Summary

In this episode of the Web Usability podcast, host Lucy Collins speaks with Grace Carter, founder of the Metamorphose Group, about her journey as a storyteller and entrepreneur. They discuss the importance of creating inclusive and impactful campaigns, the evolution of Grace's businesses, and her mission to empower women and change the world for future generations. Grace shares her personal experiences and insights on the challenges and triumphs of being a mother and a business owner, emphasising the need for authentic storytelling and community building.

In this conversation, Grace shares her journey of using storytelling to create impactful social change, particularly focusing on the emotional narratives surrounding loss and the experiences of female entrepreneurs. She emphasises the importance of empathy, vulnerability, and normalisation of difficult conversations in fostering community and support.

Through her campaigns, she aims to challenge existing structures that hinder women in business, advocating for a more inclusive and understanding environment. Grace's vision is to leave a lasting legacy that inspires future generations to embrace their truths and fight for meaningful causes.

Takeaways

• Authenticity is important in business.
• Creating campaigns that resonate emotionally is key to success.
• Entrepreneurship can empower women and young girls. The urgency of action can drive impactful storytelling.
• Harnessing raw emotion can create powerful narratives.
• Empathy is a crucial tool in connecting with audiences.
• Vulnerability in conversations fosters deeper connections.
• Normalizing difficult conversations can break down taboos.
• Community building is essential for collective change.
• Challenging the status quo is necessary for progress.
• Leaving a legacy involves creating positive change.
• Authenticity in storytelling resonates with audiences.
• Finding purpose in work leads to fulfillment.

Sound Bites

• "Stories are integral for human connection."
• "The butterfly symbolises transformation."
• "We need to create human connection."
• "We need to create a second video."
• "Empathy is the key thing."
• "We have so many taboos."
• "I just think it's so important."
• "Life is so short and finite."

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Web Usability and Grace Carter

07:09 The Evolution of the Metamorphose Group

14:59 Empowering Women Through Entrepreneurship

20:54 Creating Impactful Campaigns

22:20 The Urgency of Action

25:34 Harnessing Raw Emotion in Storytelling

27:32 Empathy as a Powerful Tool

30:12 The Importance of Vulnerability in Conversations

33:02 Normalizing Difficult Conversations

37:38 Challenging the Status Quo for Female Entrepreneurs

42:10 Leaving a Lasting Legacy

Learn more about Grace and her work here:

Grace’s Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grace-carter-aphra/

Aphra: https://www.weareaphra.co.uk/

Business and Babies: https://www.businessandbabies.co.uk/

Ep20. The power of empathetic storytelling with Grace Carter- Transcript

Lucy Collins

Welcome to the Web Usability podcast, where we explore what it takes to make the web a more accessible and enjoyable place for everyone. Whether you're a website owner, developer, or just a curious mind, we're here to share insights, tips, and stories that can help you improve the user experience of your digital world. I'm Lucy Collins, Director of Web Usability and your guide on this journey to better usability. If you need a transcript of this podcast, just visit our website at www.webusability.co.uk.

Now, let's dive in.

Today, we are straying slightly outside the norm for the Web Usability podcast. We're still going to be talking about how we can make the world a more inclusive and enjoyable place, but we're not necessarily going to limit ourselves to just the digital world. This is because my guest today is Grace Carter, founder and MD of the Metamorphose Group. Trying to work out how to properly introduce Grace has, I have to be honest, had me scratching my head slightly. I could list her many incredible accolades and achievements, the extensive portfolio of businesses, or tell you that she's doing rather well on LinkedIn.

But I feel that none of that quite captures what a powerhouse of all women Grace is. Grace tells stories that create real change. Simply put, she is creating a more inclusive and enjoyable world through her ability to challenge the status quo. This is primarily done through her flagship company, Afra, a marketing agency that creates impactful brand strategies and campaigns. But Grace is really driven by her desire to change the world for her daughters, something that we have in common. And it was this connection that brought me into Grace's world through her business and babies campaign, a cause that I'm an ambassador for and something that we almost definitely.

chatting about today. But I feel that being a mum is a small part of Grace's identity. And today I want to dig into why she does what she does, the realities of being a serial entrepreneur and her aspirations for the Metamorphose Group. Grace, hello. Welcome to the podcast.

Grace Carter

Hello. Thank you. That was a lovely introduction.

Lucy Collins

Honestly, I spent yesterday evening writing it and I was like, God, I just don't know where to start. There's so much to Grace Carter like, wow. It's so hard because there is.

Grace Carter

when I go into meetings, because they're so, you know, so interlinked to all the things I do, it's hard not to overwhelm people. And actually, the kind of two threads to me, I would say is equity and entrepreneurship and all the work and all the businesses I run. But it does sometimes feel like I am bombarding people with information.

Lucy Collins

Yeah, I thought a nice place to start might be something that you say in your LinkedIn bio, which is that you're a storyteller by trade. And I loved that. And I wanted to understand why you like telling stories. Why are you a storyteller?

Grace Carter

I think it's genetic, to be honest, because it's who I am and has been who I am since I was a tiny child. it's just, I say genetic, maybe it's nurture. My mum was a primary school teacher for 40 years. So she was huge advocate of his learning to read at a young age and we always had books around us and I was a voracious reader growing up. So yeah, there's one story that my mum always finds quite amusing that my library did the six week reading challenge when I was little and we were going on holiday for quite a bit of the six week holidays. So I read ahead and I did all the six weeks within two weeks and I went to the library and I was like, here you go, can I have all my stickers and certificate?

And the lady was like, no, you can't possibly have read all these books in that time. And I was fuming and I refused to ever go back and I've never let it like slip my mind. yeah, so it was just who I was. was always writing stories as a child. I sent my first manuscript of a children's story off to all the publishers in London when I was about six for a story called Millie's Day about a cat. They all very kindly wrote back and told me that

Maybe I needed an agent and then maybe it wasn't the right time. And then, I did every writing competition. I had a short story that I wrote when I was in year nine that my teacher sent off to an anthology competition without telling me and that got published, which was an amazing surprise. It's just always been me. And then I went and did my degrees in English.

Lucy Collins

So I mean, you're like a real life Matilda, aren't you? I just imagine you with your little wagon coming back from the library and then being disbelieved by that scary, horrible librarian. I mean, outrageous. The injustice.

Grace Carter

I wish i could read more now. I don't get to read anywhere as much as I used to. To be quite honest, think through adulthood, I forgot how to tell stories, and I forgot how much I love doing it. My work and my writing had become very corporate and very official and I'd really lost the ability to be quite honest. It was through my LinkedIn and starting to write posts and share stories that it all came flooding back to me and I realised how much I love it and how important stories are for us to connect with other humans, whether that's through brand campaigns or just through community building or whatever it might be. Like we need stories as humans. And so it's an integral part of my work is just as much as anything else.

Lucy Collins

So, is it something you have to try hard to do? mean, as you say, you tell beautiful stories on your LinkedIn. And it's interesting that that's where you felt you recaptured your storytelling ability. But it feels like, you know, I imagine a lot of people look at those stories and go, God, it would take me hours to compose something like that. Is it hard for you? Or does it just come super easily?

Grace Carter

It floods my brain. And the only challenge is that when it's flooding my brain, like I can, it's almost like a you know, when you see ChatGPT now and you see it of like writing it out as you're watching it, that's what happens in my brain where I can like, can see the sentences and I'm like writing and forming it. And if I don't write it immediately, it starts to really stress me out. Cause I'm like, I need to get this on paper. So, it's really hard because a lot of the time I might be like walking back from the school run and I'm thinking, I really need to just get this out my head. So I ended up just standing by the side of the road, like emailing myself so that I've done it. But yeah, I think that for me, half of the guess success of it all is the fact that I do find it so easy. It doesn't, it just flows. just comes from my, I always talk about it's like the musings of my mind. It's just like the, that stream of inner consciousness that comes out. And I don't think I ever thought anyone would want to know what that world was like, but it seems they do. So that's a good thing.

Lucy Collins

Grace Carter

I mean, evolution is a really good word because the Metamorphose Group name came out of the journey that a butterfly goes on in that transformation. And it really has been a transformation over the years. I started my first business Afra when I was 25 and very naively thought that it would be really easy to build an agency. And I honestly had no idea what I was doing. I'd never worked in a marketing agency before. know, my background before that had largely been about journalism and writing. so yeah, came to it very much from the place of learning fast about what it was going to entail. And spent six years, you know, through doing that of growing Afra and had both my girls in that time, I went through miscarriages, we had the pandemic, we had a recession, like, it was a really intense roller coaster of a ride. You know, we had some years where we did exceptionally well, some where we didn't, but we'd really started to plateau out at a certain point. And I was, I was generally struggling to get beyond that point anyway. So that whole time had struggled to define what made Afra different, why you would use us because there are thousands of agencies out there. And so that struggle and that sense of not really knowing where we belonged kind of was always lingering. Also the kind of mental pressures from my personal life, you know, naturally seep into business. When I had my youngest daughter, who's one, I had a mental health breakdown and it really forced me to reflect on my career and to look at everything I'd achieved and question why I didn't feel particularly fulfilled, what was holding me back what did I actually want my career to look like going forward? By this point, I was in my 30s and I was a different person, and it was a different business to anything I'd ever imagined. And we'd kind of got to a point where there was masses of case studies, but I was a bit like, what's the thread through all of this? And do I even like the case studies I've got? Am I proud of them? And yes, the work's lovely visually or we did some really cool campaigns, but it just wasn't, don't know, it just wasn't, something was missing. So went away and I really reflected on what that was and came to the conclusion that I had not been myself authentically in championing women and all the things that I was passionate about in terms of women's rights and supporting campaigns on those topics. And that felt quite rebellious and radical to move the business in that direction when we had never ever been that business. And everyone told me I was going to ostracize myself by doing it.

And I'd never put myself out there either. So I realised that that was something I could do differently and change was actually starting to stop hiding behind everything and everyone else and start to like own my own voice. And yeah, I just kind of like started tentatively writing on LinkedIn about the things that I was passionate about, started to go out to brands and pitch for campaigns that were things I was passionate about. And to be honest, it was at first, it was quite frustrating. A lot of the brands were either saying, know, we don't have budgets this year, or it's not a key priority for us this year, the topics you're saying. And initially I was quite disheartened and thought, oh, well, maybe I'm, you know, barking up the wrong tree with this. Maybe this isn't the right thing. And then I kind of had this moment where I was like, what if I'm actually really ahead of the curve and the curve just hasn't caught up with where I'm at? And what if I'm onto something that could be really big? So, I then started to build out all of these basically failed pictures. I built them out into brands and campaigns which I bootstrapped all myself, which has been really, really tough, but I was just so passionate about doing it. And the more that I started to build all these ideas, and some of them I just put out at the most basic MVP, but kind of tried to create this structure of all these things I wanted to do, the more they just sort of evolved and I could see the connections and I could see the potentials. And I started to kind of create this world and that world was very clearly not Afra, you know, it was beyond an agency. And so,

We spent a long time questioning whether the name Afra was actually not an agency and it was something else or whether this still was this agency. And it was clear that there was still this agency because we were doing lots of different client work under it. But then we realized that we needed a group and that became Metamorphose Group. And the butterfly had been a symbol within Afra. And so, I felt like actually looking at the transformation of butterfly, you know, I'd been on a huge sense of like evolution and transformation in my own life and journey just felt very applicable. And so, we created the parent company brand last year, and then we started to build everything out one by one, went through all the brands, out all the strategies, all the brand identities and the websites. So we're still, I'd say we're about halfway through where I want to be in terms of building out the group to the kind of the full potential of what I have in my current vision. I'm sure it will.

I have no doubt. So, we started doing that and then it's just started to take a life of its own. So, we created Business and Babies which began as a campaign for entrepreneurial mothers who don't have infrastructure and support at government level to raise awareness of that. But that's evolved into a community with thousands of entrepreneurial women who are all standing up and saying, do you know what, I didn't realise until you said it but this is not okay. And actually, I agree, I want change too. And again, that started as being just the UK. And I've now had people in Australia, in America, in Spain, in Scotland, all over the world saying, we take this community to our area, know, franchising it out to do events locally for them, because this is affecting us globally. So suddenly that's gone from being like this kind of lobbying campaign for the UK government to a global community of entrepreneurial women.

And then we've got the female body.com, which is all about women's health and inequities in women's health. And again, that started out, it was just going to be a podcast and then it became a media platform and then it became a media platform and an awards gala. And then we've added a roadshow element to it. Today I was like, we could do a festival for this. we've got; I've been trying to talk to documentary producers It's humongous what the potential is. And then another one is called Prison to Profit. So, I'm really passionate about getting women into entrepreneurship and also young girls, you know, knowing it's a career pathway. So, we've been talking to lots of people who've been looking into how do you rehabilitate prisoners through entrepreneurship, but no one is specifically really looking at women. So that's where I feel like I've got a really unique perspective that I can bring to that sector. And so we've been looking at how do we build out an entrepreneurship program for these women? And how do we also support all of these things with academic research? How do we, you know, utilize all this knowledge to, to empower other women? And then with young children looking at, you know, what campaigns can we run through Afro that are really promoting entrepreneurship to young girls through different brands? You know, what can we, what can we do to inspire them in schools? So, I wrote a children's book called The Girl Who Grow, which is all about the potential of a young girl. And initially I was like, you know, I can go out and pitch this to loads of publishers, but I was just like, no, I can't, I haven't got the energy for that. I've just had a baby. I can't be dealing with pitching anymore and people saying no. So, I wrote it, I got an illustrator who's brilliant to design it all. And then I thought, well, I just need to set up my own publishing house. So, I did that. have a scene as library, which was published. that book, there's two more following it. I'm writing an adult’s book as well. And again, that has the potential to take on the writings of other women over time and starting to kind build out a place in which we can share women's stories through books. So, and that's just literally just a handful of some of the...

Lucy Collins

Yeah. I mean, I think there's like 15, is it 15 brands underneath the group at the moment or something like that? And as by the sounds of things, many more to come over the years as well. It's really quite remarkable. sitting here and listening to you talk about all of them, like it's the the passion is palpable for each and every one of these, which is just wonderful. I love the organic. It feels quite organic how this has happened. I know that there's been a lot of hard work going on behind the scenes, but as you say, you have been through this incredible transformation as a business owner, as a mother, and then this has sparked this incredible clarity around your purpose and your why. I think that as a mother myself and having taken some time out last year, it was amazing the clarity that actually that transformation has given me in other bits of my life. And I think a lot of people associate motherhood as this time when you become clouded, and you get your baby brain and you're unable to think. But I actually think that it can do the opposite for you and it can really focus you in on what actually is important to me. And I love your whole ethos that you're changing the world for your daughters. think, mean, what an incredible motivation to underpin everything. And you've got these three pillars that then obviously span across your groups and mental health, social equity and female entrepreneurship. And I think you've explained quite well sort of why they're important, but I feel to distil it, it's because it's also personal, right?

Grace Carter

hugely. And I always had this thing. I mean, I obviously never knew I was going to have daughters until

I had them, but before they were-

Lucy Collins

Although, did you? Did you always want to be a girl mum? Because I always wanted to be a girl mum and I was so pleased I'd become a girl mum.

Grace Carter

I think I'm very well suited to being a girl mum. was always, yeah, until now when they're stealing my nail polish and makeup and I'm like, oh, why did I want to be a girl mum? Yeah, I mean, I always, I guess I had a suspicion because we have a hugely girl heavy family. I just kind of had this sort of epiphany that I didn't want to ever say to my children, you can be anything you want in this world, can do all of these amazing things. And then to turn around to me and say, well, did you do what you wanted to do, mom? Did you achieve your dreams? And me to be like, no, no, I didn't. You can, because that's not motivational. That won't inspire them. So, my ethos to everything is to show people what you're capable of, not tell them. I'm hoping that through showing my daughters what I am able to achieve, showing them the potential that women have showing them that just because something is a hurdle or barrier that it doesn't mean it's the end for them. know, showing them all of these things about how strong we are, about how resilient we are, leaning into being a woman and actually saying that being a woman is not a bad thing. You we have so many qualities that make us brilliant. You know, being a mum, like you say, yes, can, baby brain can be hard, but also it can give us such a sense of drive and purpose and intention. I want them to see all of this through my actions and through my behaviours so that they never actually have that conversation with me. I don't want them to ever say to me, can I do this? Because they'll already know it. It'll be built into them that they can do that. And even now, my oldest, who's five, is always kind of, mom, we could do this, mom, we could do that. I could do a shop. I showed her the girl who grew her book when it was published and she was like, we could set up a bookshop and sell it to people. Yes, yes, we can do that.

Lucy Collins

She's definitely your daughter, isn't she?

Grace Carter

She asked for Christmas for a beads set, where you've got all those beads in a box. I said, what do want it for? She was like, I want to make some bracelets so I can sell them at school. was like, okay.

Lucy Collins

Yes, there's clearly some entrepreneurial genes in there, I think, aren't there? Yeah. When you think about your campaigns, of which there are many and they are varied, how do you go about creating campaigns that will have the impact that you are intending for them?

Grace Carter

It kind of goes back to what I said about writing in that I have this bizarrely uncanny ability. I didn't realise it how unique it was until more recently. I didn't come up with campaigns very quickly. So I don't really overthink them or spend ages brainstorming. just, I don't know. Like I have this game that I played with myself on LinkedIn where someone connects with me. They've got an interesting job title and it doesn't have to be connected to my passions at all, but they work for an interesting brand. I always think, how can I connect that brand to my purpose in my campaigns. And I will like immediately come up with an idea of a campaign. I think I've got to tell them about this because it's a really good idea, even if I say so myself. But I now message the people and I'm like, I've just got to tell you this campaign I've come up with. And I think it's a ADHD thing, actually, because I have an ability to connect seemingly unrelated things together and make them make sense. So I think that's a huge part of it. And then I think just with every campaign I ever do, it's all about how do we create human connection? And to do that, we tell stories. So everything I do is about how do I find the stories in this? How do I make people care? Like people are so busy, they have like seconds in their day. We know it from our own lives. So why on earth would they give me their time to look at my campaign? Why should they care about my campaign? And so that is the of the crux of it. And so I look at it from, how do I make them care? How do create that emotion? You the emotional response within them. Like a really good example of that is the campaign that we did for Jules Law. So Ellen, his mum, to give some context, he died in circumstances that would be perceived as suicide, but there has never been any evidence of how or why that came about. His mum could not understand it. He was never bullied at school. was no...

suggestion that he was unhappy, had no mental health issues in his life anyone knew about. And she wanted to go onto his social media to see if maybe he'd been influenced by content that he'd seen. And she tried to do this. The coroner had completed all of their inquiries and inquiries. So, she, after this point, had gone back to the social media companies and said, can I have access to this data? And because the inquiry had been closed and there was no police file to say it was a crime and all these various things, they said, no, it's a breach of data. And she was like, but whose data is it breaching? Like he was a 14-year-old boy. He was my son. You know, I was his parent. I just want his data, and they refused. And so, she set about creating this campaign for change so that she could get access to his data and the other bereaved parents could. And I saw her post on LinkedIn and she'd, was her birthday and she posted a video of her son, Jules, when he was younger, blowing out a candle and his birthday cake.

She said all I want for my birthday as a heartbroken mum is just some signatures on my petition for government to raise this as a compensation in Westminster. And as soon as I saw this video and I heard like the audio is basically everyone singing happy birthday around him and then his mum going, make a wish Jules, make a wish. And as soon as I saw that video, I was like, I know exactly how to get you your signatures. So I messaged her as a complete stranger and I said, look, I know you don't know me, I'm a complete stranger to you, but as one mum to another, please can I make a video for you to help you get signatures for your campaign? I was like, you're just going to have to trust me, but I know how to do it. And so, and I've never spoke to her, I'd never even seen her talking, so I had no idea what she was actually like as a person. But I sent her a load of questions, which I wasn't even sure if she'd be comfortable answering them, because they were very personal. know, some were like, tell me about the day that Jules was born, like tell me all about his personality.

And I just sent these questions, and I said, can you record them for me? Like I gave her a description of how to record herself, the, you know, what the background needed to be like. She said to me, you know, I'll do it another day. Like it's my birthday, I'm going out, but I'll do it in a few days’ time. And then I think it must've been like 24, 48 hours later, the government announced that the petition website was going to be closing in a week because the government was changing over and there was, they were closing all of the petitions down. And at this point she had about 6,000 and if she got 10,000 and she'd get a letter and if she got 100,000, it would get discussed. And I messaged her and I was like, Ellen, we need to do this video. Like, you've got one week to get to 100,000. Like I was like, screw the 10,000, we're going to 100, but you've got one week. So, she was like, right, okay, I'm on it. And she went and did this video, and she sent it to me. She sent me two takes and the first take was really raw and she'd like messed up loads of times in it. And the second take was much more polished.

I took the first take, and I used that one to create the video and all of the moments where she, it wasn't just in what she said, it was the moments where she looked away to the side of the camera or she kind of went, okay, right. And like the kind of those moments where she showed the vulnerability and the rawness to it. You when she started to get emotional and cry, I knew that the perfectionist in her did not want that part to be the, you know, what everyone saw.

But that was the bit I took all the rawness and the... I knew I had to make people feel really uncomfortable as well. So, I really tried to... I didn't try to make it feel nice and packaged in a way that people felt comfortable watching it. There was kind of like moments in it where I then interspersed it with footage of him as a child. I wanted parents to watch it as though it was their child and to see the human that had been lost in this, not just some data about you know, brief parents, but like this was a mum and a son. And then there was a clip that she had of him where he said, you know, you've got this mum, be brave. And it was about, she was doing a hike and he recorded it for her. And I put that at the end and I just, it was actually quite a long video in a world where we're told that content should be like 30 seconds and snappy and no one's got attention. It was many minutes long and we posted it and she literally just, she posted it, I posted it. We kind of got people sharing it.

And the petition site went nuts. And the video, everyone was watching it. People were messaging saying they were crying watching it. Like it had impacted so many people. Frank Bruno shared it. And then we heard that MPs were starting to see it and it started to get life on its own. And then the press picked up on it. And she then started to go on this massive press trail with everyone wanting to talk to her about what had happened. And we got to probably. I don't know exactly, but say 60,000, like we kind of got like near the 100,000, but it was starting to slow momentum. And this is like a few days before it's closing. And I messaged her, and I said, I think we need to do something else because this is not going to get to the 100,000 if we continue with just this one video. So I said, I think we need to create a second video. And there was an element of me that was like, how the hell do we top this one? What do you do next after that like, what is the rest of the story? Like, where do we go with this? And so, I kind of guided Ellen on what I thought the next story needed to be and about how she really needed to go deeper into that pain and that story and talk about the day that he died and talk about all of the emotions that came with that. I know that she found that incredibly hard and traumatic. But also, I think having seen the success of the first video, she felt a bit more confident that she could give that bit more to the story and so she did it. I didn't know she would. I was really kind of almost scared asking because I felt really bad to like use her grief in that way. But I knew that if we could get that into a video that it would be so compelling. And so we did and we created the second video, put that live and then again, the petition absolutely went nuts and we were like just sat watching it and it was like a constantly moving number. And I had so many people messaging me being like, we're all just sat watching this number going up.

And then the day before the petition closed, we went over the 100,000 mark. And then by the time it closed the next day, we've got to 126,000 within a week. it was crazy. But all I did was told some stories and used video as a means of doing that. We didn't payload to ad spend and ad budget. didn't have huge brands backing it or anything like that. It was just the rawness of telling a story well.

Lucy Collins

Yeah. I think you really you tap into empathy, which is just the most powerful tool. And I mean, as a parent as well, particularly, can just totally, you can't relate to a story like that, and you hope you never have to. But it is something that you can imagine a lot of people quite rightly watched and God went, God, I mean, can you imagine if that was my kids? And I think that empathy is the key thing. It's something that we really try and do with our user testing as well in a very, very different context, obviously. It's all about getting people to walk in the shoes of users, feel the lived experience of somebody else because that is when the change happens. That's when you get to question your own mental model and your own view of the world and go, actually, is there something else you need to be paying attention to here? Yeah. I mean, what an incredible campaign. must have been quite a mix of emotions, I imagine, all the way through that for you and for Ellen.

Grace Carter

It was really hard because then we also started creating videos for the other brave parents and every time I did it, it felt like I was grieving a child that I'd never met. I am deeply empathetic. think I actually found that that was another ADHD trait that I didn't realise was, but I can very deeply feel other people's emotions and put myself into their shoes. And I think also that's the writer in me is that you are able to become another character. Again, that's always been who I am. The story that got published when I was in year nine, I don't know why, but it was

called the day my mum died and it was a story about my mum dying in a car crash. My mum is very much alive and everyone that read it was in tears, and they were like so sad and they're like I can't believe this happened to you. I'm like it didn't like it never happened and for whatever reason that had been what I'd felt was the right thing to write it was for a piece of homework so I don't know why I'd done it but um I do have that ability and I think like you say for me everything that we do is like how do I make you feel what I'm feeling, how do I make you walk in her shoes, or how can I feel how you're feeling? Like, you know, with Ellen's situation, I hadn't lost a child in the circumstances she had. You know, I'd lost children through pregnancy and miscarriages, but nothing like she had. So again, it was like, had an inkling to how she might feel, but nothing to the right depth. And so, I think in that sense, you have to be a really good listener. Like you have to I ask questions, everyone always says it of me, that I ask questions that no one else would ask. I think it's kind of like the journalist in me, but I have no barriers to questioning people. And sometimes I think people might find that a bit intense or a bit like, hang on, she's gone there, like already, I don't know her. I don't really believe anything unturned, and I ask the uncomfortable questions and I listen to their answers. And because I show my own vulnerability in those conversations, I always give something of myself first and I am very heart on my sleeve. But because I'm vulnerable, people share so much with me that they wouldn't otherwise share with other people. And so I kind of end up getting those stories where I'm able to learn about them and I'm able to see the depth of their personality. And I think because of that, I'm able to tell things like stories that are not surface level, you I'm able to go beyond that. And I think that's probably like a key part of who I am in the work that I do.

Lucy Collins

I think if you ever were interested in a career change, I think you'd also actually make a really great user researcher because a key thing is about that piece of empathy, like being able to connect with someone in a session instantly and then pull out their deepest, darkest secrets while listening to the whole thing and making some sort of sense of it. So, you never know. If you fancy a career change, come and join us over here at Web Usability.

Grace Carter

Usability and accessibility are a huge one about understanding people's lives and what they experience. there's someone who I've met through LinkedIn, and he comments on lots of my posts, and he's blind. He grew up with blindness. It's a genetic condition that's gone through his family. Until I met him, I never really considered what the online world or social media felt like for someone that was blind. And he quite often would write on my posts and say I was referencing the picture that I'd posted in the caption. He'd be like, I love what you're writing, but I don't know what the picture is you're talking about. Like, can you tell me what your what you've posted. And so it really kind of made me think, okay, how do I make this more accessible? How do I open up what we're doing? So, when I wrote The Girl Who Grew, I created an audio version to the story. And my intention long term is to create a braille version as well. And then all the characters within it, all the girls, there's lots of different girls, I wanted to show the breadth of who we are as humans. some of them have, like one's got a hearing aid, one's an amputee, one's got glasses, like ones got tattoos, like ones got alopecia. And it was such an interesting book to then read with my daughter because she asked me, she observed all those things and asked me all about them. And we had so many conversations about different types of people, what it means to be a girl. Like one of them has short hair and she was like, that's a boy. I'm like, no, girls can have short hair too, like that's acceptable. And, you know, so we had all these discussions about what that meant. And it was just so nice to, to be able to discuss and think about other people's lives and create that empathy in her to the point that, you know, a Strictly Come Dancing was on this year and we saw someone that was blind, someone that had a hearing aid, someone that was a transgender person on there, was someone that was an amputee, like there was so many different types of people. And again, it was that conversation starter, but she just asked for curiosity. And I think that's how we breed acceptance for the next generation where you don't have discrimination, and you don't have all the problems that we've seen historically.

Lucy Collins

It feels like what you're doing is just normalising the diversity of humanity with a particular skew towards women. Because I think that you're so right that if we just talk about this and I think we talk, it's not just normalising different types of people, but different experiences. And I know that you're passionate about talking about your miscarried experience and the fact that pregnancy is not a simple, straightforward process and that we should be happy to talk about baby loss, but also the transition into motherhood, how that impacts us as female business owners. And we're definitely going to come on to talk to you about the campaign. But I think actually alongside empathy, which it feels like the thing that underpins everything that you're doing, it then comes hand in hand with this normalisation. And if we can...

normalise the experiences that people are having in an empathetic way. That's where the change happens. I completely agree with it being fantastic teaching opportunities for your daughters as well. I've had a similar one with my three-year-old. My mum's in a wheelchair. When my three-year-old asked me why my mum or her granny was always sitting down, it was a wonderful opportunity to be able to open up the conversation about the fact that granny's legs don't work. This is why she's in this position and the fact that this is just a different form of normal. I love that that's what you do with your kind of platform and the voice that you have is create these opportunities for people to share their stories and therefore normalise those experiences and those lives so that it's something that we can all feel more comfortable to talk about.

Grace Carter

I think we have so many taboos. Like think it's very British thing as well not to talk about a lot of things and we just kind of get on with life. I know that sometimes there is a realm of oversharing and I think I've probably fallen into that sometimes myself. But I just I think I started to look around me and think, well, if I'm going through these things and I'm finding certain things hard, surely other people are as well. And if I'm finding it hard, why aren't they talking about it? And you see it so often where once one person shares a problem and then someone else goes, yeah, I've had that, I've had that. And suddenly everyone's able to relate and support and that problem suddenly feels so much less of a problem. And so I think that's my thing with it.

you know, from the experience with losing the children that I had, I felt very alone with that. You know, I was one of my first, the first of my friends to start going through pregnancy. And I didn't know anyone that had miscarriages to talk to. And it was all very new to me as a world. I managed to find a great community with Tommie’s in their Facebook group. I got loads of help from lots of strangers. But then I decided I wasn't going to ever not talk about it. Like it wasn't, I didn't want it to be a taboo. Like everyone was saying that it was and I was like, well, maybe I can just do my bit by not hiding this fact. Why should I be ashamed of that fact? And then because I started to tell people about it, the amount of people that then said to me, yep, I've been through that too, like me too. And so, when they tell the statistics, like one in four women or one in five women go through a miscarriage, I'm like, in my head thinking, well, anecdotally, I'm pretty sure every woman I know that's tried to have a baby has but has either got a story of miscarriage or knows someone close to them that has. And so, I'm like, I just think it's just so important because it gives people permission and a space to share their story in return. And that's how we break down taboos. And that's how we, know, there's a really great saying, and I'm going to quote it wrong, but it's basically about shame, like can't hide, you have to put light on shame in order to get rid of it. And shame is born in the darkness, basically. And so if we want to come out of that, space, particularly as women, where we go through so many things in silence, then we've got to start giving it a name. We've got to start vocalising it and putting words to it. And that ultimately begins with us being vulnerable and feeling comfortable sharing our own experiences, which is the hardest thing to do, whether you're a male or female. But once we start doing it, I think most people are pleasantly surprised to see that they don't get this like, my gosh, I can't believe you said that. They get, I'm so glad you said that. Like, thank God you've said it. Like, someone needed to say that. you know, I've been going through this for so long. I wish you'd said it sooner because that was my experience. Like, I had so many women sending me messages on LinkedIn every single day being like, this is my experience. You know, thank you for sharing it. I've not felt I could talk about it. Like, please keep saying it and then that spurred me on to keep saying more and more because I knew it was having that impact.

Lucy Collins

And I was certainly one of those women, because I think when I first came across your business and babies’ campaign, I was like, my God, someone gets it. And also, someone gets it better than I even realised I needed to get it. You know, it was like you've taken the thoughts from my brain and have distilled it into a beautiful campaign. So think on that, know, so business and babies, obviously you touched on it briefly, but you launched this campaign as a way of challenging the infrastructure that exists around female entrepreneurs and trying to give women like us who run our own businesses better support in order to not have to compromise between having a business and having a baby. Tell me a bit more about the campaign and I guess what it is that you're hoping to achieve with it.

Grace Carter

Yeah, my initial intention was just awareness. It was to be able to raise awareness of the fact that the infrastructure is not there, the legislation is not there. We're operating in a world built by men for men and actually there's so much data that shows that women are both brilliant at being entrepreneurs, but also that are losing out when they have children and they're dropping out the workforce at that exact moment in their careers. And so I wanted to get people talking about that fact. I also, I'd found it was a very lonely space having a child and running a business. I didn't know anyone else in my position to talk to. All my friends took normal maternity leave. And so I felt very

much like the odd one out to be trying to do both. It was kind of that aspect of it. But also it was then, well, what's the answer to that? You know, rather than just, we all stand there saying, isn't this terrible? Let's make the focus on the solution and how do we change this for the future? I don't want my daughters thinking that this is how entrepreneurship has to be. And so that was where the government campaign part of this came in for me. looking at you know, what can we, what can we campaign for? You know, the, the fact that you can't take statutory maternity pay and run your business, like you have to completely take yourself out the business, which is just not sustainable for any business owner. Even if it's just that they need to check in like half an hour a day, like it's just not realistic to never be involved in your business. You know, the fact that the recent legislation that's come out that has extended maternity leave for employed women who have premature babies or whose babies are very ill or go through bereavements by 12 weeks, that has not extended into self-employed women. it's just all these different things like the Discrimination Act does not protect self-employed women in the way that it does for employed women. I don't know necessarily the obvious and easy answers to all of these things. I think there are so many potential outcomes. Some are quite quick wins, like the fact that you can expense a golf day, you can expense the hotel, the travel, the food, literally everything to go on that golf jolly to entertain a client. can't expense your childcare to go on that day. Who wrote that law? I don't know, but I'm going to think, I a wife at home looking after the kids and it was never a concern. But there's so many easy things that we could be doing differently. I think I'm to have to shift away from one problem at a time and kind of work my way through the problems. But what became really apparent was that, you know, it can't just be me going to government and being like, I am not okay with this, you know, I need to prove that there is a problem. And so to prove the problem, that's where building the community came in. And I started building the community and I had no idea what was going to happen. Like I just, I didn't even know, I didn't know these women to build the community, but it's just rapidly started to increase. And every time I see someone post on LinkedIn that they're a female founder due a baby and they're freaking out, like, hello, I'm here. Being there, done that. It's going to be tough, but I've got you. I just, try and like share the different stories that I see other women writing about their experiences in the group so that like we can really get this sense of experience. And yeah, it's amazing. And I think it's going to be interesting how it evolves because of the fact that there is this global aspect to it where I think it can become a really big community. But yeah, so that's basically business and babies.

Lucy Collins

Yeah, and it's an amazing campaign. And we'll obviously be directing plenty of people towards it, website. And I am certainly going to be shouting about it a lot to my very limited pool of people on LinkedIn. it's, I mean, there's a lot, as you say, it's something we're going to have to chip away at. There's huge systemic infrastructure issue. it's not going to be a quick fix, but I think you're right. Let's demonstrate that the problem exists and let's, you know, together collectively, I feel that there's probably great potential for change. I think to finish off, I'd just love to understand your aspirations for the Metaphors Morphos group. And I'm sure they are not small knowing you, Grace. But if you could sum those up for me, tell me what they are. What are your dreams for this group that you've created now world domination, I think. Yeah, that seems legit.

Grace Carter

Honestly, I don't know. Like our purpose is to change the world for good. And the tagline that we're sort of running with is the world will be different when we're done, which arguably will we ever be done. You know, I think there's going to be evolving concerns and issues for my entire lifetime that we will tackle. And for me, it's about developing solutions and whether that's brands, campaigns, whatever that might be, media content, but developing things that just always have that focus on, we leaving the world a better place? It sounds so corny and cliche, but what is the legacy that we're leaving behind? Because the reality is if we're lucky, we get, well, the book says, it's called 4,000 Weeks, it says that the average is 4,000 weeks on this planet, and that's if we're lucky. And life is so short and finite, and I just feel like if I can be here and just leave a positive impact behind for my time, then that is all I would like for my grandchildren, great grandchildren, as they kind of look back on their ancestors and they're like, do you know what? That person in my family trade did good. So I think I don't have a specific vision other than that that will be the legacy that I leave. Yeah. I mean, wow. And no small thing, hey?

Lucy Collins

Yeah, that'll be easy, Grace. Thank you. feel we could just go on and on. There's so much we could discuss. We've kind of like barely scratched the surface of so many of the amazing, I mean, we haven't even named some of the campaigns or brands that are under the group. How you have time for all of this and also then be an amazing mum to your two girls. I really don't know how you do it. I think a lot of people will be questioning that. I feel in the short time that we've been connected, you've taught me so much and we talked about it a lot today about the value of being vulnerable, the value of tapping into that empathy.

And when you give a little bit of yourself, others will just come rushing back at you with a whole lot more of themselves too. So, I think I thank you for today and thank you for sharing so much of your story. And I really hope I guess anyone listening to this can take just one thing. And you said cliche already, but I think cliche is, it's cliche for a reason is if you can truly be yourself, if you can truly find your purpose and fight for those causes that are close to your heart, then I guess that's where the change really happens. And I feel that you are the embodiment of that. So thank you. This has been a delight.

Grace Carter

Thank you so much. I really do think that what you said about that living your truth, you you don't feel like you're working. You just feel like you're doing the thing that you absolutely love every single day. So yeah, completely agree with you. That is a good summary and thank you for having me. I've loved it.

Lucy Collins

Absolute treat. Thank you for tuning in to the Web Usability Podcast. We really hope you enjoyed this episode.

If you have any questions, comments or topics you'd like us to cover, reach out to me on lucy at webusability.co.uk or connect with us on LinkedIn. Please don't forget to like and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Until next time, keep making the web a better place, one user at a time.