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Patsy quit her job. Susannah quit the city. Now they’re on a quest to find the path through the wobbly middle of their careers. This podcast is for every woman who’s asking “What now?”.
Hosted by Susannah de Jager and Patsy Day, The Wobbly Middle features interviews with famed city superwomen, dazzling entrepreneurs and revolutionary midwives and doctors who reveal what they’ve learnt through their own wobbly middle experiences.
[00:00:05] Patsy Day: Hi, Susannah.
[00:00:06] Susannah de Jager: Hi Pats. How's your wobbly middle?
[00:00:09] Patsy Day: I have to say I'm feeling very pleased with myself. I started an online course last year, 12 units, eight assignments, and I did it. I started something and finished it, and honestly, no one is more surprised than me. I also want to give a shout out to my friend Jess because she did the same and it really feels good.
If there's anyone else out there started a course or finished it or thinking about it, get in touch and tell us all about it. How's your wobbly middle?
[00:00:45] Susannah de Jager: So I've been thinking about how to focus. It's just so exceptionally hard. We live in such distractible times and I'm definitely subject to it. The temptation to flip from one thing to another and be busy is almost like a cult, the cult of busyness.
There was something that I used at work, but I was really thinking about it in the context of how we approach our lives at home and this period of our lives where you're trying to make space for new projects, and it's called the Eisenhower Matrix.
It's worth looking up because the visualisation is really important and it splits things into a grid between urgent, not urgent and important, not important, and it basically says that anything that's not urgent and not important, you should delete from your to-do list. Things that are urgent and not important, you should delegate. Things that are not urgent and important, you should schedule, and then the top one, urgent and important you should do. And I think that we should apply this to our lives.
I'm really excited about speaking to Hannah today because she seems to me as somebody that's brilliant at working out how to direct and conserve her energy, and I'm looking forward to hearing what tips she has for us as well.
[00:01:56] Patsy Day: Hannah McCracken had a dream job in advertising, working with big brands and exciting ideas.Then she had a family and took a career break, a six year career break. When she was ready to go back, she was told that her ambition to return to work at the same level with flexibility was totally unrealistic. She should take less money, a lower position.
Refusing to accept this, Hannah took counsel from other women, not least friend of the pod, hell and Wright, and persevered. Hannah's story is one of strength of character, determination, and a reminder not to listen to the wrong people. She also teaches us about building and retaining our self-belief even when we step out of the workplace. Here's Hannah.
[00:02:46] Susannah de Jager: Hannah, thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:02:49] Hannah McCracken: I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you.
[00:02:52] Susannah de Jager: We've spoken before about how you view your career and how it fits within your broader life, and I would love to start this conversation with your thoughts because I thought they were rather beautiful.
[00:03:04] Hannah McCracken: Thank you. I've been really lucky from day one, my career has been a complete joy and a challenge and a wonder and a really large part of my identity. That is as true today at the age of 46, as it was when I was 21 when I started out. And life now is a lot more complicated for me at this point in my wobbly middle, with three wonderful children and all the moving parts that come with that alongside working full time. But throughout the steps between 21 and here, the consistent piece in terms of that golden thread that my career has given me has been very important, and it's been something that I have fiercely protected, defended, and nurtured because amongst all those moving parts of life, that golden thread is the thing that is uniquely mine. I so willingly am connected to all those moving parts of family and life and friends. But that golden thread that little part of the story that's really unique to me and that is supported by all those other things around me. But I think that sense of belonging to my career has been and always will be important to me.
[00:04:29] Susannah de Jager: I absolutely love that, and the idea of it belonging to you and you to it. Tell us a bit about your career.
[00:04:37] Hannah McCracken: It really started with me losing an umbrella, actually, and I think sometimes life serves you a happy little accident that nudges you in a particular direction and the start really of my story career-wise was losing a, a little and probably fairly rubbish black umbrella at Nottingham University.
I needed to go to the lost property department to try and recover said umbrella and it was shut. And next to the lost property department, was the careers department and I wandered in. I can still smell actually in my head, what that place smelt like.
It was a little sort of porter cabin style building. Nothing particularly fancy, but there was a really practical, alphabetical guide to careers. So I thought, well, while I'm here, I might as well have a flip through, and I didn't get beyond the letter A for advertising, and I wish I could remember what the description was. But it was interesting and alluring enough to me to really talk to my gut about what I wanted to do, and my career in advertising has spanned all that time and really started in that moment of realising that a career that would blend creativity and business was absolutely for me.
[00:06:05] Patsy Day: You worked at two of the biggest advertising agencies in the world.
[00:06:08] Hannah McCracken: Yeah, it's a tough and competitive world advertising and I was very much told early on that it would be difficult to get into, and I love it when someone tells me something's going to be hard because it just lights a fire under your feet in a really compelling way because you are not just proving it to yourself, you're proving it to the people that have questioned your ability to succeed.
[00:06:32] Patsy Day: So I really focused on getting a place on one of the graduate training schemes and was very lucky to land one at TBWA, where the first account I was working on was with the Labor Party for the general election back then. So I was working on a very high profile account and I was incredibly lucky to be working with some of the best minds and creative talent in the whole industry. So the benchmark was really set there. One of the wonderful things about advertising is that you get to work and dip your toe into so many businesses because one day you might be working with labor the next you're working with Mars, or newspapers or retailers. So it's a fascinating and really multifaceted career. But it wasn't all, you haven't just gone from advertising role to advertising role. Tell us what happened.
[00:07:29] Hannah McCracken: I
went back to work after our first child was born, and then I stopped for a while, while number two and number three came along.We were really lucky, they came along quite close together. Boy, that was a busy time. My husband was traveling quite a lot, so I took a complete break for a couple of years.
I think it was always my hope and plan to go back into the world of advertising. But we have to remember, this is pre covid where the world of flexibility was very, very different in terms of businesses understanding of the commercial value of flex and the value of talent. So I had a few years not working at all, looking after our children, and then I slowly started to move back towards doing something.
[00:08:22] Patsy Day: I just want to ask you about the point at which you decided you were going to step away from work and focus on your family.
[00:08:30] Hannah McCracken: It was a really difficult decision actually for me because work had always been such an important part of my identity and I loved and still love work. But it was very clear to me that in order to grow the family that we were hoping to have, I needed to wholeheartedly be able to focus and give myself entirely to that.
There are some moments where that clarity is absolutely there. It doesn't necessarily make the decision easy, but you know in your gut that's what you need to do. I can remember where I was, at work, when I realised that I really did need to stop. We were also moving out of London at the time, and I think that sometimes a thought or a decision sits in your gut and it takes you a moment to find it. But once you do, it's always the place of clarity for me, with any decision about my career.
[00:09:31] Susannah de Jager: It's really interesting, Hannah, when I hear you describe that thought process and how your instinct really kicked in. It's very similar to how I felt when I decided to step back from my full-time career. Just looking at the forces at play within our own family, the age of my children, and that sense of something's got to give, and I often feel very compromised when I say that out loud because it somehow feels like you're letting down the sisterhood.
But actually now that I am a bit older and hopefully we're coming through it and we can go back in and show people who have that path ahead of them, that there's a way through and onwards on the other side of it, I feel now that it's actually exceptionally important to be very honest about that feeling to talk about it, so that women that are going through this with younger families, with these forces wondering what it should look like, don't feel perhaps the same way we did.
[00:10:26] Hannah McCracken: I think that your podcast is so vital for that honesty. When we all lift our heads a bit and look at what other people are doing as let's face it. We all do. Where you go, is everyone else nailing it? Am I, in fact, an abject failure at all of this? We all do it at every stage in our careers.
Everything looks really neat and really precise and really ordered in the biographies that we see played out. The power of this podcast, The Wobbly Middle, to normalise and reassure and celebrate the total messiness that we sometimes have to navigate is really, is so important, because I think you're right, Susannah that honesty is quite rarely spoken of.
[00:11:11] Susannah de Jager: You took that decision, speaking to your gut, so important not to ignore that. How did it then feel? Did you always have that sense of certainty or did it ebb and flow?
[00:11:21] Hannah McCracken: I think I did in all honesty have that sense of certainty, but it quite quickly was joined by a feeling of anxiety that I was going to be left behind in the years that I was taking out. Advertising is a very fast paced and it remains a competitive industry, and that's true for every stage, not just at the entry point.
Whilst I tried to protect that sense of conviction that I will go back, it was very difficult to ignore. Trying to hold my nerve that I'm here, I'm at home, I'm doing something really, really important for our family that I hope will be valued. So I think maintaining the confidence was tough, and ultimately the point at which I was then going back in that really needed a deep breath, because of the number of years I had been out by that point.
[00:12:16] Patsy Day: Yeah, that phrase holding your nerve. I think as we think that we can have different careers, we can have different phases of our working lives, we just must hold our nerve and believe that they will come to us if we put the right things in place.
So you got to a stage where you decided to go back to work. How did you actually take the first step? Did you go to job agencies? Did you speak to friends? What was the first step you took? Because I'd just like to add it was six years.
[00:12:45] Hannah McCracken: It was six years.
[00:12:47] Patsy Day: That's a good chunk.
[00:12:48] Hannah McCracken: Couple of years totally out, and then three years running a small photography business at weekends, which was really the best way for me to work around the flex that I needed, again, we're pre covid. So my husband was traveling a huge amount. We had three very small children. I wanted to do something for myself. I set up a small photography business, largely working weekends.
But exactly as you say, Patsy, the point at which I was ready to go back towards this wonderful industry of advertising, it was six whole years and six years that I have never, ever apologised for or over explained when I've been in a job interview, and I think that's a really important thing for anyone. But I think particularly returning to work mothers, to be proud of that decision that you've taken and the thought and care that has gone around that decision, and not to feel that you need to apologise for that timeout.
I was ready. Here we go. I'm ready to go back. I had so much fire in my belly. Who wants me? Here I am, ready to go, and there was this very consistent sound that was played back to me by the world and it,was thisit's gonna be tricky. Was really what I heard played back to me initially because there were two things.
There was the six year gap, as you say, and there was also the need for flex. I kept hearing back this word compromise. If you are really gonna want the flex that you're asking for, and bearing in mind, you've been out of this fast paced industry for six years, you are going to need to compromise, and that was something that was very difficult to hear and something that I was just not willing to take. The skills that I had honed of mental strength, tenacity, creative problem solving that comes through being a parent, I felt like I was more ready than ever.
At that point, career paralysis can really set in, and I think that's true for any individual that has time out of a career.
It can be a terrifying thing at that point to think, can I still do it? Am I a complete fraud?
But I was very lucky to have some extraordinary cheerleaders around me in many different forms of family, friend, professional who really encouraged me to completely ignore what I was hearing in terms of compromise.
Reassuring me that whilst technology would've changed in those six years, the core principles of how businesses grow and the fundamental human behavior of how people tick, those never change. At that point, I was very lucky to meet a woman called Helen Wright, who runs a wonderful business called 9-2-3 that is about celebrating and nurturing the power of flexibility
[00:15:54] Patsy Day: We are super big fans of Helen.
She's great, so I was very lucky to meet her and work with her for a couple of years. Really supporting the commercial case and the case for talent of flexible work.She was and still is, on such a clear mission, and that remains very important to me, to work with people who are very clearly going out into the world and trying to do something different, and it was the most wonderful reentry and it is a reentry. That phrase, going back to work, you're actually going forward into work, and it really felt that way. There was zero compromise. It was an electrifying place and I thought, yeah, okay, I'm back and where do I go from here? And where you went, you ended up in B2B rather than previously direct to consumer. Tell us about that change.
[00:16:41] Hannah McCracken: Yeah, I thought I'd make it a bit harder for myself. You know, why not? Because B2C working with all those incredible consumer brands, mostly with Mars, looking after a lot of their wonderful chocolate brands. The easy step would've been to go back to working with those agencies that work with big consumer brands.
But FST is a business that's doing something radically different within the B2B space. I can still remember my meeting with the three partners, these three guys called Alex, Andrew, and Charlie. They are an extraordinary trio of individuals with a very clear mission. Business to business companies are often highly technical, very complex. So it's really good for me to stretch into new areas where I have to lean in and concentrate and learn in a very different way. But really the principles of how advertising works, they're the same to me, whether it's chocolate or highly complex global logistics.
You used the word earlier conviction and it literally comes out of you like a light bulb. It's so wonderful to see. What advice would you give to people coming out of a career break in order to make sure that those knocks that you had, but didn't allow you to change your trajectory and you didn't listen? How did you steal yourself in the day-to-day for that?
[00:18:08] Susannah de Jager: Because you've got a huge amount of self-belief, but still these things can be hard.
[00:18:12] Hannah McCracken: This might sound slightly odd actually. But at that point where I was starting to interview to go forwards, not back, but to go forwards in the next step after that big break. I put a series of photographs around me of individuals who I know believed professionally that I could do this, and I also I've always written in green ink. That's because of one particular individual that I worked with early on in my career. and that green ink is a thread actually that I carry with me literally every single day. You can see Patsy, that my book is full of this, and it's a very tangible, practical way of me staying connected to the person that I know I've always been in that career in spite of that break. The thread of that ink is a really important continuum for me that's bridged those six years and having those photographs of people literally staring at me and smiling at me and believing that I could do it. They're tiny little sort of practical techniques. But they were very tangible reminders to me because a lot of that sense of belief exists in your head and sometimes I think you need something that you can hold, that you can look at, that you can flow through a pen, in my instance, that goes, no, it's real. That belief is real, and the connection to what you are able to do is a tangible thing.
Those are two probably very personal, tangible things, but things that have really worked for me.
[00:19:48] Susannah de Jager: They obviously are very specific, but I think it's very thought provoking to hear you describe something and for everyone listening to try and think what the equivalent things might be that they can bring to give life to, as you say, something that is often quite intangible.
So I love that idea of pictures of people that you know really back you and it's almost one up from mentorship. It's cheerleaders, right?
[00:20:14] Hannah McCracken: That word cheerleaders is so important, isn't it? To be cheerleaders, for each other to know the value that gives other people. Mentoring has always been really important to me. I think you get so much from it individually and paying it forward to the next generation of women is really important to me, to really lift each other up.
[00:20:35] Susannah de Jager: We also spoke about how career shifts actually aren't terribly unusual. They happen all around us all the time, but they often come from a position of strength. So somebody's excelled in one area, and then they are given this opportunity to step across into something else, which of course, psychologically makes a huge amount of sense.
But you spoke earlier about all the parenting skills that you had developed in this time. You stepped away from advertising, but not from life and not from still evolving and continuing to develop skills. There seems to be a real perception gap of how we view people that have come from a perceived vacuum and I'd love to hear you just talk a little bit about why you think that is and how perhaps as employers and those listening that are both sides of this equation, we could do more to acknowledge those skills that are evolved outside of traditional workplaces.
[00:21:27] Hannah McCracken: Yeah, I think it's a really good question. They're such valuable skills and they can be quite difficult to articulate. I think it's also total chaos when you are actually honing those skills. So what you are absolutely not doing is also trying to separate out and collect in your pocket individual skill sets, because you're just quite frankly, trying to get to Sainsbury's.
I can remember a particular meltdown in Robert Dyas involving I think a local plumber having to carry my eldest child home because I wouldn't let him buy a actual real chainsaw at the age of three. I was very pregnant.
and this lovely plumber sort oftook pity on me, I think. But in those moments, goodness me,the strength, the mental strength that you need, the negotiating skills, all those things. You're not aware that they're forming there's no debrief at the end of that.
But I think that at that point that you are reenteringbusinesses always hire an individual because there's an opportunity or there's a problem that needs to be solved, and I think as an individual, you have to look at the job. What is the job that needs to be done. First of all, am I able to do it? And how can I talk about the skills that I've got, the experience I've got, that it is gonna show these people I can not just do it, but I'm gonna absolutely kill it. Businesses can hear that confidence from people and as I say, I've always been very open. It's a really important thing to do that, to be really honest, to be really clear about what you can present and bring to a business, and for a business to in return, listen and open themselves to the different experiences that people have.
I really encourage those conversations to happen because I think that if they don't, there's a huge part of talent within this country that just gets overlooked and that's a terrible thing for individuals. It's a great shame for businesses and it's a disaster for the economy as well.
[00:23:38] Patsy Day: Yeah, that point about the economy is one that's very much overlooked. This isn't about raising women necessarily, although it is. But money talks and this is an economic imperative.
[00:23:50] Hannah McCracken: Yeah, absolutely.
Continuing and nurturing and growing people's careers once they've returned from motherhood is really important.
The Fawcett Society had this astonishing figure in a report that two fifths of working mothers will turn down promotions because of childcare responsibilities. Two fifths.
[00:24:11] Susannah de Jager: And at the moment they're saying that 45% of women in the workplace currently are considering stepping down from their roles.
[00:24:17] Hannah McCracken: It's absolutely shocking and, as working mothers specifically it's not just about being in work. It's about growing and still pursuing that golden thread where we started this conversation. It's not enough, certainly for me, to be just about getting it to work. I need to feel like I'm still growing my experience and my career and that requires the meeting of many parts of a job that is interesting of childcare routines that you can navigate, and actually I think that flexibility that stretches across everything.
Working for a business that really values the importance of flexibility is really key. But if at home you have a partner who doesn't also share that importance of flexibility, that then makes things a lot harder. Sharing and having equality with the physical load and the mental load that comes with having three children is absolutely critical for me to be able to do the job that I do.
[00:25:26] Patsy Day: If we can build the support around us to get back into work after a career break and can actually thrive in those environments. Then the knock on effect maybe that men begin to feel more comfortable taking career breaks or to take on greater responsibility for the childcare because ultimately that is the secret to this all.
[00:25:49] Susannah de Jager: In addition to what you have both just said, I've often thought there ought to be more formality around some of these moments with one's partner where you approach it and say, okay, I have been at home. We took a decision as a family. I have loved that. That was what worked for this period, and now we are entering a new period and you and I need to sit down and agree. In the calm moment because it doesn't work in the less calm moments or the more busy moments, what partnership is gonna look like for this next period. Because otherwise what can happen, and nobody is necessarily doing it on purpose, is that the balance has settled in a place that reflected different focus for that period, and then somebody, often the woman, but not always, is trying to return to work while keeping that in balance, and that's when you see all of these qualifications coming in, oh, I need this, I need that. I don't want to take a promotion and this worry that it won't work.
[00:26:45] Hannah McCracken: It needs to be at least discussed. You are so right, Susannah. I think it's, it has to be a proper conversation and it's really difficult, isn't it? Those big conversations often happen in the tiny fragments and air pockets that you get in the day.
[00:27:02] Patsy Day: We have a question that we ask all our guests, which is what you would tell your 30-year-old self about where you are today.
[00:27:10] Hannah McCracken: Ooh. I would say to my 30-year-old self, put your shoulders squarely against the fear. At the age of 30, I still had moments where things would come up with work or with life, where I would literally feel my body slightly putting a shoulder at an angle to it, which I think is a bit of a protective thing that I do mentally, and I've learned more and more how important it is to face challenges square on. To literally open your body and your mind to what's about to happen. Because to take that brute force and impact of something difficult is actually much easier to do when you face it square on.
I think I'd also probably say to her, don't wear such high heels. My back has never forgiven me for the decade or so of me wearing extraordinarily high heels. So I perhaps say to her, maybe take the heels down just a inch or two. Your chiropractor will thank you for it when you're later in life.
[00:28:16] Patsy Day: Do you know what I really loved? I love this rethinking about it as a reentry and moving forward rather than a going back, that terminology is so just outdated.
[00:28:27] Hannah McCracken: I mean, for me, I started having children at 30. There are years and years still left. I still feel like I'm just getting going.
[00:28:34] Susannah de Jager: And I feel like we're in the golden era for that at the moment where this, there is this kind of queenager whole movement going on, acknowledgement that the menopause isn't the end of your life. That so many women have trailblazed and had their successes later in their careers. I feel very fortunate to be growing up into this setting where everything feels much more like the opportunity is still in front of us, where I think even in our parents' generation, there were fewer examples. So I feel very fortunate to be now where we can go forties, fifties, sixties, and beyond. There's so much ahead of us.
[00:29:12] Hannah McCracken: Yes. Yeah, absolutely, and I think some of those trailblazers were there in a different form. I was always surrounded by these incredibly strong women growing up. An unbelievably confident squad of aunts and great aunts. But how those characters are sort of unfurling professionally, you are absolutely right, Susannah. There's just a revolution happening and we're so lucky to be part of it, and we have a big responsibility in being part of it because we are paying it forward for the next generation.
[00:29:43] Susannah de Jager: I love that. Honestly, Hannah, thank you. It's such a joy and a privilege to do this podcast with Patsy because we get to have these conversations with people like you and I always come away having learned something myself. So huge, thank you, and I hope for everyone listening.
[00:30:00] Hannah McCracken: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I think it's a wonderful thing that you've created and I wish the wobbly middle so many joyful wobbles as it goes through because it's, been a pleasure. Thank you for having me.
[00:30:14] Patsy Day: Thank you for listening, for sharing your stories, and for being part of the conversation.
[00:30:19] Susannah de Jager: New episodes of The Wobbly Middle are released every other week. Please follow us and leave a review. It really helps others to find us.