In this episode, Chris Whyte speaks with Tracy Sharp, founder of Sharp Minds and host of Beginner’s Guide to Design Thinking. Tracy shares her incredible journey from studying product design engineering at Strathclyde University to leading global teams and building a career in mentoring and coaching. She opens up about her experiences as a female leader in engineering, the importance of asking for what you want, and how she overcame burnout to create Sharp Minds. Tracy discusses leveraging design thinking in unexpected areas, building a portfolio career, and fostering inclusivity in engineering.

Key Takeaways:

1. Navigating Career Transitions: Tracy’s career journey highlights the importance of flexibility, self-awareness, and leveraging your network.
2. Building Confidence and Authenticity: Tracy shares how she found her voice in male-dominated leadership spaces and the value of staying true to yourself.
3. Design Thinking Beyond Products: Tracy explains how design thinking can be used for personal growth, career planning, and building relationships.
4. The Power of Mentorship: Tracy’s mentoring programs aim to empower the next generation of women in engineering and foster inclusivity.
5. Portfolio Careers: By balancing multiple roles, Tracy demonstrates how to build resilience and adaptability in a rapidly changing professional landscape.

Connect with Tracy Sharp on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracychristinasharp/

Learn more about SharpMinds here: https://www.sharpminds.coach/

Listen to Beginners Guide to Design Thinking here: https://open.spotify.com/show/7vP9XJRLbfihGb7ZXlaSSK?si=afcc833494534582&nd=1&dlsi=b3ef013204fe444b

Connect with Chris Whyte on LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrchriswhyte/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Stay in the loop for future events: www.teamkodu.com/events

Hello and welcome to the Design Journeys podcast. I'm your host, Chris White. And in this podcast series, we explore the career journeys of design and engineering leaders from the world of physical product development. In today's episode, I'm joined by Tracy Sharp, founder of Sharp Minds and a design leader with over 20 years of experience spanning engineering, leadership and coaching. Tracy's career has taken her from early engineering roles at Storm Interface and IDC to leading global teams at Shark Ninja, WIK Group and Stiga.

Now she's focused on mentoring women in engineering, helping businesses create more inclusive environments and building her own portfolio career. If you're interested in hearing about the challenges of leadership, the power of asking for what you want and how to build a career with purpose, then stay tuned because this conversation is for you.

Okay, Tracy, let's dive in. So your journey started with a master's in product design engineering from Strathclyde, which kicked off an impressive path through design and engineering. You began with a hands-on roles at Storm Interface and Industrial Design Consultancy or IDC, moving on to manage projects at there for where you took products from concept through to production. From there, you built your expertise with Shark Ninja, which is where we first connected. And at Shark Ninja, you led new product development projects.

Yeah.

navigating the challenges of working with global teams and high stakes projects. After that, you took on new roles with WIK Group in China and Stiga in Italy, managing everything from product launches to cost saving initiatives across global sites. You went on to work as a senior design manager at the RCA, mentoring startups, working in inclusive design. Today, you're now focusing on mentoring individuals, groups and startups while your business sharp minds.

coaching and mentoring while also helping companies create more inclusive environments. On today's podcast, we're going to get into all that and get into your take on leadership, confidence, authenticity, and how to make the most of your core skills. We'll also talk about portfolio careers and the challenges of starting a side hustle and the journey behind your group mentoring program, Sharp Minds. And of course, we'll talk about your podcast, Beginner's Guide to Design Thinking. So Tracy, again, welcome to the podcast.

Yeah, thank you very much. I'm really excited to be here and thank you for inviting me here.

is that the pleasure is all mine as we've or alluded to in the intro there. I've actually known each other a long time now, haven't we? I think I spoke to you when you just started at Shark and Inger and then kind of touch base every now and again, you seem to be in a different part of the world. So it's great for you to reconnect now at this point in time. So why don't we start at the beginning then? So University Strathclyde.

How did you or why did you kind of get involved in design and engineering?

Yeah, so actually, I actually started my university degree actually doing physics. So yeah, I know. So I actually started off doing physics and I really loved like maths and sciences at school, really enjoyed physics and so I enrolled in that. And then I guess I was at Strathclyde and I started at Strathclyde and it was quite early on that I kind of realized.

actually, I'm not really sure what I'm really going to do with this. Because I think that at first I thought like, okay, let's, I'd signed up for a master's and I thought maybe I'd do a PhD. And then like I got chatting with more and more people and I thought like, it's just not really kind of as many applications, which could be interesting. And I remember having a conversation with a family friend and they were doing a course also at Strathclyde, Product Design Engineering. And we

We went to the same school together, our siblings were pals and so we always knew each other. And he said, like, I don't understand why you're not doing this course, Trace. It seems like really perfect for you. And I kind of I looked it up. We had a few kind of conversations about it. And then I thought, I think they might be right. I don't know why I'm not doing that, because I had like a combination of art and then like kind of creativity and then also the sciences and the maths and stuff. And it was all sort of smooshed together.

And I actually transferred directly into second year also at Strathclyde, but I took a couple of specific courses so that I could transfer over. But I think that engineering's always been in my family as well. My dad worked in manufacturing. So I think that it was always this.

So I do a lot of speaking with women in engineering and it's a really common answer that like how did you get into engineering and it's like my mum was an engineer, my dad was an engineer, my family and so it was exactly the same for me. I think it was it just kind of made a lot of sense and I think like growing up I was always really curious about how stuff worked and so I just kind of really leaned into that and yeah and I've never really looked back to be quite honest. I think it's very much suited for stuff I'm interested in.

Amazing. Yeah, so it's in your DNA then isn't it really and your genes there. So I took the opposite. I rebelled against kind of following my family's path. Yeah, my dad was always an electrician and they always trying to push me into engineering as a kid and I was like, if my parents are saying it, it's not definitely not cool. In hindsight, having spent kind of

Yeah.

yeah?

best part of kind of 14 years now working with engineers and designers, you know, what could have been, but then, what a, what an interesting career I've had so far getting to kind of be on the peripherals of all this amazing design talent. So, so that's, that's great. So talk us through kind of where it went from there, then we'll kind of cover this. You were right machinery and then storm interface.

Mm.

Mmm.

Any kind of any lessons or kind of any kind of stories from kind of those formative years, I suppose.

Yeah, for sure. think, to be honest, really quickly, I learned the value of network. think that, actually, so I only worked at Wright Machinery for about three months because, so I was staying in, I was actually staying in Brunel University halls of residence because I moved down from Scotland, moved by myself, moved down from Scotland and didn't really know where to live, et cetera. So I managed to.

blag my way into moving into halls. basically, I think it was maybe the first two weeks that I was there, someone knocked on my door and it was the guy that lived in the flat downstairs with me. he literally, his opening line to me was, hi, I'm Mark, I'm looking for friends. And we're actually still in touch. We're actually still in touch just now. Yeah. And so he was working for a company called Storm Interface. It was actually called KeyMAT Technology at the time.

Pearl.

and he was there on a summer internship. And we became good pals during the summer. And at the end of the summer, he went back to Chicago and he said, hey, they've really noticed the gap in the team, which is like a junior engineer. You should totally apply for it. And so that day I gave him a copy of my resume and he physically put a copy of my resume on the desk and I got the job. And so I think that, yeah, and so from there it was very much like,

fantastic.

Network is a big part of the journey in any kind of industry and that was my first experience within the first three months of my career basically. And then also, annoyingly, at the time when I was working for Storm Interface, I don't think I ever really properly realised the value of what I was doing.

because I think that I had it in my head, I had it in my heart that I really wanted to work for a consultancy. And it was my dream at that time to own my own consultancy. And so I was working at this company, they made outdoor keyboards and keypads for terminals, so you've got like ATM machines, et cetera. And I was sort of thinking to myself like, God, this is really kind of boring. This is like, you know, it's not a very exciting product.

because I always wanted to design stuff. I always wanted to design something that people could really relate to, like domestic appliances was always my goal. And, and, you know, I was working on these keypads, which was like, but what I learned was there was so much value in what I was doing because I was really doing the whole design process from literally a blank piece of paper to working with suppliers and Asia to like going through like all the quality processes to actually get something over the line. And it was in

Yeah.

And this is something that I've definitely taken with me, which is it's not always about the product. I think that when you work in product development, can be, I think it's really important. And I've learned now that I think that if you're working for a company working in hardware product development, I think it is really, it's beneficial for your values to be aligned with the values of the business or for your values to be aligned with the outcome of the business. But at that time, I just was wanting to kind of develop stuff.

it really is about learning the process because once you know the process you can apply it to literally any product. yeah, was a really, really first couple of years was a big massive learning curve in that space.

Huge, yeah.

I've had this conversation several times in this show where people give advice to the younger selves in terms of don't turn your nose up at the unglamorous, all the dirty jobs, if it's a machine or whatever. Don't lose sight of the long-term goal to work in kitchen appliances, if that's your thing, but those opportunities and the learnings that you'll pick up at those smaller companies.

Mmm.

I imagine that kind of that insight there served you really well throughout your career, especially joining a and charting is a completely different beast now to what it was when you joined. imagine a junior going into somewhere like charting, you know, it's like going into Dyson where it's so big. Like, yes, you'll have a great experience. But it's nothing like being able to see the whole process through if you're kind of, I mean, how big was storm interface when you were there? There's a heads.

Teenie weenie. Yeah, teeny weenie. was, I think it was about 25 of us. But they did also have a factory in East London. So I was working near Uxbridge, which is like Northwest London, and they had a factory in East London, which is very, very unusual. But they were in the process of transferring that out to Asia, which like basically I was able to be a part of as well. Yeah, exactly. it was, but they, yeah, they basically had like an assembly house.

cool.

Yeah.

wow.

We had an assembly house in East London. So I got to go over to the factory a couple of times and sort of see what was going over there as well. But it was incredibly valuable. And actually, I only have one patent. My name is on one patent and it was at my time at Storm Interface. Yeah, yeah. it was... Yeah. I know. I know. know. yes, I've not really... No, sorry. My name's on another patent and that was at...

wow. I mean, that's remarkable considering the career you've had as well.

Therefore, but it never, it never saw it never saw the light of day. They just basically kind of like put the idea down. But yeah, but the the one at Storm Interface, it was from a blank piece of paper and I did the detailed design for everything and and like liaised with the factory out in China and stuff and it's it's in the back and it's what's annoying is you don't see it. You'll never see it. You'll never know it's there, but it's behind. It's like a little sensor that you

Okay.

That's incredible.

Yeah.

put on the back of our ATM machine basically to detect if someone has drilled out the fixing studs. I don't know if it's still around it's 20 it was literally like 20 years ago now so yeah.

Okay.

Wow. Yeah, it's, yeah, those types of products from the outside looking in, you think, they're not that glamorous or it's not as sexy as like a, as a consumer appliance, but then actually so much transferable and the engineering challenges are definitely still there, aren't they? Cause it's got to, it's got to be sealed correctly. It's got a long, like low maintenance. You've got hundreds, if not thousands of people kind of tapping away at those key pads and

And so it's gonna be resilient and still look and feel great, you know, so I'm So, so how did IDC come about then? Because that was your next move, wasn't it?

It was, yeah. it was actually, I didn't apply for the job. They found me. And yeah, so basically, think my resume was on a job board somewhere, basically. I have no idea where it was at that time. And it was, as I mentioned before, it was always my dream to work for design consultancy. at that time, at that time, that was my dream. yeah, basically someone, a guy called Sergio, he got in touch with me.

and sort of said like, hey, we're looking for design engineers. Are you interested? And I said, am I? And basically, pretty much left really quickly. And I worked for Industrial Design Consultancy, IDC, which is still trucking, still going, still going in the same place. And that was just outside Windsor. So yes, and I lived in.

Hehehehe

I lived in West Drayton, which was just like in Northwest London as well. So it was easy for me to get there. I didn't really have to move or anything. So it was actually, it was kind of perfect. And I learned so much there. I learned so, so much there. it was, yeah, I felt really lucky with the opportunities that I got there. And again, I was able to, I was able to kind of work on entire products as well. like a

Yeah.

was able to work in medical as well. my only experience that I had in medical was at IDC, worked in transport industry as well. kind of, I also worked on an ATM machine, cash cassette, and that was like the whole product, detailed designed the whole product. So I had like really, really amazing experience and I'm still really good friends with a lot of people that I worked with there. really good bunch. I'm still, and so...

Yeah.

They're a great bunch. Yeah.

because whenever there's any kind of like networking events or anything for the industry, I, yeah, still chat to people. Actually, IDC, I think they had their, what was it, their 50th? Or they basically had like a big anniversary. Yeah, they had their, couldn't have 50, that's too long. But they basically had a big anniversary kind of like celebration. And so I went along to that and got to sort of see some people. But yeah, I'm still in touch with quite a lot of people there. And I think that

been going a while, they?

I think a kind of major lesson from that is like, again, it's the power of community and it's the power of connection. And I think that I think that the I think that at that particular time, there was a lot of us that were a similar kind of age that we're all maybe within like about five years of each other. And and I think that having that kind of really strong connection, they were like my family, basically, because like, obviously, I left Scotland and I was the only person from my family that left. And so we basically kind of

created this wonderful kind of really close-knit community, which I know that IDC is actually really, really great at nurturing that kind of connection. And it's something which is so valuable because you'll work really hard together. You will trust each other. You will be able to kind of collaborate well. And I think that there's a lot to be said about kind of workplace culture. And that was one of the ones. I think it's always a really good mark, a really good sign that you've worked.

Yeah.

Yeah, I've got a lot of affection for that business, worked with them on and off over the years. yeah, I mean, it's credit to them as people and their personalities that you stay in touch after all the time, because it's so easy to lose contact, isn't it? That's great. Wonderful. So yeah, you moved on, just shy of it for years after that, then and then ended up at their fall for three and a bit years. So

Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah, easy.

is.

So they're more central London, are they? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

And yeah, I got to kind of realize my dream then like moved into the city, into London. I, you know, I've been, well, this is now my eighth year of living in London, but it's been split in the middle. But yeah, it was again, a company with like really wonderful culture. And I'm still also still in touch with people there. And, and they're still trucking on as well. And I think that for me, I was more attracted to, and again, this is like a kind of lesson learned.

I was more attracted to the products that they were developing because they were a bit more consumer products. Whereas like IDC was a bit more industrial, commercial, less sexy, let's just say, whereas like at the time, at the time, Therefore was working with TomTom. They were working with like really, really big players, big names basically. And I was quite attracted to that.

I think that, and I'm really, really grateful for the experience that had there. Like I got loads of CAD experience. My CAD skills got really good there. A lot of the work that I was doing was a lot about manufacturing strategy as well. Like how would we split that, how would we split up that part? How would we detail it? So it kind of definitely fueled the fire that I always had about like design for manufacture, design for assembly, design for plastics. And so that's still my kind of expertise, I would say. So I got a lot of that experience. But the thing that was always missing

for me, and even though it was my dream to work for design consultancies and I did it overall for seven years, I never really got to see things through to the end. So I never really got to learn the lessons. And for me as an engineer, the lessons are so important. I think that when you take something through to the end and you take it through the manufacturing processes, you learn about the, you what's the restrictions, like what does the product actually need when you're testing it? How does it fail?

And all this stuff is really, really important stuff because it means you become a better engineer that you can then feed that into the start. And I knew that that was missing. And so I kind of, knew I wanted to get back into kind of in-house design teams basically from there, but I had to, you know, it's the same, think I'm sure everybody's kind of like nodding and kind of relating, but sometimes you just have to go through that journey to kind of, learn the lesson, which was...

for me personally, for me to kind of put a bit more kind of value or to basically for the kind of line of work that I'm in, which is more about the back end, detailed design, and it's more about manufacturing and engineering, but it is about design. And for me, think that having the proper exposure to the manufacturing processes and the testing to production, I found that

Hmm.

that was the thing that was really missing for me to kind of be able to connect the dots. So then I kind of left consultancy in 2014.

Massive. Yeah, it's that that's the bit that takes the sheen off, isn't it? From the the romantic view of design consultants, you get to work on all these wonderful brands, and especially when yeah, therefore has got a great reputation and they pushed that side of things really well, don't they, in terms of kind of the kind of brands that they work with and a lot like a lot of London city kind of centric agencies or consultancies, they are led by

brand that and the engineering almost seems like a bolt on for a lot of them. But I think what I've seen more over recent years actually is quite a few smaller design consultancies kind of either come onto the scene or maybe just transform this, but where they're taking products all the way through to production with their clients. So they're either partnering with manufacturers or they've got a link with a manufacturer over in China or somewhere.

Mm. Yeah.

And that seems to be working quite well because they're small and agile and nimble. And I guess a lot of their clients are on the smaller side as well, where they definitely need that support. Whereas traditionally they might kind of not come onto the radar of somewhere like IDC or therefore they might or may not be more interested in the higher profile client badges for the portfolio as opposed to the startups. yeah, interesting.

Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

So, Shark Ninja then, that was the next one, wasn't it? I think. And that's the biggie. We spent quite a bit of your time there.

Yeah, that's the biggie. did. Yeah, that's the longest job I've had. And I was there for four and a half years. And I think that I was able to stay there for that long because my job changed a number of times since I was in that period. And you kind of alluded to it in the initial blurb, but I did move out to China whilst working for Shark Ninja as well.

can't believe it's only four and a half years. It seemed like a lot longer.

Yeah. Well, yeah, because you went, you joined them as a senior design engineer and then left as a director and four and a half years. That's, that's some going those.

Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes.

Yes, it is. But what I would say, and I talk about this a lot when I talk about my career journey. Yes, four and half years from a senior to director is very short. But for 10 years before that, I didn't do any kind of career progression. So I was because I was working for a lot of smaller companies, and so there just wasn't really that kind of like progression. So I was yes, because I joined. So I joined Storm Interface as a junior.

So that was like from a junior to a design engineer and then seven years of nothing. that was, I'm appreciating the cameos with the cat by the way, cats are welcome in this space. It's just like, is it dinner time?

Right, okay.

Yeah, it's the clocks going back has thrown them. They're going to be in their heads. It's dinner time, but there's an hour and a half yet. So yeah, I'm okay with them getting in the background stuff. It's just if they step on the keyboard and then cause chaos. That's what I'm nervous about. So if I look off screen, it's just to kind of keep my arms length.

dude. no, we're going to have a lot of gate crashing from a cat.

Yep.

No problem, cats are welcome.

So do you think then just touched on that in terms of the seniority piece, you were at a fairly stable level in that individual contributor level for kind of 10 years, weren't you? So do you think that is more of the businesses you were in or the kind of the symptom of that kind of being in consultancy for so long?

Mm. Yeah.

Mm. Yeah.

Yes to all of that to be quite honest. think it was there just wasn't really that kind of there was a hierarchy there, but I think that the age difference in the hierarchy and a lot of the hierarchy came with the amount of time that you stayed there. So like certainly so at Storm Interface, you know, I was a junior and then there was only two engineers there. There was me and one other person Ray and he was the

senior design engineer and he was like, I don't know, he was maybe like 20 years older than me. So there was there was not really any kind of scope there. And then IDC, there was a bunch of us that were design engineers. And then there was like more kind of like, like project manager slash engineers, like project engineers that were there. And they were they were like 10 years older than me as well. So there was a lot of it was a bit of kind of seniority. They'd been there longer. And then it was very similar at therefore like a lot of the kind of there was people that were kind of

partners and associates and they were generally kind of the project managers and generally the way that you could kind of step up is if you were assigned to a particular project account for a long time. So there was people that were working for Samsonite, was people that working with TomTom and they were kind of stepping themselves up basically and that just didn't really happen for me so it just meant I was a design engineer.

designer junior for that period just like slogging away.

Okay.

Yeah and then guess as you move into bigger companies that are growing as well as as Shark Ninja did quite aggressively so when you join them it was still at Victoria I presume yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yes.

And actually a friend of mine who I had worked with at IDC, he worked there as well. This is another thing about like networking is like the design industry is so small that you will work with people multiple times. like the role I'm in at the moment, I've worked with people in that job from Shark Ninja as well. So like a lot of people kind of like sort of scattered, but like, yeah, I guess like in terms of like random advice, which is just like your reputation will always stay with you.

yeah.

So you are responsible for the way that you show up, that you're responsible for the way that you collaborate with other people. And the world is hella small, so don't be an asshole, basically.

Yeah, and I think it's, people are very quick to come forward and give positive feedback and praise and recommendation. But if you piece on off, if you've got a bad reputation, quite often you won't know, but people just won't reach out. So just be the nice person, just do a good job and pay it forward. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Do a good job, yeah. Yeah, no, 100%, 100%. So I always sort of make it my business to be easy to work with. So I think that it's part of my brand, it's part of the Tracy brand is to do the things that I said I was gonna do and then make sure I make it an easy experience for me to work together. And it's only ever served me.

Yeah, that's great. We're very, very aligned there, Tracy. well, you're kind of, obviously you had lots of experiences at Shark Ninja and you kind of saw the world with them and for God knows how many products, we're launching that time, but are there any kind of key, key takeaways? trying not to go on the food pun, but the, yeah, anything that you would say, lessons learned any food for thought. Yeah.

Yeah.

Mmm.

Any food for thought? ho, ho. Ho, ho, ho. Food for thought. So I learned so much there, and I have a lot to be grateful for. I really, really do. And I think that one of the many, many special sauces that Shark Ninja has is the fact that it will give opportunities to people that ask. And so I think that I had always been really curious about Asia. I'd always been really curious about the manufacturing process.

free time.

I'm a visual learner. I always wanted to go out there. And so I was really grateful to have the opportunity to travel out to China a couple of times a year. And basically I had lots and lots of, it was a sort of like series of events that people had kept saying to me, Tracy, why don't you go out in China? Why don't you give it a go? And for a long time I said no, because I thought like, God, no, I can't do that. But actually.

I think it was just like a series of events which kind of led to me saying, you know what, what would happen if I just asked for what I want? And I just marched into my boss's office, a wonderful chap called Damien Lee, and I said, I think you should send me to China. And it took a good while of paperwork, but within the year I had moved out to China.

basically, and I was there for a good few years. And I actually did a similar kind of thing at Therefore, which we were all sitting around the table talking about projects that were happening. And there was a project that nobody was on. And I looked at it and I understood the brief and I said, I would be great at that. I think you should give me that one. And so I think that in terms of lessons learned, don't be afraid to ask for what you want. And I think that, yeah.

Yeah, if you don't ask, you don't get.

If you don't ask, you don't get. I really think that, you know, another lesson learned was like, I waited too long for people to give me stuff. And, you know, if people don't really know what you want, and I think that if you don't necessarily know what you want yourself, then you're always going to be disappointed because I think that if you're sitting around waiting for that job, that job offer, that promotion or that opportunity or that project, it's just not going to happen. So I think that it takes, you know, it takes a lot of

There's a lot of vulnerability in that. But I think that I definitely see the value of being vulnerable. And I think that if you kind of put yourself on the limb and, you know, if you put yourself out on the limb, it's like people can, the worst thing is people could say no. You know, people would say no. Yeah. And then least, know, where you stand. Yeah. I a mentee just do something very similar to that very recently. And she was after like a particular role and they said no.

Absolutely. At you know where you stand.

and because she was very clear that that's what she wanted, she left. If someone's not going to be able to support your career path and if you're ready to take it to a new level and they're not able to support you, then you're completely within your rights to go.

Absolutely. It's, I mean, like you say, you can't just hang around and hope that someone asks you kind of to do that thing that you haven't communicated that you want to do. Statistically, it's not going to happen, isn't it? So I think be a nice person, be a pleasure to work with, focus on delivering excellence and great outcomes. And then don't forget to ask from time to time for the stuff that you want. And that...

Yeah. Yeah.

Yep. Yeah.

that kind of accounts whether you're working and you're asking your boss for something or whether it's kind of asking you a network. I think what I've learned over these is people want to be helpful. They want to kind of be useful, they're not mind readers. So you've got to let them know that you want something out of that kind of dialogue, that relationship. yeah, it's solid advice.

Mmm.

Mmm.

No, no.

Yeah, yeah. No, exactly, exactly. And yeah, that was definitely going to be the yes and, which is like, your manager doesn't know what you want. And I think that I was, I guess that part of me was thinking almost like my manager was responsible for my career path, which is totally not true. We are all responsible for our own career path. So if you're like sitting there frustrated, then it's like, it's your responsibility to think about what you want and then go after it.

is no one else is going to help you with that but you. I mean, don't get me wrong, I've had allies, I've had wonderful allies who had my back and basically kind of shoved me into a situation and said, come on Trace, you can do this. Whereas I'm sitting on the edge kind of going, go, I don't really know if I can do that. so I think that to your point, Chris, people do want to be helpful. And I think that probably one of the best leadership skills that you might be able to have is to recognize the skills in others.

and to certainly kind of give other people the opportunity even if they don't see it for themselves. I mean, and I say that because when I moved out to China, I'd recently been promoted to design manager. And when I went out to China, they promoted me again to associate director. And I had never asked for that. And I was like, no, no, no, no, I don't think I'm ready. I don't think I'm ready. Whereas like, you my boss at the time had said like, I'll help you. You can do this. I totally believe in you. Go for it.

Hmm.

And I just got my head down, basically. Got my head down and yeah, never really looked back since, to be honest.

Awesome.

Hey there, it's Chris jumping in for a quick moment. At the heart of this podcast are the design journeys our guests share, where they've been, where they're headed, and the relationships and communities that shape their incredible achievements.

As we near the end of this series, I'm excited to share what's next for the Design Journeys podcast. We're building a vibrant community centered on physical product development. Think regular online huddles, quarterly meetups in the UK, and even an annual event in the US. We're also planning hands-on workshops

both in makerspaces and online. And that's just the beginning. If you'd like to stay in the loop, head over to teamkodu.com forward slash events and register your details there. We'd love to see you. Now back to the episode.

Okay. So let's fast forward then. now, so the next few years, of you kind of, finished at Sharton Inger in June, 2019. And then went over to, well, you stayed in China, didn't you, with WIK?

Mmm.

And then was it then you went on to Stiga. So from China, so from Scotland, to the south east of England and London, to China, and then Italy. So yeah, you've certainly, certainly seen the world then. So shall we because I'm conscious of time, shall we kind of fast forward a little bit to talk about kind of the kind of

Yes.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah, let's do it.

the leadership stuff and kind of and sharp minds and yeah, we've talked a little bit around some of these topics throughout your career. But yeah, if you want to talk about kind of leadership in design and product development, kind of you mentioned confidence, authenticity and leveraging your core skills, perhaps, yeah, if you want to kind of take that away.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think that, before I sort of like go off on a little bit of a fresh topic, I do want to kind of like pause and kind of acknowledge my privilege in a number of different ways. And I was incredibly lucky and fortunate to have the opportunity to retrain. And basically I was working in Italy and that opportunity kind of came to an end and I had the opportunity.

to pause and reflect and think about what I wanted to do next. But I think that at that particular point in my career journey, I'd worked in corporate, I was working in leadership, I was working in senior leadership, and I was, for the most part, the only woman at the table. Or if it was like, generally, the only woman at the table for leadership, if there was other women there, they would be in finance, they would be in HR, but it was very, very rare for me to be sat at a table with another woman leader.

basically in the engineering space. basically, you know, through that kind of period, I became incredibly inauthentic to who I was. And I think that, you know, if anybody's gonna listening in, if anybody kind of like knows who I am and like knows like, you know, Tracy loves a joke, she's always gonna go for the joke. you know, having like bringing reggae energy and being like a lot of like playfulness and fun is very much part of the brand as well. And

kind of being in that kind of space, being in that kind of leadership space, it was genuinely really, really difficult for me to kind of really fully understand who I wanted to be as a leader, who I wanted to be as a female leader in engineering, because I hadn't met any. I hadn't met any. Yeah, I hadn't really met anybody. And to this day, even now, I have never had a woman as a boss. Never. 20 years. Never had a woman as a boss.

Wow.

Wow.

never really had a strong positive female role model that I knew personally that I could kind of look to, to kind of be like, okay, this is how this works. This is how, this is a strong positive female leader and this is how you manage things. And so it was really, really difficult for me to be able to manage myself, to kind of like manage my own personal growth. And, you know, and I'll be like, I'll be kind of very open vulnerable and just say like, burnt out, I overworked, I over-functioned because I was trying to be something I wasn't.

and I was always interested in psychology and mental health and so I got into coaching and basically trained to be a coach and it's probably one of the best things that I've done not only for my career but for my life as well. It all sounds very cheesy but it's changed the way that I think about things, it's changed the way that I think about myself, it's changed the way that I speak to people, it's changed the way that I listen and it's changed the way that I manage people.

because I want to, you know, like I've had 20 years of experience and sure, like I'm still will have another 20 years to go, like, you know, until like I retire. But I feel like I could be really, really annoyed about the fact that I don't have a strong positive female role model or I could be that one, be that person for someone else because I do, I do have a really good career. I do have a really interesting story. And so for me, it's like, I want to give that inspiration. I want to kind of be like the, like,

person that says like hey if I can do it you can do it like hey these are the opportunities that are also there and hey this is what you might need to help you get there and let me help you get there.

incredible. think. Yeah, I mean, that probably look back on that. I don't want to put words into your mouth. But imagine that time is quite dark, quite, quite, I see a lot of doubt a lot of the cat was getting the cameo again. I'm trying to make a very serious point here. But, you know, through kind of those kind of dark kind of

Mmm.

Yeah, no, I loved it.

gloomy times is come something really positive and like, incredible, you know, and had had you not gone through that, you know, you might just be doing the same thing. Yes, you might be superficially kind of more resilient, I guess. But really, I imagine you're a lot more resilient having gone through that pain and come out the other side with something super, super valuable. That's that's that's brilliant.

yeah.

guess.

Mm.

Yeah, no, I totally, but no, thank you. Thank you for saying that. And I appreciate that. And I think that, you know, you're totally right. I think that if I hadn't have lost my job, if I hadn't have burnt out, then Sharp Minds wouldn't have existed, basically. you know, Sharp Minds is like a collection of all the tools, all the conversations, all the lessons that I've learned along the way to kind of get me back on track, basically. So all about.

confidence and imposter syndrome and like authenticity and leadership skills and like design thinking practices and values, understand your values and living by them. All of this, it took me out of engineering. So like I had chosen to leave the engineering world because I just couldn't deal with it anymore. But it's through the kind of coaching and through like, you know, other ways to kind of manage my mental health and

other ways of just sort of like looking at the world, looking at my career, looking at my skills. Like I've slowly kind of went back basically to engineering and I'm living it in a very different way. Like I'm working for a startup at the moment and you know, I'm still able to kind of provide that value to the team, to like the strategy to actually kind of like help deliver a new product. But I'm doing it in a very different way and I'm doing it in a way that's kind of authentic for me and I'm able.

I'm in a sort of like small kind of company, there's like only about 10 of us in like a small office space in Battersea and I'm able to be Tracy. Like I felt like I forgot who she was, I forgot who she was and I had to remember who she was again and now I feel really comfortable to bring that energy, to bring the fun, to bring the playfulness to the work environment and then still kind of know kind of recognize when someone might need a bit of a chat.

Some of it make me the kind of conversation and I can just like switch the hat over basically like from going from mentor to coach to kind of manager to leader to design engineer, that sort of thing, to design thinker. Like I've got all these kind of different hats and I kind of feel like I've got way better at kind of knowing which hat to put on in any particular moment. But it's been a journey. It really has been a bit of a journey. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Have you met Simon Thorpe by any chance?

is he at Sharting and Jeanette? no, no.

He's a coach. No, no, he's not an engineer and he's a coach. He was someone that coached me for leadership management training about two years ago, but he talks about the many hats. And one of our exercises we did when I was in my last company was we went back to the, back to the office, got the team around and we, we made a hat together. So they basically made kind of my different roles as a manager. And it was like an exercise in getting them to recognize.

Mmm.

kind of, and it was partly for me as well, all the little things that you do as a, as a manager and a leader of people that, you know, there's the, there's the boss, there's the, the, timekeeper, there's the medic, there's the psychiatrists, you know, there's all these different things. There's the, there's the referee, the disciplinarian, you know, all those different hats you have to wear, they just, yeah, is it well worth reaching out to him? I think you,

Mmm.

Mmm.

get on well with him because he's well into, he's a great coach as well. I think you'd resonate, but that's not going off on a tangent there, just with the hats.

No, it's okay. No, no, no, no, I think because I'm always really open to people connecting. I'm always really, really open to conversations. I'm always really open to people who are fighting the same fight, who believe in like the same thing as I am and stuff, because I think it's, you know, I mean, ultimately, I'm trying to support the next generation of women leaders in a male dominated industry. Basically, that's kind of what I'm doing. And I'm never going to be able to do that alone.

Yeah.

So it's like, need the other people that are fighting the same fight. I need the other coaches. I need the other mentors. I need the other leaders. It's like, I need the allies. Like I need all of us to kind of like bound together. And it's not as if I'm, and you know, I don't, I don't see this in a kind of like, you know, I in a male dominated industry and I hate men. No, no, no, no, not at all. It's like, we need men. We need men to support us and we need to kind of create this more equitable world.

And ultimately, one of the main missions of Sharp Minds is to really help us to build a foundation to be able to design inclusively, basically for all. Because I think at the moment, and there's some wonderful books out there, Invisible Women is something I talk about all the time. And basically, because we don't have enough women, or don't have enough mixture of genders and backgrounds, and underrepresented groups are not represented enough in the design industry because we need...

people to be able to provide their perspectives, to be able to build a world for all of us. And so Sharp Minds is part of that journey as well, part of that kind of mission. And it's just basically kind of like one group at a time, one startup at a time, like one individual, one one-to-one meeting, one conversation basically. So I'm always kind of open to people kind of getting in touch.

Yeah, massively. Well, I'll connect you offline because he's a great, great guy. But you might not be able to answer this next question because it might just be a little bit too complicated for the few minutes that we've got. let's picture a scenario. And this is one that is going to resonate with a lot of people. You you're a small, small business, a small design team or design and engineering team. And it's white males.

Yes, please.

Mmm.

Mmm.

in that that team, that's probably describing quite a lot of businesses out there. But the founders, the owners are very conscious of this and they want to do something about it. They want more balance and value kind of female input women in design and engineering. the longer it goes on where they don't have women, the harder it seemingly becomes to create that balance. Are there any kind of

I don't want to devalue it because there aren't any quick fixes, but what things are companies doing that you're seeing that are helping, that have been turned on the tide that perhaps we could share and talk about?

Mm.

Yeah, no, this is a subject that I really love to talk about. But I think one of them is, you know, I mentioned, I've mentioned a couple of times about the power of network. And what I would say is like, say, for example, you want to try and get more people, more women to apply for the jobs.

there's a number of different things that you can do. One is you can try and use a gender decoder for your job application in the first place. And this is something, interestingly, like I wrote a job spec for the company that I worked for and I wrote it and they put it through and it was like predominantly female. So it's basically like, if you do have that perspective, then you are gonna get more people to apply for the job in the first place. So use a gender decoder. Two is if you can try to kind of have your website to be as gender neutral as possible.

So if you kind go to like a, if it's a consultancy or some or something. So it's like, what are the products that you are kind of, what are the kind of products that you are demonstrating? Could you have some more kind of like products which could be considered to be like gender neutral? What is it that you're actually putting up on the website with regards to like the message or the vision of your company? Are you very clear about what your company values are? Because people are going to be more inclined to be doing, to apply for you with the why rather than on the what.

If you have people that work in the company, then is there anybody in the company that can recommend women to kind of like join the company? Because generally a lot of people kind of get jobs through their network as well. So say, for example, you can think of like, you know, five amazing women and like send the job application to them and just be like, hey, this is like, this is like an opportunity or like get the recommendation, get their like their job resume, like on the table, that sort of thing. It's really kind of beneficial. But yeah, because I think that

It is a kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy that if there's not enough like kind of women on the team, then less women are going to be less likely to apply. But it really is about the outward message that you're kind of giving. And you can also kind of like build these communities. Like what is it you're kind of talking about if you got it on your job description as well? Are you offering any flexible time? Are you very clear about what your benefits are? Are you like, what are you sort of saying on your kind of social media platforms? Are you saying like, we support Pride or?

Yeah.

How are you supporting Pride? How are you supporting international women's days? Because I think there's so much there that comes with lip service. It's like, no, we want to actually see what is it you're actually doing. And then of course, if you have any kind of women on the board, or your board of directors, or any kind of leaders, shout about them, spotlight them. Kind of say, hey, look at these amazing women that we're doing.

Is there any kind of opportunity for mentoring? Can you kind of bring in mentors to the company? Can you offer any kind of mentoring and any kind of support or any kind of development for your team as well? So this is obviously that was just off the top of my head, but it's the subject that I'd like to talk about because there's something that you can do, but you have to choose and you have to want to do it.

That's a great list. There's some very quick takeaways there and very important ones though. Very actionable steps, they? In isolation, very quick to implement. that's fantastic. And obviously from the coaching, mentoring side, then hopefully by now they should know who to come to. We'll leave a link in the description.

Yeah, exactly. Get in touch. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, because I offer mentoring for individuals, but then I also do groups as well. And of course, people are talking to me at the moment about company-specific cohorts as well. So if you've got a number of women that you want to be mentored together, then get in touch. I can do exclusive cohorts as well.

Fantastic. Well, we've kind of running out of time. We've got probably time to talk about a couple more things. touch on. So we talked about maybe touching on portfolio careers and some of the challenges and lessons learned on kind of starting to side hustle. So we can talk briefly around what do you mean by portfolio career?

Mm.

Mmm.

Mmm.

Yeah, portfolio career for me, it's lots of little jobs, basically lots of little jobs because at the moment, so the moment I work four days a week at the start up, I have Sharp Minds, but in Sharp Minds I also mentor for the British Design Fund, Innovation RCA, Zinc, I'm also a kind of coaching fellow there. I also work for, like have done some work for Central Research Laboratory as well.

And so it's all these kind of little things, of course, as well as my podcast and podcasts we're going to be developing a course from that. I also do workshops. I also kind of have like kind of contracts for kind of consultancy for some businesses as well. I'm an associate coach on two different kind of platforms. For me, this is a portfolio career, which is none of these are full time. A lot of these are just like maybe a couple of hours a month. Like my time with the British Design Fund, I'm mentoring two startups at the moment.

and they take up about two hours a month each, basically. And it's the same with all these different things. And I think that if you are freelancing, if it's something that you are kind of interested in, then it's important to have a lot of different things going on all at the same time, that you're able to kind of turn the volume up, turn the volume down in certain moments. Like say, for example, something happened to the startup that I was working for and like...

OK.

suddenly, and this isn't happening, but like say for example, I had to go down to one day a week or something, it's like I can turn up the volume on other things basically, so that you're not really dependent on one thing. The balance can come with like, know, how do you balance all these things if all of these things come at the same time, but I think it's important to kind of realize, recognize, how much of your personal time are you willing to give basically, so you could do consultancy in your spare time and you know, like my...

Yeah.

my mentoring sessions and some of my kind of one-to-one sessions can be in the evenings as well. it's like, and you know, I do a lot of my writing at the weekend. So it's like, when, when can you, how much can you kind of balance that? And I think to kind of touch on what you've mentioned before as well about starting a side hustle is I think that it took a long time to build all those.

elements to my portfolio career. It took a long time and a lot of it came from connections. A lot of it came with introductions, perseverance and just kind of really being really patient. And I think that when you're building your own side hustle and you want it to be your main hustle, then I think that if your side hustle is completely different from your own job, the job that people would know you for, like for example, like people knew me as an engineer, knew me as a design manager, director, whatever.

and then suddenly Tracy's also a coach and mentor, then it takes time for people to, for that to kind of permeate through your network. Tracy's actually also a mentor. So if you are going to start a side hustle, which is different, then you have to give it the time and you have to be patient to let people and you unfortunately, you do have to bang the drum and you do have to like, I have a newsletter, I have like, you know, social media presence. I did have like a Instagram channel at one point and stuff as well.

It's like where are your audience at? What do you want to tell them? What do you want to shout about? And you have to kind of consistently shout about it. So at one point I was posting on social media five days a week when I was doing my sharp minds full time. But yeah, basically a lot of people find value in consistency. And so I think it's just really, need to kind of just let your network know, hey, I'm doing this. Hey, I'm still doing this. Because I think if you disappear, people just forget.

Yeah.

That's it. Yeah. Don't take it for granted. And I think it's, you've got to very much have a long view mindset. And I'd always mentioned Alex Mosi on this podcast, or at least I do on conversations I have, but he talks about the game of business and to win the game, you don't win by winning and beating a competition. You win by staying in the game and to stay in the game, you've got to build something that's resilient and lasts forever. So

Mmm.

Mmm.

for

How do you, how did you cope then in the early days? Because it's all well and good knowing and trying to trust the process. You know, you do these things and eventually people will come, you know, but that can, especially for those who are just starting off, maybe they've been made redundant and they're looking at kind of their side hustle being the only hustle right now, because job opportunities are thin on the ground. How do you stay positive? How do you kind of keep going?

Mmm.

Because that's two different things, Chris, think. Because staying positive and keeping going are two different things. And I think that I was terrible at the first thing. I was terrible at staying positive at the beginning because I think it was my only hustle. I think that, and I do want to share this because I think a lot of people can resonate with this as well because, you know, you've got to get money in, you've got to earn a living, you've got to do it, you've got to do it. And so, you know, this is another reason why I sort of share that it's important if you are starting a side hustle.

Hahaha

then it's important to keep it a side hustle to begin with until you kind of like build that of journey. But if in the situation that you have been made redundant, I would say again, tap into your network. If you do have a side hustle, then generally the people that actually know you, they know you personally, they know your work, they know your expertise, they know your work ethic, they are way more likely to hire you first. Way, way, way more likely.

Absolutely.

And so, and I think that there's, there can be a lot of, I guess, I want to say shame, which is kind of like quite a big word, but I think there can be a lot of embarrassment or shame about the prospect of knocking on someone's door and going like, Hey, can you help me out? But to your point earlier, people do want to help you out. And if they can, probably will. And if they know you and like you, if you've done your good job of like being a good colleague, then there's a good chance they will do it. And, and, know, like the, was out of a job earlier on, my, earlier on this year, like my.

I had a fixed term contract at the Royal College of Art and it very sadly came to an end. through my network, through my network, I was looking for a job and a friend, a friend of mine, we were colleagues, we always stayed in touch, because he went off to a startup and I was helping him out, basically when he sort of started out and then basically he's kind of returned the favor. I was looking for a job and he's like, let's get Tracy in, we got to get Tracy in. And generally that's how it works. And again.

Amazing.

Privilege, again, luck, I appreciate it. You it's like, you have to acknowledge it and to be a good ally and to be a good support for other people, you have to realize your privilege in the first place because then you can really understand and leverage what it is you can really do to help if you understand where you're coming from and what privileges and what levers you have.

Absolutely. But yeah, one of my bosses used to always say you create your own luck, thank you by putting yourself in that, that kind of doing the right things, being the right, nice person and leaning on your network. That's fantastic.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what I think I'll just say before we kind of move on is just like, you know, for anybody that is kind of like have been made redundant and obviously the UK scene is looking a bit grim at the moment and, you know, I'm hearing more and more stories about people that are in trouble. But I think that it's like, sit tight. The only thing I would just sort of say is sit tight. And I think that quality applications are way better than quantity because I think I've done it myself where I'm just like scatter gutting, like scatter gunning.

everything, let's like apply for this and that and the other. You know, if you can work, if you had like an idea of a side hustle and you it's a bit of a kind of dream, but it is something a bit different. What can you do in that space in the meantime, if you have that time in between jobs, you know, what would you regret not trying? What course would you regret not doing? What thing would you like regret not spending the time on? And so it's something really important to leverage and make the most of that time and then sit tight.

plant the seeds and tap your network.

Absolutely. Great advice. Great advice. So, yeah, we're rapidly running out of time, but do want to talk to us quickly about your your podcast then?

Of course.

Yes, yes, of course. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, so it's called the Beginner's Guide to Design Thinking. It's available on all podcast platforms. And basically the kind of whole premise is I team up with a design thinking facilitator. Her name is Lucy Patterson. We met through LinkedIn. We didn't know each other before. And basically we wanted to basically shout about the fact that design thinking can be used for more than innovation in the product space.

I use design thinking principles in my one-to-one coaching and mentoring and she uses it in her business development and she works a lot with people in the neuro inclusion space as well. And so yeah, and so we kind of came together to talk about how design thinking can be used for your projects, your business and your life. So like I've used design thinking for my career, I use it in relationships as well.

And so it can be used in all different kind of scenarios. It really is a beginner's guide. We talk you through, we're actually on season two at the moment and we're walking you through the design thinking process from start to finish, how you would feel. We're using kind of personas and different kinds of applications for it as well. And we're talking about the feelings, the feels and the thoughts and the dos and the don'ts and the like actually kind of bringing the human, the humanity into kind of design thinking. And it's a lot of fun. I'm going to be recording it right after this session as well.

Wonderful, wonderful. Well, Tracy, it's been absolutely wonderful having you on the show. We could talk for hours. There's so much we could dive into. perhaps we should revisit this for a future season. do any final shout outs before we kind of put wraps on the episode?

I know, right?

Yeah, of course. Yeah. So you can learn more about my group mentoring program at www.sharpminds.coach. You can also tune into my podcast, Beginner's Guide to Design Thinking. It's on all podcast platforms. Or if you want to follow me on LinkedIn, it's like the forward slash Tracy Christina Sharp, all in words. And I basically have Monday Mentoring Musings every Monday where I share some advice and kind of questions asked. So I'm basically giving lots and lots of free kind of advice on that as well.

And if you go to my LinkedIn, there's also a link to join my mailing list and I give lots and lots of free advice and tips every month, the first Saturday of the month, and you can learn, be the first to know about my new products and services. And if you just want to send an email, it's Tracy at sharpminds.coach.

Awesome. I'll do my best to get all that in the show notes. wonderful, Tracy. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. Thank you so much. until next time.

In the show notes, yeah.

Okay, thank you, Chris.