If I say the words Life Admin, what feelings come up for you? Is it immediate overwhelm? I think at this time of year, when we’re thinking about getting back to school and realising how the end of the year isn’t actually that far away, it can cause a slight sense of panic when you realise how many balls you are juggling. My guest today, Catherine Ann Reid has created a super user-friendly digital solution called Doqit that brings together all that life admin into one place and offers timely reminders so you’ll never drop a ball again.
Timestamps:
00:01:21 Introduction and Catherine Ann’s Background
00:03:31 The Inspiration Behind Doqit
00:06:44 Solving the Life Admin Problem
00:09:29 Implementing Doqit and User Stories
00:19:50 The Role of AI and Future Possibilities
00:23:26 The Tech Founder Journey
00:35:23 Reflections and Lessons Learned
00:41:15 Inspiring and Being Inspired By Our Kids
00:48:38 Finding Balance and Creating Kind Spaces
Links:
Website: https://www.doqit.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherineannreid/
Transcript:
Caroline: Hello. So I have another amazing episode for us. And I guess what I may start off by saying is that I’ve been doing this for over a year now. Well, it will be by the time this episode comes out. And I am now starting to feel almost a bit of responsibility about curating and bringing people in that are helpful and, have lots of advice and wisdom because I appreciate people’s time so much and I don’t want to waste people’s time. And so I actually have literally the perfect guest for everyone today because Catherine Ann is not only an amazing entrepreneur and founder, but she’s also been creating this platform that helps busy people like you and me to get our lives in order. So we’re going to have a really nice chat about Catherine’s work and then also, I guess, tips around life admin and life in general and all the other things that come up. Yeah, and hopefully this will help to mentally lighten the load for everyone and maybe banish some of the paper clutter. Yeah, so hello, Catherine. I’m so happy to have you.
Catherine Ann: Hi, Caroline. It’s lovely to see you. Thanks for having me.
Caroline: Awesome. To kick us off, perhaps you could tell our listeners a little bit about your background. How did you end up becoming a tech founder?
Catherine Ann: So my background is actually over 30 years, B2B sales, primarily in the communications industry. I don’t mean telephone communications, but marketing communications. Started off life in advertising, typesetting, design. It was an area I loved. I think the media industry is great. It’s great fun. Twenty-two years ago, next week actually, I gave birth to my daughter, Chloe. That was when… That was when the change in me started and the change towards becoming a tech founder. When Chloe was a baby, I found myself unexpectedly going through a divorce. Chloe has complex additional needs. Both of these, so her medical diagnosis and the divorce both came with their own small rainforest of paperwork. And I just found myself completely overwhelmed And that was where the first thought around organisation of paperwork started for me. Actually, as time moved on, the overwhelm and the challenge of it all became worse because we then started to move into this digital transformation where everything became emails, apps, platforms, cloud storage. I had what I describe as piles, files, and clouds. I was quite an organised person, but I still, I think the tipping point for me was when I paid my tax return late for the third year in the rounds and as a single parent, I thought, I can’t afford this.
I would rather have burned the money out of my back garden. So I thought, right, I need to get something to help me, and I couldn’t find anything. It was just there was nothing. There was solutions out there that were doing bits, but they were complicated or just seem to take an awful lot of effort. And I thought, I’m a busy mum, I need something that I can have at my fingertips. It can just be there to go, Hey, you need to do this, or Here’s that piece of paper, or, Here’s that bit of information, that was just going to be easy. I thought, Well, somebody is going to crack this. Why not me? And that was when it started. That was probably about six years ago where I put my stake in the ground and thought, Right, I’m going to do something about this problem. Because by then, I had discovered it wasn’t a Catherine Ann problem. It was actually something that when I started talking to anyone, really, everyone had a story. Everyone had a different story. Anything from a parking ticket or I spent three hours looking for my title deeds. The big thing that everyone says is, I forgot to give my kids for lunch money, but that’s for them. That’s not something we can solve.
Caroline: I love that. I love that you were just like, Why not me? Why not me? Do you know what? Sometimes it’s a big problem that a lot of people identify with. I think you would almost think, Well, surely someone’s solved this. But clearly, they haven’t because we all have our own ways of coping. I think we were speaking before, I love to use Trello and different tools like this, but they don’t quite do everything that you need them to do. It’s easy for things to slip through the net. Then you’re like, Oh, man, the passport’s run out, and then you have to go through the full application instead of doing the simpler updates or, yeah, like the lunch money. That’s a classic one. My son’s texting me. He’s like, I have no money for lunch. Oh, yeah.
Catherine Ann: There has to be an easier way. But yeah, the thing for people was the… (a) We’re living in a subscription economy and people do… And we’re a subscription, so no apologies. What happens is people sign up for things, they forget. And because it’s small amounts of money, maybe every month, they don’t see that seven pounds or eight pounds. And years can go past. I was speaking to a lady who she was telling me… She was setting up her business. And as a founder, the first thing you do when you set up your business is you go through your bank account and see what you can get rid of. And she had this payment for, I think it was £10 or 12 pounds. And it was for a warranty for a fridge freezer in a property that she’d left 10 years previously. I mean…
Caroline: There’s lots of people have that thing. I know I was helping my in-laws over the summer going through their paperwork and letters and bank statements and stuff. And we found a few things like that that I was like, what is this that you’re paying for? Because I don’t think you even have this thing anymore. And then going to the bank and you’re trying to get payments stopped. It’s amazing what you find that you didn’t even realise. And I think It does get confusing because things happen on different frequencies as well. So it might be something that’s only annual. And actually that’s really easy to miss, whereas the monthly things are maybe a little bit easier to catch.
Catherine Ann: No, it’s true. I I signed up to Jibjab, of all things. I think it was to make a Christmas little song to send out to the family. And in order to sign up, you have to take a free trial. And this was before I had Doqit. And then this money came out, I think it was £25, came out of my account. I had no idea what that was for. I had no idea that actually I was going to have to pay. I’m going to say, in fairness to Jibjab. I wrote to them and they refunded my money straight away. But not every subscription does that.
Caroline: No. And to be fair, they’re not doing it to swindle you. I think. No, not at all. Free trial thing is very normal. I think it’s just us as humans. It’s very normal for us to try it or get the free thing that you want to get, and then it’s out of your mind. You don’t think about it anymore. Yeah, I guess it’s human nature. Perhaps you could explain a little bit more about how Doqit works, the structure of it and how you recommend people start to implement it into their everyday busy lives. Yeah.
Catherine Ann: So Doqit is a web app. What does that mean? It means that you can access it on your phone or on your desktop wherever you feel more comfortable. And it gives you a a single place where you can hold your information. So things that… When I say… I talk about day-to-day life admin, and day-to-day life admin isn’t every day. So it’s things that you might need. So when we think about information, it might be things like your national insurance number, your national health number. So it’s things that you don’t need all the time. But when you do know it, quite often you think, I don’t know when that is. So you can hold information like that in there. Paperwork, insurance policies, copies of things like maybe passports, birth certificates. So things that have got an expiry date and things that you just need to access. One of the things that I found is that what people do is they keep copies of things physically in different files or digitally in different clouds, but then they can’t find them. So if everything’s in Doqit, you know it’s there. And for anything that has got an expiry date, you can say, for example, if you’ve got a car, you can put in your car registration number and Doqit will instantly tell you when your MOT and your road tax is due. MOT is a bit. So both of them are fairly important because they carry fines and they can invalidate your vehicle insurance if you don’t have them reviewed. So what we do is we tell you when the expiry date is due, and then you can set a reminder to have your MOT carried out. Now, depending on where you live, depending on who does it, you would know as a user yourself If you use Bobby’s garage down the road, that you know there’s a seven-week waiting list, you can set your reminder for them. When you set your reminder, they’ll send you an email on that day to say, Hey, don’t forget to get your MOT done? We’ll send you an email to do that. But what you’ve also got within Doqit is an ability to look and see all your reminders so you know what’s coming up that day, that week, that month. For the next two years, you can see everything that’s coming up. But if you’re on the go, so here’s an example. I’m on the Natwest Accelerator. I can never remember the pin code for the Hub door. I’ve got it in Doqit. When I get to the hub door, I just open my Doqit, use the search facility, put in hub, and up comes my code. So it just helps save time and stress, and it can save money as well as going back to the subscriptions. If you set you only want to do the free trial of a subscription, you can make sure that you cut it, or you can make the decision, Do I want to use it or don’t I want to use it? And you can cancel it. So it’s there. It’s like a… Remember, you just go, someone said, It’s just like having a friend in your pocket, and it’s just like having a friend in your pocket to help you. Yeah. So there’s nothing complicated.
Caroline: Giving you those well-timed reminders.
Catherine Ann: Yeah, well, so what we’re not doing is we’re not giving you advice. We’re not trying to sell you anything. We don’t sell or share your data. That’s really important. It’s about getting that data to work for you and just be a really simple, easy to use tool that helps keep you on track.
Caroline: Yeah, now that’s some really good examples of how you can use it. One thing I know we’ve spoken about before is that when you have a lot of life stress and a lot of this paper, you called it a rainforest of paperwork. I love that. I’ve not heard that phrase before. So when you’re maybe in that situation, maybe there’s other things going on that are affecting your ability to deal with stuff. What would you recommend to just to help them get started? What did you turn to when you were thinking about, how am I going to give myself a bit more headroom and get on top of this paperwork?
Catherine Ann: That’s a great question. We’re doing some user testing. We do user testing a lot. It’s speaking to users, understanding what they want. Something that keeps coming up is, should I block out a weekend to put my paperwork in? It’s like, absolutely not. Life admins overwhelming. We want to make it really easy and simple for you. What I always say is, how do you eat an elephant one bit at a time? So as things arise or something crops up, add it to Doqit. So maybe you get an email, something is in about your insurance renewal pop it in then, or you know you’re going on holiday, make sure your passports are there. You can also put in your flight tickets, all of your information as it comes up. And someone asked me, someone asked me a while back and said, how long do you think it would take me to get everything into Doqit? I said, Realistically, a year. Take a year. Just do it as it arises. It comes in the post, comes in your email, or if you want to block out a weekend, do that, but that’s not what we’re about. It’s like atomic habits. Get into the habit of doing it, and before you know, you’ll start to feel the benefit of it. But it’s like a child, it needs fed. So in order for it to do something, you do need to feed it a bit. But interestingly, we had a… So because we’re new, everyone’s got my phone number, so it’s like if you get any problems, you can get in touch with me. And I had gone to get my hair cut a few weeks ago and this text came up and it was from a lady who she’d been a user for three weeks and she said, I’m so happy, I just wanted to tell you, Doqit’s great. I’ve been for an interview. They wanted three forms of ID and I forgot, I’d only taken two. Then I remembered I had my water bill in Doqit. I instantly went in, showed them my water bill, could prove where I lived. That was enough. Happy days. It’s paid for itself. It’s those little moments of that’s where you start to feel the value.
Caroline: I love that.
Catherine Ann: Yeah, me too. I was chuffed to bits. It was like, that’s… it was great because she had said… She phoned me afterwards and she said, that saved me the stress and the cost of having to go all the way home and come all the way back in. She said it was just like, I’ve got it here.
Caroline: And you know what? I think if it was an interview, coming across really professional as well and really organised, they’d be like, Oh, yeah, this person is super organised.
Catherine Ann: I know, u-hu.
Caroline: Let’s give them the job.
Catherine Ann: So it was really kind of her to share that good experience that she’d had. Such a simple thing.
Caroline: Yeah, it’s amazing. And I think, I know we spoke about this before as well about the different ways that people have been using the interface and they’re giving you ideas as well and the way that people adapt to certain situations. They’ll see things that you don’t see. So I think that’s just amazing. It’s such a simple way to improve someone’s life. And I guess maybe how your brain’s now thinking about this is like, Oh, I could turn that into a little case study, and then I could share that idea with the rest of the Doqit user community so that they can benefit from it, too.
Catherine Ann: So there was another story last week from another user, and he was telling me that… because I was asking him, I said, tell me about your life, admin, before and he said, he had gone out, he said, tt was a work night out. And he said, and we went to a club. And he said, It was the first time I’d been to a club since they were discos. And I went, right, okay, I hear you. And he said, when I got there, the guy at the door said, where’s your ID? And he was like, what? I need your ID. And he was like, what? I need your ID. And he said, yeah… And I said, Oh, I know. I think that’s the rules now
Caroline: Yeah. No matter what age you are.
Catherine Ann: No matter what age you are you have to prove your ID. Anyway, he said, he was like, three sheets to the wind, half one in the morning, had to phone his wife to get a picture of his passport to then send it to him so that he had it. And he said, not now. He said, I can put it in Doqit. And I went, well, there you go. Doqit saves marriages. That could be a new slogan.
Caroline: Yeah, because I’m not imagining his wife would be very happy with a half-one phone call of, I need to get into this club.
Catherine Ann: I know. I know. I thought that was great when you said that. And he said, Yeah, but not now. And I thought, he was obviously planning on going clubbing again.
Caroline: Yeah, he’ll be prepared next time. Oh, gosh, yeah, it’s so interesting, isn’t it? I think it is fascinating to me when I think about the psychology side of how people approach their life admin, and just their lives in general. We were talking, weren’t we, the other day about decluttering and home organisation, and maybe some of the analogies or some of the parallels that you could draw between how someone approaches their life in general and how they might approach the admin side of things, of how they make sure they’ve got all their paperwork in order. So it’s just fascinating how people see things so differently and actually find maybe fun use cases as well as the more mundane, this needs to be done. So it would be amazing to see what other stories you discover along the way.
Catherine Ann: I know. I do love hearing the stories that people share. There’s another really important one came out, which was a lady who’s the same age as me, she’s been working since 1980, and in 1980, she got a works pension. She had very diligently kept all her annual benefit statements. Now, that’s something we say, you should always keep annual benefit statement for lots of reasons. Back then, people had maybe one or two pensions. That’s now going to increase to around about 11 because of auto-enrollment as time moves forward. But she has reached 60, retirement age, and she got a letter through from the pension company who had been taken over, it was either two or three times, I can’t remember, but the amount that they said she was due was incorrect. She was able to go back because she had diligently kept a lever arch file with all her annual benefit statements and produced the original documentation that the company who had subsequently been taken over didn’t have.
Caroline: Wow.
Catherine Ann: They didn’t have it. She got, she said it wasn’t a life-changing amount of money, but it was a fairly chunky substantial amount of money because she had kept her paperwork. Now, back then, because everything was paper, you knew where it was, put it in a lever arch file. Today, because it does come in at you from different ways, it can be more difficult to keep track of. But if you have got it in Doqit, then you know what? You never know. For me, that was a great example of getting your paperwork to work for you.
Caroline: Yeah, and that kind of discrepancy, I guess you would never your normally question or notice. You would assume that whatever numbers are presented are the correct numbers. I would never have thought of that. And then that’s you potentially missing out on a lot of money at a really important time in your life as well.
Catherine Ann: Absolutely. So when she told me, I was like, wow, because very few people do keep their statements, even though they to make sure year or year that they’re correct. Yeah.
Caroline: Yeah, who knows? Maybe that’s something in the future with the way that Doqit works and then the way in which AI and these things are progressing, it could maybe flag up these sorts of discrepancies if there was an issue. That would be really helpful.
Catherine Ann: Yeah, I think with AI, the possibilities are endless. The possibilities with AI are endless, but it always has to be, is that what the customer wants?
Caroline: Yes, absolutely. It has to serve a real purpose, not just for the sake of it, because it’s a bit of a bandwagon at the moment, isn’t it? Everything is AI.
Catherine Ann: Everything is AI, yeah. I mean, it’s great what’s being achieved through it, but I think that it needs to have the right use cases. And as I say, be something that is wanted by the customer. And it’s serving them as opposed to just being a fancy add-on.
Caroline: Yeah, definitely agree with that. So the tech side of things, I guess I’m interested in how have you gotten on with that? Maybe you could walk us through the journey, because I think people might find it quite interesting and inspiring for someone to have an idea and then be like, Why not me? To then, how do you actually implement something like this?
Catherine Ann: Visiting a few rabbit warrens, a few… loads of rabbit warrens actually. You know we’ve grown in an age where we’ve seen Star Trek, we’ve seen Star Wars. We know that things can happen. So for me, anything can be achieved. The technology allows anything to be achieved. It just comes down to money. So I felt confident that what the idea I had in my head could take shape and could be built. So that was great, but it was also scary because I’m not a technical person. I have worked with development, I’ve been very lucky to have worked with some good development teams over the years through my past life, if you like. So I knew things could be achieved. And it was really about keeping my powder dry and taking time to make sure that we found the right development partner. And again, drawing from my background, I knew that it if we’d gone to a design-led business that had a couple of coders that they would build what we wanted for the budget that we had, but I wasn’t sure that what I wanted was the right thing. So it was fine that I said, well, I would want that for me, but how was that then going to translate into what customers wanted? Because I’m also not a product person. So I pulled together, I’ve got a fantastic team of board advisors. I’ve got a great co-director as well. We’ve all got very different skills. We took time to find the right development partner, which was a venture builder who had all of the front, back-end, quality assurance, products who before we even cut a line of code with them, we revisited every aspect of who’s the customer? What does the customer want? Why does the customer want it? Looking at the competitive landscape. I mean, the biggest competitor we have is inertia.
Caroline:
Yeah, people doing nothing. I heard someone say that very early in my entrepreneurial career. They said, your biggest competitor is not who you think it is. They said, your biggest competitor is the fact that people would rather do nothing. The problem is not painful enough or not chronic enough. They are like, I have to do something about this now because the next time it causes them an issue, they’ve forgotten how awkward it was the last time that they had to fix it. Gosh, yeah, that’s such a good point.
Catherine Ann: It’s interesting because when I started in this journey, it was before COVID, and the hurdle there was technology for a lot of people. When I was doing some research, and quite early on, I’d spoken to investors just to get a feel for is this the thing you might think about? I wasn’t asking for money. I was asking, tell me about what interests you. And their thing was always, How are you going to change consumer behaviour? I used to go, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I thought uou’re not going to be convincing yourself there, Catherine Ann. But actually, COVID did that. COVID drove a huge change in consumer behaviour because people had to become really reliant on technology for all different aspects of their life that they hadn’t thought about before. And that helped shift that inertia by quite… I would never be able to put a figure on it. I’m sure there must be some research somewhere, that’s probably happening just now that’d be able to get figures around that. I don’t know. But you know yourself that people, everyone… QR codes is a great example. If you think about four years, if you’d walked up your high street and ask people what a QR code is, they would think, I don’t know. But now we’re QR code-tastic with everything.
Caroline: Everything’s been made digital, yeah, yeah.
Catherine Ann: So we did that, we looked back, we did research. We did lots of wire framing. We did some smoke tests out across, so a smoke test is for anyone that doesn’t know, is where you put maybe some ads on Facebook and Instagram to see what feedback you get. So it’s almost pretending your product’s out there to see what feedback you got. And all of that gave us the more solid foundation to build Doqit before we went, before we started to build out the MVP. And it’s funny because people always… I think people think that you just go Oh, yeah ting, and you start building it. But for it to work, you really need to know… Well, the first thing that’s something you said a minute ago is, is it a big enough problem for people? Because if it’s not a big enough problem and there isn’t a big enough market, then it could be the timing’s wrong. It just could be that maybe it’s just not a big enough problem. But we were able to get some really great stats around the amount of money it’s costing people. It’s costing people roughly £1,400 a year in money that’s leaking, and that’s leaking to the subscriptions we mentioned. People not renewing… allowing insurance to roll over, so they’re not getting a better premium. Fines, because they’re not getting their tax return. So it just leaks. It leaks out. Believe it or not, we’re spending about 32 hours every month on average trying to stay on top of it. And over 50 % of people in the UK are stressed as a result of just the sheer overwhelm and trying to stay on top of it.
Caroline: It is a lot to deal with, and I think it’s probably become more acute because money is scarce. And most of us now we’re having to look really closely at those insurance renewals. Even before, I’m a big fan of Martin Lewis. And so back in the days when no one knew who Martin Lewis was, I was always like, you should go on this website because it’s great, and it’s got lots of really good advice. And his thing about the optimum timing is like 20, 21 days before your insurance renewal. That’s when you get all your quotes and that’s when you sign up because the prices, that’s when they’ll be at their lowest. So he has some really great advice and research that helps you. But you have to be organised. You have to plan how to do this. And that’s mentally a lot, yeah so stress and…
Catherine Ann: We share a lot of Martin Lewis’s advice through our… and we say, as per Martin Lewis, we don’t brand it as our own because we don’t give advice, but we do share a lot of his articles because they just make good sense. And his advice, particularly around insurances and just even giving people a nudge to say, don’t forget to submit your gas and the electricity readings. And by the way, check your bill. You might be underpaying, you might be overpaying. All of those little nudges just help people avoid… Gives them peace of mind and avoid any shocks around getting… Maybe finding that they’ve been underpaying their utility bills and they’ve got a bill for £500, because nobody can afford that these days.
Caroline: No, I know. And it’s even things like if your mortgage deal is coming to an end, being prepared and looking and seeing, does that mean there’s going to be a big step change because I know when ours changed last year, it ended up it was more than £400 a month more, which is a huge amount of money to come up with overnight. So yeah, I guess it just helps to reduce some of that stress. And unfortunately, money and those sorts of stresses and struggles that we have, they have a big impact on our mental health and our physical health as well. So I guess you’re playing your part in hopefully helping people to be a little bit less stressed, have better mental health as well.
Catherine Ann: Definitely. Overwhelm, worrying about having that voice in the back of your head going, I think there’s something due. I mean, that was where I was at. When I wasn’t on top of my paperwork, I felt as though I was wading and swimming through the treacle all the time because I just couldn’t get my act together. It was kind of made worse by the fact that people were going, you’re doing a great job as a single mum. I just felt I had more balls falling in my head than there was rain falling from the sky because I never knew when anything was due. I couldn’t find anything. Actually, I wrote about this on LinkedIn the other day. I felt as if I was failing as an adult. It was ridiculous and it was all because I just couldn’t get on top of it. And that was just before that I went, right, I’m going to change this.
Caroline: Yeah. Gosh, that’s such a great attitude to have. And I think a lot of people will identify with that feeling of feeling overwhelmed and not knowing where to start. So hopefully we managed to share some good advice for people so that they can get started.
Catherine Ann: Start small, it’s like anything, it’s like life, it’s a marathon, it’s not a sprint. You know there’s no prizes for getting all your stuff into Doqit, just do it little bits so that you start to get that feeling of, oh, that’s good, I’ve done that or I’ve got that. Or even just knowing your passport renews in eight years, but that’s okay. It’s not going to fall through the net, I’ve got it set.
Caroline: Why the passports is the one thing that, honestly, I check it all the time, even though I know that they’re not due for renewal because I just know how much of a headache it is to have to do them from scratch again. It’s just, yeah not fun.
Catherine Ann: And there’s that new 10-year renewal thing. So if your passport was issued more than 10 years ago, because actually before Brexit, you could get your passport and they built in the extra bit of time. So my passport has got… It wasn’t issued more than 10 years ago. But I’m going to have to be careful with my passport because of the way the date, because of when it was issued best is when it expires.
Caroline: Okay. Yeah.
Catherine Ann: So again, that’s something that we send out little nudges to our users to make sure that they know that. Because if you’re going, and if you’re going on holiday, you need to make sure that the passport’s got enough time in it because different countries now have got different rules.
Caroline: Yeah, it’s so complicated, isn’t it? That’s great advice. One thing I was wondering was in terms of your reflections on how far you’ve come and where you’re going with Doqit, is there anything that you would have changed or done differently or you’ve learned that you’re like, oh, I wish I’d known that before?
Catherine Ann: So I know now so much more than I knew when I started. I think the big thing for me was I didn’t know what I didn’t know. When you don’t know what you don’t know, it’s like Paradise Island and you’re a bit excited because you think, oh, I’m going on this journey and it’s going to be really great and we’re going to build this app. Then it’s like, bam, you find out what you don’t know. That’s not Paradise Island. That’s quite a dark place. But I think one of the great things, and a bit of advice I would give anyone is, just ask. Just ask people for help. Just reach out to people, even if you’ve not met them. People are busy, but people are kind. See, if they say no, you’re not any worse off. But generally, people love being asked for help or guidance, and that’s what I did. I would say I have learned so much over the last few years. It’s incredible. And I wouldn’t change anything because I don’t think I could. I think I had to come through. And I know there’s much more to come. So it’s not that I’m at a point where I’m thinking, oh, I know everything now. I’m on this journey now where I think every single day I learn something, and I love that. I think that keeps it really exciting. But I think if I was to turn back the clock and do things differently, then I wouldn’t know what I know, and who knows what would have happened.
Caroline: Yeah, that makes sense. I think I’m similar and with I definitely echo that people are so helpful. They are so generous with their time and no question is a silly question. You will never know it all. Like you say, you discover new things all the time where you’re like, okay, that did not go as I expected. oh, what shall we do now?
Catherine Ann: I think another piece of advice that I always give founders who are starting out is be cautious of seduction. And by that, and this is something that I fell for, was when people want to give you lots of advice. And quite often, those people have maybe read great business books or they know someone who’s had or who’s built a business. But see, really, unless they’ve done it themselves and they’ve been a founder, it’s really difficult for a lot of that advice to work because they’re coming at it through a different lens. So if someone, for example, is the chairman of IBM, not that I know who the chairman of IBM is, but the chairman of IBM. The chairman of IBM cannie really help you when you’re a startup unless they’re going to give you a bag full of money. And quite often, you don’t need the bag full of money.
Caroline: No, and that can make things worse actually.
Catherine Ann: Yeah, it can. You need to be getting the right framework and understanding. If you’re at A, how do you get to B? So not thinking about how do I get to Z, but how do I get to B? What is that next step? It’s kind of like, I always think about sales. People say well it’s hard to sell. It’s like, well, you never selling. What you want to do is, I just want to get my next meeting, I agree with the next call. So it’s like, what’s that next thing? What’s that next small incremental step? But be wary of the seduction of people that want to… They do really want to help, but actually..
Caroline: It comes from a good place.
Catherine Ann: It comes from a good place, but quite often you can think, well, that’s great, maybe I should do that.
Caroline: Yeah. And no one knows your business better than you do. I think sometimes when it comes to advice, it can be the context is different or that person’s experiences is different. And then when you think about it and for your customers and the problem that you’re solving, it isn’t always the most appropriate thing to do. And I know I’ve definitely felt overwhelmed as well by the good meaning advice where you’re like, but I can’t physically do all these things at the same time because I just don’t have the resources. So yeah, that is a tricky balance and easy to get overwhelmed and not knowing. It’s a bit like your paperwork, isn’t it? You get paralysed by this whole thing of what is the next thing that I should be doing? And how can I break this down into smaller chunks so that I can actually do something instead of being frozen and not able to do anything?
Catherine Ann: I think that’s something that having a child with complex needs has taught me is the small chunks, is breaking everything down into that smallest component part to achieve that before you go onto the next thing. That was one thing that Chloe has taught me. I remember when she was little, she didn’t pile up bricks. We had a lovely therapist working with it, and she said, well, Chloe needs to know the bricks there. She needs to know to open her hand, close her hand, put it down, pick it up, and then do it. So always think about the brick analogy and apply that to work. So it’s like, before we start building the tower, we need to know that the break’s there. Let’s move it.
Caroline: Yeah, yeah. And when you speak about Chloé, it’s so clear to me how much, she’s a big part of your why, and she just sounds she’s such a beautiful person. So maybe I’ll get to meet her one day as well. I would love that.
Catherine Ann: Yeah, hopefully. She’s an incredible… She’s a young woman now. She’ll be 22 next week. She’s quite something. Her determination to be all she can be is quite incredible. And she’s a wee social butterfly as well, which is lovely. I love that. Yeah.
Caroline: So it’s our kids, I think, that drive a lot of our desire to do well for them and to give them a better life. And I often feel like although… I think sometimes my kids’ teachers probably think we’re a bit crazy because obviously the kids go into school and they talk about weird stuff none of the other children talk about. But I do feel like there is the role model aspect of showing young people that it’s okay to do something different and try something that you don’t necessarily know is going to work, but have a go anyway, I think is really, really important. And that determination. Maybe it kind of has, her determination’s rubbed off on you, but I think you probably also have helped in that role model aspect as well.
Catherine Ann: Yeah. No. Well, absolutely. Her determination. I mean, we were told that she would never walk, and Chloe had to learn to walk three times because of surgeries. And I’ve got a photograph that any time I’m feeling a bit, can I do this? And it’s Chloe running, holding a bean bag. And I use the term running really loosely, running at her speed. But the sheer grit and determination in her face. And I think, do you know what? She can do I can do anything.
Caroline: Yeah, I love that. I love that. I think the main… We do connect so deeply because my mum was told the exact same thing about me, that I would never walk normally and that what she had ahead of her was potentially watching me go through lots of operations and things. And I don’t know how she coped with that. I feel like watching my own children grow and how much we want to protect them. It’s yeah, for me, I guess I was quite blessed in that we went down the physio route only and didn’t do any operations. And after three, four years, the physio did its job, but it wasn’t easy for me or for her. I feel almost a bit sad that she’s not here now for me to be able to have these sorts of reflective conversations and tell her how much I appreciate what she did for me. Because I think, I don’t know what Chloe is like, but teenagers are not often the nicest to their parents, are they? And I know I’m really blessed because I have a teenager and he hasn’t ever got to that phase where he’s like, you’re so embarrassing and I don’t want to be seen with you and saying things that are quite hurtful. And yeah, I I think I probably wasn’t as kind to my mum as I should have been at that stage. I don’t think I realised when I was younger how much she helped me to get through that really difficult time because I was so young. I didn’t really understand what was going on. I really didn’t. And it’s only now that looking back and realising how my life could have been completely different is profound.
Catherine Ann: You’re very lucky. And she was lucky to have you, too.
Caroline: Yeah. I feel very blessed to have met you and find out about you and Chloe and yeah, you just seem like you’ve got such a special connection so.
Catherine Ann: Yes, she’s been a wee gift to me. I always say that she’s my wee gift. And because of her condition and her additional needs, she’s not like your average mainstream teenager, so she’s never had that sort of stroppy. She’s always been really gentle and loving and kind. She’s had the odd strop, but I’ve never had to deal with that side that a lot of my friends have that I’ve got children. I always think we’ve all got different worries with our children. Mine are different with Chloe to others, but I don’t worry about her going out night clubbing. I don’t worry about… She would never go out, be anywhere on her own. So my worries are totally different.
Caroline: Yeah, that’s a good perspective to have isn’t it.
Catherine Ann: And I feel really lucky that way.
Caroline: It’s also making me… I appreciate my own family so much more now. And yeah, those relationships are really important. And they are the things that keep us going when we do have days in our business when things aren’t necessarily going to plan.
Catherine Ann: Regularly.
Caroline: Oh, this is such a nice, such a wonderful opportunity. Honestly, I’m so glad that you’ve had time to come on the show.
Catherine Ann: Oh, thank you.
Caroline: Yeah, and share your story because I think a lot of people listening might feel like, Oh, I could never start a business or I could never… Whatever the thing is. Or they might say, Oh, I’ll do it when I’ve done X, Y, Z because I would need some qualifications before I think about doing that, or I would need money or I would need something else. And they build it up and those dreams can be set to the side or deprioritised. So I think showing people that with the right mindset and a little bit of help with advice and things, there’s a lot that you can do.
Catherine Ann: There is. I mean, I left school when I was 16. I was a lone parent with a child with complex needs. And I always think, if I can do this, anyone can, I might not be able to move at the same speed that someone much younger with no responsibilities. But as I said earlier, life’s a marathon, it’s not a sprint. And through, although this journey has taken a few years, the amount I’ve learned to get to where we’re at today and be able to understand the customer much more is fantastic. It’s great. And having Chloe there to keep me motivated, I mean really motivated, I feel really lucky.
Caroline: Yeah. So before we go, I need to ask you the all-important question, which is the whole theme to what I’ve been creating here. So Create your kind space is about creating kind spaces. So I love to understand a bit more about what people gravitate towards when they are feeling a bit out of balance in terms of their wellbeing. And do they do something completely different from their day job as well? I always find that really fascinating. So how do you create your kind space?
Catherine Ann: So how did I create my kind space? Again, I’m going to go back to Chloe, and I feel really lucky to be part of her community. So as an example, we were at a… one of Chloe’s classmates. It was his 21st on Saturday, and we went to a church hall in Hemley where there was a group of young adults, all of whom had varying needs and varying complexity. They don’t care about fashion. If they want to dance, they’ll dance. They don’t need to dance with anyone. They’re not thinking about drugs, they’re not thinking about drink. They are caring about each other. They’ll just randomly hug each other. When they see each other, they are delighted. And that whole environment, which is really honest and true, is as kind as it can be. And that for me, being part of Chloe’s community, is where I can go any day of the week to be a part of that, to create that kind space. Even something as simple as… Chloe gets to transport, so she gets picked up in the morning and she gets dropped off at night. And her wee friend is there. And I have gone out there in the morning, taken Chloe out in my pyjamas to the car with my hair all over the place. And her wee friend will say, you look really pretty this morning. It just makes your day. So being in her community is a really special place to be and where nobody gives a toot about about anything. It’s a lovely, kind, loving environment.
Caroline: That’s beautiful. And what a great perspective. If we could all see the world that way, like yeah.
Catherine Ann: Yeah. If we could see the world through their eyes, then I think the world could be a much, much kinder thing.
Caroline: Oh, my gosh. I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that as well. Yes, yes. We need more kindness in the world.
Catherine Ann: We do. My dad would always of said, It costs nothing. It’s nice to be nice and it doesn’t cost anything. So why not?
Caroline: Yeah, absolutely. Oh, what a wonderful message to leave us with. So before we go, I want to make sure that people know how to get in touch with you. And if they’re wanting to try out Doqit as well, that would be great if you could let us know.
Catherine Ann: Of course. So you can find me, Catherine Ann Reid, on LinkedIn. That’s a good place to find me. Our website is Doqit, d-o-q-i-t. dot i o. And you can try Docket for 45 days, free of charge, and we actually let you know three times before the 45-day trial is up. So there’s no surprise of money getting leaked out your bank account. We do practise what we preach. And Doqit is on Facebook and on Instagram. And if anybody just wants to have a chat about their life admin or tell me their experiences, I would love to hear it. Just drop me a note through LinkedIn or if they can find me and can’t remember, drop a note to you, Caroline, then you can forward it on.
Caroline: Oh, yes. Yeah, I can do that as well. And we will pop those details into the notes as well, into the show notes. Yeah, so that’s so wonderful. And of course, if anyone has any questions about the business side of things as well, I’m more than happy to answer people’s questions or maybe do some signposting to helpful resources because we’ve talked about that side of things as well today, which I think people might be interested in. Yeah, so amazing. Thank you so much for your time, Catherine Ann, it has been such a pleasure to have you.
Catherine Ann: I can’t believe almost an hour has gone past.
Caroline: I know.
Catherine Ann: I feel like we’ve all been chatting for 10 minutes. Thank you for having me. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. I really appreciate it.
Caroline: Oh, thank you so much.
Caroline: It never ceases to amaze me how resilient people can be. I am so blessed to be able to have such beautiful guests on, who share their life lessons and passion for helping others. You can hopefully tell from this episode that I feel a deep connection with Catherine Ann and Chloe, I’ve walked a similar path with my own disability. My mum had five kids and had to juggle all my appointments and treatment and I know she would have loved something like Doqit to help keep her organised.
If you’ve listened all the way to the end can I ask you a favour, if you’ve liked this episode, please screenshot it and tag us on social media @createyourkindspace. It would also be so wonderful if you could rate and review the podcast to help other people find it. We have some great episodes planned that continue on with the family theme and getting organised at home.
