that I didn't feel good enough, that I didn't feel smart enough.

And I was able to learn tools to overcome that. I specialize in mindset work as well. So a big part of what I do with my own clients is it's motivation, it's mindset, it's the confidence to actually take the action. Because without having, without my coaches, there's no way I'd be where I am today. They helped me, they gave me the encouragement, the motivation and the tools to move forward. And then the other thing I did was I had my coaches and mentors but I also joined like mastermind groups and memberships so I've been in a number of different peer cure groups of other

female entrepreneurs who are either at my level in business or they're a little below me or they're earning multi-millions and through being in those communities it's been a game changer because you're around like-minded people who really understand the challenges you're facing there's always somebody in the group who has been in your shoes and can share their experience or their perspective as well and that has been an absolute game changer. When we talked last time, you mentioned how much you focus on confidence in your coaching, especially for women at work. Yet, I've noticed that confidence is often overused, almost a buzzword in every training,

learning and tech product. I was wondering, how do you define confidence differently? Yeah, I agree with you. I think the word confidence is very overused. But for me, confidence is about having certainty in yourself and your ideas and being able to articulate that with a strong, positive energy to your audience. So I feel like that should be a quote that I take for this episode because that's literally it. It's about confidence comes from within. So I wasn't confident, which meant I wasn't certain in myself. It meant I didn't show up and voice an opinion because I was afraid of being judged or I was afraid to, like I had all these different tools and frameworks

I had developed myself. And when I started my business, I would have been quoting like Mel Robbins or different people. And it was one of my coaches said to me, she said, what about your frameworks? What about all the tools that you've used to achieve your goals to be a better leader all that stuff and I was like but I'm not I haven't done an organizational behavioral organizational degree and she said yeah but you have life experience so even just by having that conversation like it really empowered me I have tons of different thought leadership tools that I use with my clients and by that conversation I'm certain in them because I know they work so I think it's about you having certainty in your ideas having certainty in who you are and what you bring to the table and realizing that if you're promoting yourself or sharing an idea and the intent behind that is to add value to another person, I believe you should do it.

I believe you're doing a disservice to your audience if you're not doing it. So that's what I think confidence means. Speaking of coaching your clients to boost their confidence, I know you've developed a signature program called the Executive Presence Blueprint. Why did you create this program? What was your thought process behind it? And could you share some of the key principles that guide your approach? The reason I created it is because there's been such a huge change in the world. The changes

over the past decade Vince we've obviously had movements like the LGBTQ movement, we've got Me Too, we've had Black Lives Matter, we've had the wars that are going on in the world, we've had COVID, we've had so many different cultural shifts. And we have a new generation coming up behind us who, by all accounts, they are not as career focused as maybe my generation. I'm a millennial. four, Harvard Business Review released a paper on the changes in executive presence between 2012 and today. And they looked at the differences in executives, what's expected, what executive presence means, because a lot of people, it's an elusive term. They're told they need to work on their executive presence. They don't really understand what it means. So I did a lot of research myself to go, what does it mean? When it comes to executive

presence, there's three main pillars. The first one is gravitas. The second one is communication. And the third one is appearance. These have been in place for many years. This is what would have been needed to be a strong executive or a strong leader some of the biggest changes in executive presence is people are looking for authenticity so in their leaders they no longer want this kind of a idea of a white man in suit being really forceful like forcefulness would have been a trait under the communication pillar they don't want that anymore they want more authenticity. They want more of a listen to learn orientation rather than being forceful. And people want more respect from their leaders. Vision has become more important. So for leaders to really stand out, they need to

have a really strong vision. And that's become more important between the data from 2020 or 2012 2022 also inclusion is a huge thing so leaders are expected to be more inclusive and again while i believe most people try to do their best they don't necessarily understand inclusion they don't understand what it really means they don't understand to be how to be really emotionally intelligent and how to do all that good stuff and one of the biggest things, and it has never changed, the top two traits of executive presence are number one, confidence, and number two, it's decisiveness. And when I looked at the corporate world, and in particular, many women in leadership,

from my own experience doing private executive coaching with them, and also in my membership 360 Leaders Club I noticed confidence to make decisions was a big challenge for them and also a framework to make decisions so I decided I'd create a course that would basically help them to make decisions to be more assertive to build their confidence and charisma help them to rebrand themselves so the course walks through, there's a whole module on crafting your personal brand as a leader so that you can bring in your values, your strengths, your story. So it's helping them to come up with their stories.

There's a module on mastering communication and gravitas. You're expected to be able to command a Zoom room now. A lot of leaders haven't really got that down yet because they're used to in person and then also inclusion is a really big thing and being more emotionally intelligent getting the balance of the masculine and energy masculine and feminine energy right the feedback has been phenomenal in particular on the confidence and decision making. In all of your time helping clients, have you ever had a situation where the learning outcome didn't quite meet your expectations? And what did you learn from that experience? I remember when I first started my business, I was coaching some people who would have been at maybe lower levels in the organization who just didn't want to progress, who just didn't have the drive or the ambition. And personally,

I found that really frustrating because they were hiring me to help them at the time I was career coaching to figure out their career path, but yet they weren't really willing to take any action that's absolutely their choice what I learned from working with my non-ideal clients is who my ideal clients really are when somebody invests to work with me I really take it seriously I want them to get the results and it was super disheartening sometimes to see people not using the tools, not taking the action. But what I learned from that is it's not any of our jobs to fix somebody else. They have got to do the work. And so what that taught me was to really seek out my ideal clients, which would be women who are ambitious, who are driven, who are ready to put in the work for themselves. And I know who

they are now because I've worked with enough of them to know who are the action who are ready to put in the work for themselves. And I know who they are now because I've worked with enough of them to know who are the action takers and who aren't. Because unless you're willing to take action, nothing is going to change. So who are your ideal clients? Could you describe them for us? Perhaps some of our listeners might be interested in seeking your help? Yeah, sure. Yeah, so my ideal client is a woman in senior corporate leadership or a female founder who is scaling her business. So this woman would be maybe at a director, senior director, vice president, senior vice president C-level. And they have big ambitions

and big goals and they're very driven to advance their careers and usually the thing that's blocking them is confidence to actually take action they usually don't like conflict they usually are in this pick me energy waiting for opportunities to come and feeling like maybe they're not good enough they might be doubting themselves in terms of their capabilities and they may be thinking about maybe quitting the corporate world because they feel like they can't make it or they may be feeling super frustrated that their peers are getting ahead and they're still stuck they want to be the best leaders they want to be taken seriously they're impact

driven they want to they really want to make an impact in the world but they don't have all the skills and tools they need to lead their teams effectively they may lack emotional intelligence which is all these soft leadership skills are absolutely crucial for career advancement and that's the stuff that I work with them on would be giving them skills and tools to actually be more emotionally intelligent, to lead their teams more effectively but more importantly to really lead themselves, to be able to manage their emotions, to be able to show up with confidence and certainty and so that's my ideal client is somebody who's working towards either a promotion or somebody who's just been promoted and wants to make a huge impact in their industry and in their organization.

These days, I always like to end our conversation with a multi-billion dollar question. We're entering the AI era with innovations like AI agents and AI coaches emerging. From a coaching perspective, how do you see this AI-human partnership evolving? And in what ways do you think human coaches like yourself still hold a competitive advantage over AI advancements? Yeah great question so firstly I'm not threatened by AI at all I because from a coaching perspective I believe it can only actually enhance our services. Harvard actually did an 85 year study where they were trying to really look at what was the most important factor in determining our happiness in life and in our longevity of our life and what they found was they basically followed 700

plus people from adolescence to old age and they studied they were trying to study happiness the biggest positive psychology happiness study ever done and what they found was that the number one thing that made them was the most important factor in determining happiness is actually the quality of our relationships so I don't believe I know AI will never replace a human relationship which is why I think coaches don't need to worry because as humans we're always going to want connection with other humans. It's literally hardwired into our DNA. I believe AI can help us. I use AI all of the time. For example, I mentioned I have my coaching frameworks. I might have a vision or an idea for a framework and I'll use AI to say, hey, I'm trying to come up with this tool for making a career decision. Here's what I'm thinking and can you help me make this better or can you give me a different word for this because I want it to fit

into an acronym that's easy to remember I believe that AI working with AI as opposed to working against it is going to really be super powerful for coaches because we can create content and tools and frameworks that are going to be better, which means you can better serve your clients and your audience in that way. Let's give a big round of applause to our first guest from Ireland for her courage and strength as a mother of three. Not only realizing her own ambitions, but also helping other ambitious women achieve their dreams through human connections. Thank you, Lucy. You're so welcome. You are so welcome. Thank you so much for having me, Vince.

If you like what you heard today, make sure to subscribe to our show to get all the latest updates. Thank you for tuning in. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Until next time, take care.