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From Squiggly Career to Duck Alignment: The Clare Lucas story
33 Plays1 year ago
Clare Lucas helps businesses grow by enhancing their productivity and efficiency. In this episode of the Yeseo podcast, we have the great pleasure of welcoming Clare as a guest.
We were going to write up some show notes for this episode, but Clare’s biography was so good we’ve used that instead. This is proof of how brilliantly efficient Clare is to work with!
Introduction to Clare Lucas and UK Ducks In A Row Ltd.
Meet Clare Lucas, the dynamo fuelling the momentum behind UK Ducks In A Row Ltd. Clare’s voyage into the realm of virtual assistance kicked off during the pandemic, ignited by the realisation that small businesses needed practical solutions and outstanding support behind the scenes but required a much more flexible approach than the conventional way of employing staff.
Evolution of Clare’s Business
Starting up as Clare Lucas Real Business Solutions in 2020, it didn’t take long for her to see that the potential goes far beyond the traditional boundaries of virtual assistance. Therefore, the business evolved into an outsourcing agency providing organisations with everything from everyday admin to business development and strategy support. Ducks In A Row became the name because no matter the organisation, they get you organised!
Clare’s Early Career and Adventures
Clare’s journey reads like an adventure novel rather than a typical biography. Opting out of the usual university path, she embarked on a globetrotting escapade, starting in America, working at a summer camp, then through New Zealand and Australia. Upon returning, she dipped her toes into the travel industry pool, where she established herself as an expert salesperson when it came to Australia and New Zealand. And the perks? All-expenses-paid trips to destinations like Australia, Singapore, Iceland, and beyond. Now that was the good life!
Diverse Career Path
With a track record as eclectic as a mixed tape, Clare’s career spans from sales management in travel to various roles within local government. Over an eight-year period, she transitioned from an Executive Assistant to a tech-savvy project coordinator before stepping into the world of strategic communications. On leaving local government, she joined the senior leadership team for a local independent company with responsibility for contracts, products, sales, and marketing, that was until that ‘thing’ called Covid hit.
Clare’s Personal Life and Motivations
These days, Clare calls Suffolk her home turf. As a wife, mum to a teenage son, a primary school daughter, and a quirky half-pug, half-sausage dog fur baby, combined with responsibilities as a charity trustee and parent governor, her life is an ongoing juggle of roles. Beyond the hustle, Clare’s heart beats for globetrotting, and she seizes every chance to create cherished memories with her family around the world.
Clare’s Role at UK Ducks In A Row Ltd.
So, what makes Clare the go-to gal for UK Ducks In A Row Ltd? Authenticity. Her journey is a testament to her commitment to empowering businesses, charities, CICs, and film productions. When you connect with Clare, you’ll have a collaborative journey!
Find Clare on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/clare-lucas-ducks-in-a-row/
Visit the Ducks in a Row website https://www.ducks-in-a-row.uk/
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Overview
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello, welcome back to the SEO Untitled SEO podcast. You're here with us for a spot of land. This is live action networking. I don't think people in tech speak to each other enough. So I gather people around who I don't usually know.
00:00:16
Speaker
And I get to know them. Live action networking. I say I don't usually know because I have a guest today who I do know. And it's a great pleasure, someone who's a great pleasure to know. So honoured guest, would you like to introduce yourself, please?
00:00:32
Speaker
I would love to introduce myself, Andrew. My name is Claire Lucas, and I am Chief Duck at Ducks in a Row. I love that, Chief Duck. I've started saying a senior white-haired SEO wizard when I introduce myself, because networking things, people are always like, well, I am managing director, or I am, I don't know, something else. Our friend Milo introduces himself as Chief Sandwich Maker, I think. He does. He certainly does.
00:01:01
Speaker
He does. So Claire, let's share your lovely journey and your lovely background and how you got to where you
The Role and Impact of Virtual Assistants
00:01:11
Speaker
are today. So first of all, you ought to tell us what your, I don't want to say what your job is. What do you offer the world? Oh, now there's a thing. What do we offer the world? We offer
00:01:26
Speaker
How do I put this without actually saying what we do? We help people... What are you going to say without swearing? It's a bit early for that. So we help people behind the scenes get organised in their businesses. We help them get their ducks in a row, no matter what that organisation is. And we help with things like their admin, their social media, looking after their diaries, their calendars, their projects.
00:01:53
Speaker
anything and everything to, you know, assist them and give them a helping hand behind the scenes. That's amazing. So that's why I wanted you to introduce it because I would have introduced you as a VA, which might not mean something to everyone, but a virtual assistant. And I think those two words don't do justice to what people like your good self does for companies. You help me speak, that'd be really handy.
00:02:21
Speaker
So I've worked with VA's for years and years and years, and I didn't realize until I first started working with a virtual assistant just how much stress it could remove from my life. So I want to dig a little bit into how you got to where you are. So you don't have to go all the way back to like primary school, but I'm guessing you haven't always been a VA.
Claire's Career Journey and Business Formation
00:02:44
Speaker
See, I've got to pretend like I don't know you now. I'm guessing you haven't always been a VA. No, I haven't always been a VA, Andrew.
00:02:51
Speaker
Up until the global pandemic, I was employed and I kind of had a very squiggly career doing lots of squiggly, wonderful jobs and roles along the way. And then this lovely thing called COVID hit.
00:03:09
Speaker
obviously note the sarcasm there. And I saw an opportunity that I thought was too good to turn down. We were presented with a new way of working that meant that people could prove that they could be productive without being present and sat next to somebody.
00:03:29
Speaker
doing that job because I think there was a bit of a stigma around, you know, you need to be in the office, you need to be looking at me and I need to see you and you need to be visible to know that you're doing your job. So we were taught that actually that is, you know, not the case. And so I saw this opportunity to set up my own business and that is how it all began.
00:03:54
Speaker
Excellent. So your new business, was it based on what you did? I know you said you had a squiggly career, but were you working in lots of different industries or did you have a lot of experience in one particular industry? I'm talking about travel.
00:04:09
Speaker
I know, I started my career in the travel industry, which I absolutely loved. I loved everything about it. I'd worked up to become a sales manager for a tour operator. And then these things called children came along, changed the scope of my career somewhat. So instead of being a sales manager out on the road all of the time, I wanted something that fitted in more with family life. So
00:04:36
Speaker
I joined Suffolk County Council and I spent eight years there working my way around. I started out as APA and I did that for five years. And from there, I went on to the digital transformation team as their project coordinator. And for the last year that I was there, I worked in the communications team.
00:04:56
Speaker
so gaining lots of skills and experience along the way.
Team Building and Local Business Support
00:05:01
Speaker
Following that, I worked for a coach company in Suffolk on the senior leadership team and I was responsible for all of their holidays and day excursions. So yeah, it has been very squiggly. It's squiggly, but with a real clear linear line through it all is that you have to have your shit together to do all those jobs and you have to be really well organised.
00:05:26
Speaker
And that's the bit that I love. I love being organized. I love keeping projects on track, you know, managing events down to the finest detail. All of that stuff is what kind of makes me want to do what I do and give me that passion and fire in my belly, I guess. I'm a real believer that if there's a job that somebody can't stand doing, there'll always be somebody else who absolutely loves that job.
00:05:52
Speaker
Yeah, and I know through what we have, we have mutual clients, don't we? And I know of the quality a lot of your work you do. This sounds like it's just an advert for Claire, which I don't care. I'm quite happy for it to be an advert for ducks in a row and Claire. And
00:06:07
Speaker
I've felt really bad at times with some of the tasks I've given you to do for a client because they are either repetitive or there's something that I think I'd go a bit cross-eyed with and you just seem to relish it. Yeah, I just kind of get on with it, but I like it because I get given different things. I'm not doing that repetitive task day in and day out.
00:06:28
Speaker
I actually, you know, get to work on certain tasks. And when that comes to an end, then something else comes my way. But what's really great is having built a team at Ducks in a Row, it's, we now, you've just quite clearly said that, you know, there are jobs that we all don't like. We all have strengths. We all have things that we prefer to do over others. For me, I like to be creative. I like to work on the projects and the events.
00:06:54
Speaker
when it comes to all the data analysis and number crunching, that's really not what I enjoy to do. So of course, we've got somebody on the team now who loves that stuff and would do it day in and day out. So building a team where we've all got different strengths and skills means that we all get to do the things that we really like while supporting other businesses, you know, with their business. So it's great. Yeah, it's a cool thing. And I will just say to any of my
00:07:24
Speaker
My peers in the SEO world or any kind of sole traders or actually anyone who works in SEO, Claire is brilliant at doing a lot of the things we don't like to do, like lots of meta descriptions or lots of alt tags, anything that requires lots of little things to be done, but that benefits massively from having a creative mind on it.
00:07:45
Speaker
then just speak to Claire. Just take that stress out of your life. So let's have a look at where your journey is now. So you established yourself as a VA. I mean, the way it works with a lot of VAs is as soon as the world finds out that's what they're doing, they then instantly far too busy. And it kind of stops there. But what I've noticed with your journey, and feel free to correct me if I'm just conjuring nonsense here, is that you sort of
00:08:14
Speaker
gone a different route. For one thing, having a team isn't something that I think is completely kind of standard, but also there's other things you're doing to support the local business community.
The Productivity Club and Challenges for New Business Owners
00:08:26
Speaker
So you do, I'm quite interested by the concept of the, you don't call it co-working, what do you call it? Oh no, I've forgotten it. I saw you post about it on LinkedIn the other day and it's like a membership club, productivity club. Productivity club. Productivity club.
00:08:43
Speaker
Yeah, so I think when I set the business up, you've got to remember that we were in the middle of a global pandemic. I seized an opportunity. I did everything that I tell other businesses not to do. So I had no strategy. I had no business plan. I didn't have a clue what I was doing. I just knew that I wanted to take a leap of faith, as it were. And so when I gradually got busier and got those retainer clients in,
00:09:13
Speaker
actually having to say no to somebody when they asked if I could help them really just didn't sit comfortably with me. And I was like, so now what do I do? I'm at full capacity. I want to help other people, but I can't help them. So how am I going to go about that? And actually having a really great mentor and being able to talk through that situation meant that I was able to go out and find great people that could support what I was doing who had the same passion and drive.
00:09:43
Speaker
were in it for the same reasons that I was really. So that's been a three-year journey to get to that point which is fantastic and then they're kind of, I always thought about
00:09:57
Speaker
That's great. So some businesses, once they're up and running, they have some money to outsource. They get a VA. We work with them. That's great. What about all of those people at the beginning of their journey who don't have that money to outsource? Quite often we find that, you know, people have worked their way up the corporate ladder. They're really good at what they do. They set up a business.
00:10:20
Speaker
And all of a sudden they go, oh, but I had a PA before. I had a marketing team. I had a sales team. And they go, I don't know how to do all of this stuff. So that is how the Productivity Club was born, to help those people at the beginning of their journey learn new skills, learn how to use Canva and MailChimp. And we've just come off of a call this afternoon that was a training on LinkedIn.
00:10:45
Speaker
So whatever the members want, the members get, as long as I can facilitate it for them, I get people to come into the group, they do training, they give them bits of homework, teach them loads of stuff, and it's really affordable. And then at some point, they'll be able to afford to outsource, but let's give them a helping hand now when they need it, really. It's something that's lacking for, I think, a lot of people who start their own businesses.
00:11:14
Speaker
I've been running businesses for many years, but when I first started, there wasn't any support at all, certainly that I could find. And I could have got support if I'd gone on the dole for six months, which just seems so strange to me at the time. I could have got training, but there was nothing available. And that was, I'm old enough that it was early days of the internet. So there wasn't all the kind of infrastructure of articles and whole websites about.
00:11:42
Speaker
to support people in you know, in this way. And I would say that held me back, probably set me back 10 years, I think it took me 10 years to get where I could have got within a couple of years of, for one thing, working with a coach, but to knowing the things, the sort of skills that you're sharing the productivity club, because when you start, there's you mentioned the really obvious holes, like someone's been in the corporate world, and just sort of
00:12:13
Speaker
you know, they lose the ability to say, oh, write that up with you or kind of, you know, sort out my calendar. That's, that's something that's really obvious to them because they go, okay, well, this is a hole. This is a gap. This is now something that isn't happening. What's really dangerous is there's so many things that you don't even know you should be looking at. Yeah, absolutely. So that's why I'm really interested in the concept of the productivity club. And I think that's, like you've just said, when you first started
00:12:39
Speaker
in that the internet was in its infancy. I wasn't going to say that. So you had that issue. The issue that we've got now is that there is so much information out there that how do we navigate our way through that? I remember when I set the business up going on YouTube and just going down this rabbit hole of watching tutorials and looking for information that I thought would be really useful, but I'd actually spend hours doing that.
00:13:09
Speaker
Whereas the productivity club can really streamline, you know, it's a one-stop shop. You haven't got to kind of go burrowing for days on end. So yeah, that was another reason for it really. Is it a virtual thing or is it an in the room thing? It's a completely virtual. You can either turn up to the training sessions live, they're all recorded. So, you know, you can learn at your leisure, you can dip in and out of whatever topics are really relevant
00:13:39
Speaker
to you. And like I always say to the members, if there's something that you really want to know about, tell me, let me go and find an expert for you and bring somebody in so that you're benefiting from that. This membership is for the members. It's not for me to go, this is my productivity club and this is what we're going to do today. It doesn't work like that. It's a non autonomous collective. I mean, I don't mean autonomous. It's a good thing. Let's just say that.
00:14:06
Speaker
So you must end up with experts in the group. I'm just thinking the people who naturally tend to start their own businesses as sole traders or as individuals do tend to be people with a lot of experience, a lot of skills. So I guess there could be sort of cross-pollination there. Absolutely. And that's the whole, the whole aim with the Productivity Club is to bring people in, to really help them and embed whatever it is that they need to know for their business to be successful.
00:14:33
Speaker
But for that networking, that collaboration, everything, as you know, I know that we're not supposed to say that we, you know, we know each other, but we do, clearly. We've blown that, I think. But everything that I do is all about collaboration and working with other people. It's never about me going off and doing my own thing. If I can bring people in and work with them and introduce other people in my network, then that's what it's all about for me.
Future Plans and Business Reflections
00:15:00
Speaker
You're just trying to think the equivalent
00:15:03
Speaker
In my industry, I tried to start like a peer support group many, many years ago for people in Ipswich who worked in SEO. And I saw myself, I think I gave myself the job title of nerd herder. I'm trying to think what the equivalent for the productivity club would be. You're the productivity. It's got to be something to do with ducks, hasn't it? Yeah, but you can't shepherd. What's the collective noun for ducks? That's a very good question. Right, I've got chat GPT open, I'm going to ask.
00:15:31
Speaker
So what's the ultimate goal? Where do you want it to go? Or are you just sort of letting the members guide it? Oh, the members are guiding it 100% and organically we'll see where it goes. Next year is just generally a really exciting year. It's only just launched in October. So actually getting everybody to have an input and to help shape it for next year is really exciting for me.
00:16:00
Speaker
So we've got the team of VAs and hopefully we will grow those as we go along. We've got the productivity club where we're giving all of those members a helping hand on their journey. And then I like to work with business owners, you know, alongside them as their business managers almost. So I've got a couple of clients where I manage their projects and their teams.
00:16:25
Speaker
and help them with their key accounts and their client relationships. And they've got to a point where they've got a small team now, but they can't actually manage that team because they've got too much to do. So us, we start out as virtual assistants, but then what we can do is bring all of those skills from all of those other roles that we've done throughout our squiggly careers and really help business owners on that journey as well once they have already built a small team and they're looking at growth.
00:16:55
Speaker
So it's really exciting what I do and I love it because we get to support so many lovely people. I've got some common ground with you here. One of the reasons that I like working with lots of clients is I went through various kind of
00:17:13
Speaker
processes of trying to figure out what it is that I actually like about what I do because I've done SEO for so long and the answer is it's geeky fun stuff. But now I was like, no, why do I actually do it? And I realized it's because I've started quite a few companies over the years. I like starting companies. But doing SEO gives me the ability to help other companies start without me having to make my life busier. You get the joy of the joy of seeing a new company grow and flourish is it's just one of the best things in the world. Yeah.
00:17:42
Speaker
So that's it. You're supporting clients on their journey in the same way that we are. We're just doing it in different ways. Yeah, we rock. So, you know... I have to tell you what the collective noun is for ducks though. Yeah, go on. Because I think I probably should have been able to guess this. There's several depending on what the ducks are doing, okay? Right, okay. But the general one is a flock of ducks.
00:18:03
Speaker
Oh yeah, we should have made that. They're birds, aren't
Fun Personal Insights and Closing Remarks
00:18:05
Speaker
they? But it just doesn't sound very ducky, does it? No. If the ducks are in the water, the correct term is a raft of ducks. Oh wow. Yeah, I quite like that. But also if they're in the water, I guess depending on what the activity they're actually engaging is, they're also sometimes called a team of ducks.
00:18:26
Speaker
And I think that's the one, isn't it? That's the one for the productivity club. Yes. But also another water one. I mean, it stands to reason there's a lot of water-based ones. It can also be called a paddling of ducks. Well, there we go. I think it's also quite a team. A paddling team of ducks. And the final one is a brace of ducks, but that says that's to do with hunting. So, well, I'll leave that one out. Yeah, we'll leave that one. We don't want anything to happen to the ducks yet.
00:18:54
Speaker
No, I was thinking more about the ducks being the ones hunting us. Oh, that's a very different take on what I was about to think. Anyway, I think the risk of this going kind of wildly off tack, there's a few things about about your biography that I want to ask you about. You mentioned your biography that you've got a half pug and I want to know if it's the front half of the back half.
00:19:17
Speaker
Well, he is very strange looking. He's a dog actually. He's a dash hound cross park. What? He's a dog. Right. Yep, so dash hound crossed with a park and he has got very short legs like a sausage dog, like a dash hound.
00:19:37
Speaker
but he is quite overweight, so he's more barrel-like than you would normally see, and he's got the curly pug tail and more of the pug face. So he's like a weeble with a tail. Yeah, basically. And he's got this underbite, so his teeth are always, you know, he's always got these goofy teeth that are sticking out. You're painting quite a picture. Claire, it's been wonderful to speak to you. How can people find out more? We'll put some links in the show notes, but how can people find out more about what you do?
00:20:07
Speaker
If your hangout is linked in, then come and find me on there because that's where I am most visible and I
00:20:16
Speaker
do post every day. Some of it is quite sensible and some of it is a little bit quackers, as you'd expect. So yeah, LinkedIn, I've got a website, which obviously you'll drop the link in. And yeah, anytime that anybody wants to have a conversation or a chat, doesn't have to be salesy. It doesn't have to be anything like that. If you've got a problem or a sticking point, then send me a message and I'm more than happy to help.
00:20:43
Speaker
Cool. Right. So the final thing we're going to do, I'm going to ask you two questions. The first question, sorry, I just thought of this. It's not, it's not like a big thing. I would have warned you beforehand. First question is if somebody, what's the biggest symptom that you see in people that's sold by working with, with a VA? A common theme is they're, well, they're probably all kind of interlinked, but it's,
00:21:11
Speaker
it comes down to if people are not organized and they don't manage their time properly and they don't know how to manage their time, I use time blocking a lot and it's about, you know, making sure that everything goes in your calendar, that you allocate enough time for things. That is probably, causes the most overwhelm with business owners because they don't know, they then don't know where to start, they,
00:21:41
Speaker
They feel overwhelmed before they've even started anything and they feel like they just are not in control of their time. And they're not focusing on the right things. So they're spending too long doing things that don't matter. It's very much about perception at that level, isn't it? I'm going to write a blog post. I'm going to write this up soon, but I use a bit of software called Emotion to organize my day. Have you heard of it? Yeah.
00:22:08
Speaker
Oh, it's remarkable. It knows everything that I need to do. And it organises my day. And if I miss something, it ultimately reorganises it. But what it's done for me is it's broken me out of the perception that I've got too much to do. Because now I can actually see it. And I can see I have things to do. But because I'm not looking at one massive long list that looks really daunting, it looks much more manageable. And that is it. And this is
00:22:35
Speaker
You know, this is why the productivity club is great to talk about tools exactly like motion, all of those coping mechanisms for when actually we could look at things and go, actually, that's too difficult. I can't do it. I'm too overwhelmed. So that is a perfect example of, A, how you have found the right solution for you and how other people can manage their time and also their kind of mental energy.
00:23:04
Speaker
Mental energy. Well, that leads me onto my last question quite nicely. If somebody's considering, somebody's listening to this and they've got a job and they're considering working for themselves, I have this theory that there's one thought that goes off like a light bulb in people's heads that makes them go, I'm going to do this. I'm going to be brave enough to do that. If you were asked to give them just one bit of advice to push them over and to get them to start that journey, what do you think that might be?
00:23:35
Speaker
Well, as I say, it was quite, for me, you know, it was quite a snap decision just because of the situation that we were in. So what I would say is, don't be quite as impulsive as I was. You know, get your ducks in a row, get everything organized, have some sort of strategy, work out what it is that you're going to do, put a plan into place, think it through.
00:24:04
Speaker
and go with it, it will make your journey a lot easier if you have already thought all of those things through rather than 10 o'clock on a Sunday morning, over a cup of coffee, setting up a business on company's house and going, yep, I'm going to do this. I love that though. I really like that. One of the things I've had to learn in business is that I love the run of it face first approach. But the problem with that is that you run into a lot of closed doors.
00:24:31
Speaker
Yeah. So I'd like to celebrate the fact that how you started your business, but I can absolutely back you up that, you know, people I'm guessing go to productivity club while they have a job. You know, if they want to get a taste, it seems like the perfect way of doing it. And yeah, I am pleased to announce that even though my husband nearly did have a heart attack on the day that I handed my notice in and set up my own business, you know, three years later, he is fully supportive and
00:25:01
Speaker
has gone, Clay, you've done a really good job. So yes, we're all good in that department too now, thankfully. Brilliant. I've thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. And I think you've given an incredible amount of value to be very useful to the listeners. So it only remains for me to say goodbye. Would you like to say goodbye? I'd love to say goodbye. Thank you for having me here today to talk about my journey and what it's like to be a VA.
00:25:31
Speaker
So yeah, thank you.