Work It Like A Mum
Work It Like A Mum
The Future of Flexible Childcare
In this Work It Like a Mum episode, we’re joined by Rachel Carrell, founder of Koru Kids, a childcare service designed to provide flexible, reliable options for working parents. Rachel shares her journey from corporate life to entrepreneurship and how her experience as a new parent led her to rethink the childcare system in the UK.
Topics Covered
- Rachel’s journey from a corporate career to founding Koru Kids
- The challenges of accessing flexible and affordable childcare in the UK
- How Koru Kids is tackling the gaps in the childcare sector
- The importance of providing support for childcare workers and parents alike
- Insights on the role of tech and innovation in transforming childcare
Key Takeaways
- Traditional childcare options are not meeting the needs of modern working families, leaving many to make difficult life choices.
- There is a significant gap in the market for flexible and part-time childcare, especially for parents with irregular work schedules.
- Koru Kids is bridging the childcare gap by providing flexible, reliable care and improving the working conditions of childcare professionals.
- Entrepreneurs can bring innovation to any industry—if there’s a problem, there’s an opportunity to solve it.
- Rachel’s story emphasises the importance of planning and having financial stability when transitioning from a corporate career to entrepreneurship.
Show Links:
Connect with our host Elizabeth Willetts - here
Visit Rachel’s Website Koru Kids Here
So, if you're a working parent looking for solutions or someone curious about the future of childcare, this episode is for you. Hit play now and get inspired! 🎧
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Hey, I'm Elizabeth Willits and I'm obsessed with helping as many women as possible achieve their boldest dreams after kids and helping you to navigate this messy and magical season of life. I'm a working mum with over 17 years of recruitment experience and I'm the founder of the Investing in Women job board and community. In this show, I'm honoured to be chatting with remarkable women redefining our working world across all areas of business. They'll share their secrets on how they've achieved extraordinary success after children, set boundaries and balance, the challenges they've faced and how they've overcome them to define their own versions of success. Shy away from the real talk? No way. Money struggles, growth, loss, boundaries and balance we cover it all. Think of this as coffee with your mates, mixed with an inspiring TED Talk sprinkled with the career advice you wish you'd really had at school. So grab a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, make sure you're cosy and get ready to get inspired and chase your boldest dreams, or just survive Mondays.
Speaker 1:This is the Work it Like A Mum podcast. This episode is brought to you by Investing in Women. Investing in Women is a job board and recruitment agency helping you find your dream part-time or flexible job with the UK's most family-friendly and forward-thinking employers. Their site can help you find a professional and rewarding job that works for you. They're proud to partner with the UK's most family-friendly employers across a range of professional industries, ready to find your perfect job? Search their website at investinginwomencouk to find your next part-time or flexible job opportunity.
Speaker 1:Now back to the show, rachel Carroll, who is the founder of Coru Kids, which provides childcare, ad hoc childcare, after-school childcare, after-school nannies. I will let Rachel obviously explain a little bit more about Coru Kids in more detail, but today we're going to be talking all about Rachel's journey into entrepreneurship, why she founded Coru Kids, and also her take on childcare in the UK, what she would like to see different, what she thinks parents need from our childcare system. So thank you so much, rachel, for joining me today. I'm really excited to learn about Coro Kids and, obviously, your take on the childcare sector as well as a whole. Brilliant.
Speaker 2:Where should we start?
Speaker 1:Oh, I want to know first of all why you founded Coro Kids.
Speaker 2:So I started off. I had this really kind of linear career where I went to university, I did postgrad, I was lucky enough to win scholarships to come over from New Zealand, where I live, to come over to England. I did my master's, I did a doctorate, I went into corporate life and and worked at McKinsey and I would. So I had this, this whole kind of career in life, which was very much all about you do something, you work hard and and you get to the next level. You work hard and you get to the next level. You work hard and you get to the next level. Yeah, and it was when I had my first baby and I was at that stage the chief exec of a healthcare company and I felt like I was running into a brick wall all of a sudden, this very kind of rational system I'd always lived in you know where you work hard and everything makes sense and there's a system that makes sense.
Speaker 2:All of a sudden it didn't seem to make sense anymore and I was looking around trying to find the way that child care was meant to work and it seemed to have so many holes in it. You know, there were so many things that that um that I heard stories. I heard from my friends about how they were leaving a job or a career that I knew that worked years and years to build up, or they were moving out of London to be closer to family because it was the only way they could possibly get child care to work, or they were deciding that they were only going to have one child, even though they actually wanted to. These really huge, huge, huge life decisions. And it seemed to be that the, that the child care system was just totally not fit for purpose.
Speaker 2:And I was working in health care at the time and so I was kind of used to this world of health, health care and I was working in innovation in health care, and so I kind of was used to this world where there were innovation conferences and there were lots and lots of startups doing cool stuff and I thought, well, there must be that in child care as well, there must be innovation in child care. There must be that in childcare as well, there must be innovation in childcare. There must be cool tech startups. Why don't I have a look at those? And so I tried to find some, and I couldn't find anything. There were no tech startups. I literally I found lots of incredibly dedicated people doing wonderful work.
Speaker 2:I don't want to imply that that didn't exist, but that whole world of tech and product innovation, it just did not exist in childcare. There were, doesn't? That didn't exist, but that whole world of tech and product innovation, it just did not exist in childcare. There were no specialist investors, there were no innovation conferences, and so I thought, well, I I'm gonna have to do this myself then.
Speaker 2:And so what Coro Kids really is is it's we're trying to build a better child care system, which is which is quite an ambitious sort of an audacious, I guess, thing to try and do. But I had worked, as I say, in child care. I ran a strategy for London, for the NHS, so I very much thought about healthcare systems and I looked at what needed to be done in child care and I really saw it as a system and the first thing I noticed was the the problems from a parent's perspective. You know it was so expensive, so exhausting a lot of the supply just didn't exist, you know. So if you want, if you want like affordable, flexible child care, if you're a nurse or something and you're trying to cover your shifts, that move around yeah literally impossible.
Speaker 2:This, the supply doesn't exist. And then when I when I looked at the the state of the industry for workers as well, I found that it was even worse. You know, people are disrespected, underpaid, they don't get career progression, often they're on zero hours contracts or no contract at all, often not given their employment rights. So it was. It was just there was such a burning fire once I started looking at this and I was kind of amazed that no one else was doing it it's yeah.
Speaker 1:Did you what? So? You didn't. Did you want to be an entrepreneur when you were younger, or then?
Speaker 2:definitely. Yeah, I really did, and so so there was definitely a part of this that was like I found it yes, I found my business.
Speaker 2:I found it, yeah, so it was kind of a mixture of like I, I was annoyed that no one was working on this, because it struck me that part of the reason that no one was working on this is because it's a very female industry, and both in the people that work on, work in it and also the people who pay for it, you know, make the decisions. So I was kind of like, ah, this is really. It annoyed me. I was like this is overlooked and it shouldn't be. It's incredibly important and it's not being given the respect it needs. And then, mixed with that, was this other emotion which was like oh, this is what I'm meant to be doing.
Speaker 1:She made such a success of it. I mean, it's all you know. I've heard of it A lot of my friends, you know, my friends have heard of it. The branding's all spot on and I can't believe someone didn't think of it. So you know, just the listeners explain.
Speaker 2:You know what you're trying to do with Coru Kids, who you help on the services so, like I said, we have this huge, audacious goal of like we want to totally remake a better child care system, but you have to start somewhere, and so we started with this very, very specific thing, which was your children finish school at, let's say, 3 30 and you don't finish work until let's say 5, 30 or 6 with commute, and that's that's hugely, hugely challenging, because one in three London schools still does not have an after-school club yeah incredible, that's that yeah crazy.
Speaker 2:I mean, imagine if one in three tube stations suddenly shut, or imagine if one in three roads were closed in London.
Speaker 1:You know, this is like fundamental infrastructure that doesn't exist, and if they do, I'm just thinking in my school there isn't enough places. Exactly, it's a lottery.
Speaker 2:Even in the two-thirds they're full, or sometimes they only go till 5.30, and if you've got a commute, you know that might not work for you. Or you've got a child who just it's not right for them to be stuck in a school hall, you know, for three hours with lots of rowdy kids. Your kid might be sensitive, they might have special educational needs. There's all sorts of reasons why it might not work for your family. You might have late shifts, you might have shifts that move around, so so. So the current options, um, were just so terrible, and so what I decided to try and do, the very, very first version of the product, was, I thought well, university students would be really great at looking after a six-year-old or a seven-year-old, so why don't I see if I can find some really fantastic university students, meet them all, train them up myself, and over a summer I cooked pizza for them and pasta and we used to hang out in the little park.
Speaker 2:I got this training space from Camden Council. They kindly gave me a training space for free, which was great, and I got this wonderful first aid trainer to come in and we did first aid training together with all these people, anyway, and I got this group of university students and they were so on it they were you'd just love to have your kids hang out with any of these people. And then I started just putting some Facebook uh posts up and things and saying you know, I've got these wonderful people. Does anyone, anyone want to hire them? And they got snapped up. My arm got bitten off for them.
Speaker 1:I think, like your beta, then this was your minimum viable product absolutely.
Speaker 2:And I remember one in particular, um, who I'm still kind of in touch with, actually, and she, um, this incredible Portuguese um woman who was doing a master's in children, children's literature, so so nice, and she was in South London. I remember I put up a Facebook page just saying you know, here's this person, and I got 63 families immediately contacting me to try and get hold of her. That's how much people wanted these wonderful nannies, and so I thought right, there's something here. And then, ever since then that was eight years ago and ever since then we've been building, firstly just scaling that up. So last year, you know, we went from, maybe, maybe over that first summer I trained I don't know, 20 or 30 or something like that uh, nannies. Last year we got over 120,000 applications to become a quarry kids nanny and we now my gosh, how do you?
Speaker 1:you must have a quite big recruitment team to process them all definitely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've got 40 people in the team now, in the immediate team, and we pick up about 3 000 kids a day now and uh and all over the uk or yes, all over the uk.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's amazing. What? Where do you see it going then?
Speaker 2:so I think after school is just the start of what we're doing. One of the cool things has been, you know, to start off with this very, very specific problem, which we now solve really, really well, and we build all of these, all of these services around it like we. You know, we now do all the, all the paperwork. The payments are beautiful. You know all the contracts we give lovely, that, just all of the journeys. We've worked on them for eight years now, so they're all very beautiful and seamless. And then we've we've started to expand out into other kinds of part-time.
Speaker 2:So there's lots of other reasons you might want part-time, not just, not just that, that, um, after school period, uh, so you know, if someone wants someone for, you know, two days a week or something like that, we can do that. The reason that's quite exciting is because almost no one else can actually do that. If you um, it's actually very hard to find a flexible and part-time child care and that's really our specialty and I like to. I like to always try and do the hard, hard thing. I'm a bit of a masochist. I'm not really interested in doing.
Speaker 2:If something already exists, I don't really want to do it. I'm not really interested in that um. So we've tried to really fill gaps in the market. But but now where we are today is we can do any type of nanny so we can do full-time, we can do part-time, we can do day. You know we can, we can, we can kind of do whatever. And then the other way that we've really built it up is I started off just looking at university students- and they are wonderful for, for particular kind of family and particular kind of kids.
Speaker 2:They're perfect. But they're not right for every family. You know. There are some, some families who want someone who is older, you know, or someone who like for whatever reason. They want something else. And so we've, over the eight years, we've learned how to find these different types of people and we now have about 25% of our nannies are aged 45 to 65. Typically, usually they're mums who have grown up children.
Speaker 1:As I say in a way, I mean, this might be something I would like you know where it's like a surrogate grandma figure for you If you don't live near? Your family.
Speaker 2:It's nice's like a surrogate grandma figure for your if you don't live near your family it is nice to have a surrogate, yeah, and we find, we find that that the families that like them often have slightly younger kids, yeah, or kids who just need a little bit more sort of nurturing and warmth not to say my students aren't nurturing they. They certainly, you know, definitely, but but this is the kind of typical profile and they also typically have lived in the community for decades, they know it very deeply, they themselves have got incredible community and support networks around them and they just have so much empathy. They're buckets of empathy for what parents are going through and actually a lot of the reason that they want to do it is because they know how hard it is and so they, they, they really want to. They want to do something that, um, where they're really needed, and they understand why they need it. That's why they want to do it so you, you obviously started corricates.
Speaker 1:You started with the facebook groups. I love that. Do you know? I interviewed somebody else, um recently for the podcast. Um called rosie, I think, her name's davis. She's one of the she's instagram's biggest sleep consultant say oh yes, I think I know you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, chill baby um I think it is.
Speaker 1:Um, it's got chill in it and um, she started her business through comment, just like you, commenting on facebook um posts and in facebook groups, and now it's like like yours and you know it's got really big. Um, when did you get to the point where you sort of quit your job then to take this full time?
Speaker 2:very quickly, uh, long before all the stuff that I was talking about, I um, because I just knew I wanted to do this and I guess I had um, I had. I had a lot of faith that I could make something work, and I also I, because I had, um, I had, I had a lot of faith that I could make something work, and I also I, because I had always wanted to set up a business. I kind of felt like for me it was I'd reached a point of now or never and I always thought I think just to to do it. I'd always thought, well, I need three things in place I need to have my relationship sorted, because I wanted to have stability there so I don't think I would have done it if I was single.
Speaker 2:No, until, like you know, my mid-30s, early 30s, um. The second one is I did need to have some savings and I so I waited until I was in a job where they had a sort of a bonus thing and if I achieved certain results over three years and got that bonus, you know that that that was like money in my bank and so I waited until that moment, until I had a, I had a bonus and so I had some saving, and those were the two things that I really felt like I needed to have in place before I did it. But with both of those in place the sort of a bit of a financial cushion and and what I felt was like an emotional cushion from having my relationship sorted I wasn't honestly really worried about making it, making the business work. I felt like I could cope, and sometimes people said, you know, or it must've been scary, or that you'd have to be brave.
Speaker 2:Honestly, I didn't feel very brave, or I didn't feel like it really needed to be scary, because it was. I got to the point where I thought, well, if I don't do this now, um, then, then then I better stop saying I'm ever going to do it, because now's the moment. The third thing I needed was the idea. Um and so when the idea came along and I already had the other two things, it was like right, okay, now is the moment absolutely, and have you been self-funded?
Speaker 1:have you got investment?
Speaker 2:no, I've raised quite a lot of investment actually, and pretty early on I actually raised investment. I got my first term sheet before I had any employees at all, and then it closed. But it took about six, seven months to close and by that time, because I knew the money was going to come, I hired my first two in that six to seven month period.
Speaker 1:Wow, I mean I'm going to come on to Coro Kids in a bit, but I mean, just as someone very curious, what's it like to go through an investment round?
Speaker 2:I've been through quite a few. I think I've been through five investment rounds and I don't find them that bad. I know that most people describe it as really brutal and I mean I can see that it is a huge amount of work. You definitely get rejected a lot.
Speaker 2:But if you kind of just accept that, and for me, I am always all about framing of things.
Speaker 2:I think mental framing is very important and powerful, all about framing of things. I think mental framing is very important and powerful, and so the way that I frame it is it's kind of like getting your strategy and really testing it through fire. And I find that the times when, whenever we do a fundraise, we go in with a certain amount of strategy or planning that is kind of honestly, a little woolly, a little vague, that is kind of honestly a little woolly, a little vague, and you get asked questions like you know, what are you going to do next year? How do you know? What are your proof points? What are you going to achieve? What are you going to achieve the next year? What's your horizon, what's your exit, what's the competitive landscape? You get asked all these pretty standard questions and you have to come up with really good answers for them, and it's actually a pretty good strategy formation process. Yeah, every time I finish a fundraise, yes, I am exhausted, but also I feel like we have just so much clearer plan for going forward.
Speaker 1:So if I was a potential client wanting to use Cora Kids, you've said you've got a really seamless journey. What's that journey look like then? How does somebody go from a prospective parent to one of your parents?
Speaker 2:so you sign up with us, um, which is free, and so you can see nannies and message them, which is also free, so there's no risk at um. Okay, so you do that on your platform. You do that in the platform, so it's just a website and uh, and so you put in a little bit about what you're looking for and then, very quickly, within five minutes you can probably quicker you can probably do it in two or three you, you can be looking at all of our nannies, typically depending on where you are in the in the uk and and depending a bit on what you need, but typically you'll see. You might see like 50 people who meet your requirements, yeah and uh, and so you can.
Speaker 2:You can kind of scroll through them, read their profiles, um, have a look, see what you think, and then you can choose to either make your job post, uh, public and not public, public, but public to our nannies, in which case you'll get messages coming in from people who would like to do your job, or, and and if you want to find someone quick, often that's what people do or you can keep it private and just just reach out when you see someone who looks really great, and you can do that too, and then so you message through our system and then, um, you can set up, uh, an interview which you can do over the phone, or you can often you can.
Speaker 2:You can do it however you want. But but a very popular thing to do is you might have a quick phone call just to check that you're kind of basically compatible, and then you might have an in-person interview, uh, and then often a family will want to do a paid trial, and so you might book in that trial for, let's say, four hours or something, and, uh, and just see how your nanny gets on with your kids, what the feedback is from the kids, you know all of that uh and then they book that through your platform, so you're through the website and payments, everything and insurance and that through your platform.
Speaker 2:So you're through the website and payments, everything and insurance and everything is throughout that form. Yeah, and then, uh, if you decide to go ahead with the job, we then take care of all of the paperwork. So, because you are employing someone and that, by the way, is not a choice, that's a legal obligation you can't choose not to be the employer. You are the employer, okay, that means you've got to take on all of these employment responsibilities, like what happens if they get sick or pregnant. You've got to make sure that you're complying with tax legislation and also pension legislation. So there's quite a lot of of headache, which is the the last thing a working parent wants, right? No one wants that, and so we take care of absolutely all of that.
Speaker 2:So we set you up with HMRC, we set you up with the pension regulator. We make sure that all your taxes paid correctly, your payments kind of all happen very, very seamlessly, and if any of the things that I mentioned you know, like sick, holiday, all of that, we just make it so, so, so, so simple, and so that goes on for the for the whole life of your match, and then, at the same time, we're working in the background with your nanny, making sure that they're happy and comfortable and if they have any difficult conversation that they want to have with you, sometimes we run through through it with them. We run through through it with them. So we're doing everything we possibly can to make sure that your nanny is giving you the absolute best uh, best easy days in your week that we possibly can so you booking so people can book, I'm guessing, like part-time or regular, you know, after school?
Speaker 1:what about ad hoc? Do you offer any ad hoc?
Speaker 2:we don't currently but that is one of our most requested features. So watch this space and hopefully, if I talk to you in about six months, I'll have a very different answer you know that would be really helpful because I had um.
Speaker 1:I work from home, so I'm actually very fortunate. I can, you know, make pickups, but, um, next week I've got a um something in London and it's it's like 3 30 and it's just that like when you need ad hoc and you're like where do I go? Yeah, yeah, you're sort of calling in favor, so I think that would be would be really helpful as well. So I mean, there's so much isn't there in the news? Politicians are, um, you know, talking about child care, but it is still, like you said, it still does feel quite a broken system. I know that you're obviously doing wonders and making it better, but what would you like to see If you were speaking to, like, keir Starmer or Bridgette Billipson is that right? The Education Secretary? I mean, what would make childcare better, do you think? I mean?
Speaker 2:number one has to be funding it properly. Yeah, because everyone is operating on such a shoestring UK parents pay the most for childcare out of any country in the OECD. It is really really stark. So, firstly, it has to be that there are so many nurseries that are going out of business because the funding is just not there. Secondly, I think funding structures need to change as well.
Speaker 2:So one of the things that I am very keen to work with the government on is having much better funding coverage for this flexible ad hoc childcare, because currently you can't use any of the subsidies like tax-free childcare and that kind of thing to pay for flexible ad hoc childcare, because it requires the nannies to be Ofsted registered, and Ofsted registration is so expensive that someone who is just doing it ad hoc is not going to do it, so it doesn't practically work.
Speaker 2:And, by the way, if there's who who feels passionately about this issue I and and wants to contact me, I'd absolutely love to chat because I'm going to be looking for stories to take to the government. I actually was speaking to a minister, um, the minister of early years literally last week about this. Uh, he was very interested and his officials are very interested in this issue. So if anyone listening thinks, oh, that's me, I wish I could use my universal credit or my tax-free childcare in order to pay for flexible, affordable childcare, then I'm on the lookout for stories to take to bring this issue to life. So that would definitely be number two. And then, I think, more support for people working in the industry. It is a really it's a really tough job and, as I say, often people are vulnerable and often they're not not on proper contracts and they don't get their employment rights. I don't think that's okay that's really.
Speaker 1:I mean, we're recording this, aren't we? We come from the budget. Does that affect childcare? You know, with the employer and I yeah, it does.
Speaker 2:It's definitely going to make it more expensive to um to hire a nanny, which again, I think that it's something else that I that I, um, I'm very keen to work with the government on right now. This this is I actually find this very shocking there is for national insurance. Small businesses don't pay national insurance yeah unless the the employer, the employee works in the home in other words.
Speaker 2:in other words, child care is specifically targeted with an extra tax. That's crazy, isn't that appalling? Again, I'm very keen to lobby on this. So if anyone feels strongly about this and wants to be a story that I'm going to take, I'm going to try and talk to the Treasury about this. I think it's just atrocious.
Speaker 1:Because that is, you know certain jobs. That is the only way you can really you know if you've got a really big job in london or a city. The only way you can really make it work is with a nanny.
Speaker 2:Being realistic, if you exactly and it is specifically prohibited. So if you hire, if you, if you're a pub and you're hiring a worker for your pub and you're a small business, yeah you don't pay national insurance. But if you hire a nanny to work in your home, you do that's yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, hopefully you'll be able to change their minds, but yeah, that's really bad. I didn't realise that that's so bad that they like singled that out yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I agree that feels quite, actually quite discriminatory against. You know, parents, um, particularly moms, that, as we all know, you know, if they don't get child care, then the ones that end up picking up the slack. Um, I do, I did a podcast. I wonder what you feel about this as well. With um, I don't know if you've heard of mothers at home matters no they are.
Speaker 1:They are um. They're on instagram. They've got a fairly large, large ish following and they were talking about funding as well, and they were sort of saying they would like to see um funding go to the parents directly and then they decide whether they want to use it on child care or use it to stay at home or pay grandparents. How do you feel about that? What do you think about that sort of view?
Speaker 2:I think it's a. I think it's a really interesting idea. I'm not I'm not particularly opposed to it. I think, as long as as long as the choice exists that we have a child care infrastructure, I think what we need to have is we need to have a child care infrastructure that is funded well enough that there is a genuine choice that you can use it. If you then choose not to use it and you choose instead to have grandparents or someone else to look after, or you choose to look after your own kids brilliant and you know, should there be support to do that as well. Yeah, I think actually that's a pretty cool idea. There's some really interesting stuff coming out of Sweden at the moment with their grandparental leave, oh yes.
Speaker 2:So this is the idea that, just as if you take parental leave when you have a new baby, you get some state support, if the grandparents do the same thing and leave their job in order to take care of the baby, they should be entitled to the same support. I think that's a really, really cool, progressive idea and I think a lot of this. You know, taking care of kids within the family if you've got the kind of family set up where where that is great for you, which obviously not everyone does, but it but if you do brilliant.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if someone's listening to this as well and they want to become a nanny through Cora Kids, what does that process like? Look like?
Speaker 2:So it's pretty simple to apply. Like I say, we got over 120,000 applications last year, so a lot of people do apply. And then we you have to have a couple of references. Slightly depends on your specific career trajectory and we have different thick sort of types of nanny thing that you can apply for that you'll end up being matched with different types of families, so, um, but you have to have some references. Of course we have to check right to work um and uh, and of course we have to do enhanced dbs and and you'll fill out some things. We, we then have um training that you, um that you do with us. It's we've taken care to make it really kind of engaging and fun, get a lot of really good feedback on the training that um, that happens is that in person the training or these days.
Speaker 2:No, we took it online during covid and we never went back. It always used to be in in person. For years and years it was, which I think is quite good, because it means we really refined it through in person, you know, because there's nothing you know. Looking looking out as see your faces and seeing that people's eyes have glazed over and thinking, all right, we need to change this bit, you know, but now it's all online and uh, and then, and then you, you. It's basically the reverse image, mirror image of the thing that I described for parents. So you come onto the um platform and you uh, and you can see the all the jobs that are there and and the families and you can start to message them, and then you have the interview, probably a trial, and then the contracting process so you don't need to have had child care experience it depends what you're applying for.
Speaker 2:So if you would. If you are looking to look after a baby yeah, toddler, you absolutely must have worked.
Speaker 1:Could it be your own child?
Speaker 2:or, yes, it could be, but we would need to have evidence. So we we we have a a quite developed um way that we do references and things that make sure that you've done what you say you've done and uh. But if you are, if you are looking after an older kid, you certainly still do need child care experience, but the thing is, it doesn't need to be formal, so you don't need to have, for example, worked in a nursery, or you don't need to have a child care qualification. You do, though, need to have experience, and so we have lots of people who are nannies with us, who have done lots of babysitting, have looked after lots of you know siblings, or something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely a lot of them. A lot of people in our books have their own kids. Some people who have been like brownie leaders or sports clubs you know they've taught football to kids, or theatre, or something like that. So we need to, and we look at each case on its merits. So, as long as you've got something like that, that shows that you know you will do a good job at this. We're more interested, though, in the qualities of our nannies as people.
Speaker 2:So, we look for things like are you a good team player? Are you warm? Are you gonna kind of muck in? Are you really willing to learn? You know, are you someone who is always trying trying to improve? Have you got good communication? You know good written, good, um, good verbal communication.
Speaker 1:That's what we're much more interested in so, if someone's listening to this, do you still take on students, because a lot of listeners maybe have older children that are about to go to university and potentially want to supplement you? Know their income during their degrees.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, we absolutely do. We've still got about 50% of our nannies still today are students.
Speaker 1:What about if someone's listening to this and have got their own child? Do you allow that if they could take their own child to the family?
Speaker 2:We find I actually need to. I would need to check what our exact policy is on this, because we've tried different things over the years and I know when we first started off we really tried to make it happen. But I'm actually not sure what our policy is right now today on that, because it can be quite complicated. I would love to facilitate that. That's one of those details that I'd love to. If we're not currently allowing that, then I'd love to come back to it and see how we can do it. But it does.
Speaker 2:It makes it more complicated, because when you're a parent, just from the parent perspective, when you're looking at different kinds of nannies and you've got your job, what you really want to be able to do is you want to scan very quickly and you want to kind of rule people in and out very quickly, and so one of the things that we think a lot about is how do we boil down the really essential features of each person to the smallest number of things so that you can scan really, really quickly and so that you can kind of shortlist?
Speaker 2:And we find that once a parent has shortlisted, then they will go deep into the details, and I really, really want to know about the you know three, four or five people that they've shortlisted. So for things like this person had their own child or, you know, like very unusual things, we have to think very deeply about. Okay, well, how do we represent that? And everything that we represent in the kind of the scannable bit takes away an opportunity to represent something else. So it can be a little bit of a tough balance to keep things. We it's a balance between we want to give everyone the best chance possible of finding a good job and having a great experience, but we also want to make our system as simple as possible, because this is working parents who are using it and they do not have any time and they're trying to do 16 things at once, and so it's constantly a balance between those two things.
Speaker 1:I can imagine. Yeah, it's. I mean, I think what you've done is phenomenal. What I mean, the amount I mean, you are so like on people's radar you know you've done such a good job building up such a great brand in such a short space of time.
Speaker 2:I know it doesn't feel like it's eight years doesn't feel short to me.
Speaker 1:No, I'm sure it doesn't but you know it is and I think you've done a great job. I mean, you've sort of said um, you're hoping to go international potentially. Where would you love to go if you could? Where would you love to take ChiroKids?
Speaker 2:so we get asked to go various places, but I think the most likely place that we would go is America. If anyone listening is from there or thinks that what we're doing would either be great or terrible. I would also love to hear it if you think it would not work. But yeah, I'm in the market for kind of talking to people who have opinions about where we should go About New.
Speaker 1:Zealand. Would you go back to New Zealand?
Speaker 2:I would absolutely love to. Just on a personal level, I go back new zealand every year with my family. It's quite big trip, but, um, it's just a really small market and so it's hard to justify commercially.
Speaker 1:But I would love to yeah, and I guess I mean I I've never been to new zealand, but it feels like it's quite a big country, maybe quite sparsely populated, I don't know well it.
Speaker 2:Actually, most people live in the city, so I don't think it. I don't think it has that problem particularly. It's not more um, the population is not more dispersed across um than than here, but it's just.
Speaker 1:The total number of people is not that big, it's five million yeah, so if someone's listening to this and they are looking for a nanny, or they're looking um to register as a nanny, remind us again of your website.
Speaker 2:KORUkids, which is K-O-R-U-K-I-D-S dot, co dot UK.
Speaker 1:Brilliant, and where else can people find you if they've got ideas about where you should go next or they want to get in touch with?
Speaker 2:their stories. Yes, I'm very easy to find. You can find me on Twitter, easy peasy. You can message me on LinkedIn. You can email me. You can email my team and say send this to Rachel and they'll send it to Rachel. The one thing that I'm very always embarrassed about is my messages on Instagram. I never use Instagram, for whatever reason. I just literally never use it. So every time I go use Instagram, for whatever reason, I just literally never use it.
Speaker 1:So I, every time I go into Instagram which is like once every two months I see all these people have messaged me on Instagram and it's terrible, so don't contact me on Instagram no, but you are on LinkedIn, which is how we connected um and Rachel has got a brilliant, brilliant um profile on LinkedIn, um, rachel Carroll, which is I'll spell your name because um people might it's got two r's and two l's, um in her surname, but she's got loads. All your posts are all about, like child care tips they're really helpful and parenting tips, thank you good, oh yeah even if you just want some parenting tips, follow, rachel.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for joining me today. It's a real pleasure to chat with you, rachel. You too, thank you so much.
Speaker 2:This is great.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to another episode of the Work it Like A Mum podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review and subscribe, and don't forget to share the link with a friend. If you're on LinkedIn, please send me a connection request at Elizabeth Willett and let me know your thoughts on this week's episode. You can also follow my recruitment site investing in women on linkedin, facebook and instagram. Until next time, keep on chasing your biggest dreams.