Hello, everyone. My name is Joanne Lockwood, and I'm your host for the Inclusion Bytes podcast. In this series, I have interviewed a number of amazing people and simply had a conversation about the subject of inclusion, belonging, and generally making the world a better place for everyone to thrive. If you'd like to join me in the future, then please do drop me a line to jo.lockwood@sechangehappan.co.uk, that's S-E-E Change Hapen dot Co dot Uk. You can catch up with all the previous shows on iTunes, Spotify and the usual places.

So plug in your headphones, grab a decaf, and let's get going. Today is episode 97 with the title turning setbacks into comebacks. And I have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome Elsa Caleb. Elsa is a business strategist who assists women to develop a robust business plan for the future. And when I asked Elsa to describe her superpower, she said she can get individuals to think differently about their circumstances, especially in the world of business. And she was recently labelled everyone needs an Elsa. Hello, Elsa. Welcome to the show.

Hello, Joanne. And thanks very much for the invitation. Really pleased to be here.

I'm really pleased. We've been talking about this for several months, and I'm finally pleased. We got here at the tail end of 2023, just before the new year. So absolutely fantastic. Elsa, turning setbacks into comebacks. Tell me about that.

Yeah, it's interesting. And also the timing of today's show, because we all remember Brexit. Yeah, we also remember Covid, and now we're currently going through the cost of living crisis. And the change of the year was roughly when Brexit kicked in because we came out of Europe, Covid kicked in in the march. So the timing now is, I think it's just right for people to begin to start thinking about what they want to do going forward. Okay, let's take some of the setbacks. For example, most of the clients that I meet at the moment, as soon as they meet with me, they always say before COVID And I'm thinking, if I hear that again, not that I'll scream, I'll do something, I don't know, differently, but once they start with that sentence, I now think, okay, there's been some setbacks. There's something that's held them back.

They're not as progressive as they were prior to, say, Covid or even Brexit. It's the changes that have happened worldwide that have really made an impact on a lot of individuals'lives, as we all know. And some people just cannot seem to shake it off. Yeah. So let's take Covid, for example. A lot of women, for example, had to, in some cases, give up their livelihood, even if it means being at home to school children, to do the schooling for the children. And in some cases, some of them were not equipped. And also with children, you know, you need space, you need to be out and about, you need to have the energy to be able to deal with them.

Whereas overnight, people's lives changed. The way that they had to do things changed. And it wasn't that they had a choice. They actually just had to make the changes there and then. And in some cases, they adapted because they had to. But a bit of them, I felt, in some cases, have been left behind. So now that the doors have been opened up and we're actually moving forward, and some people are now saying, oh, I can't go back to the job that I used to do. I now want to do something more creative.

I'm speaking to individuals who are saying, look, all I know is to cook, or all I know is to clean. And I'm saying, well, you know something, let's work with that. And when you look at all the skills and experiences that people acquire over the years, and it's things like being organised, it's things like making cups of tea, having routines, planning, et cetera, these are some of the important areas that we need in business. So once we've had a long conversation, I can start telling them what they can do with what they have. They begin to turn their ideas around, they begin to change their mindset, and they begin to have that tiny shining light in front of them. In other words, they begin to hope that there's definitely going to be a positive future. So that's where I always start. But, yes, of late, it's either before Brexit, before COVID and now, as I say, we're going through the crisis.

So, yeah, I always feel that if I get them at that stage and we work together, put some kind of plan together, they're able to move forward in a positive way.