Founder of Workpants, Ali Killaly
“Take the tools and ingredients you've got and see what new things you can make with them.”
The shift from being employed to self-employed is a unique experience that, quite simply, if you haven’t been through it’s almost impossible to explain the gut-wrenching, soul growing, soul destroying, exhilarating, terrifying feels it brings – but today’s guest really gets all sides of employment.
Her name is Ali Killaly and she’s the founder of career counselling organisation Workpants, and her story of coming to build and now scale her incredible business will leave you feeling seen and inspired for wherever you’re at with yours.
You’ll hear about:
The less than linear path to finding your Ikigai in business
Going full circle in your career path
The experience of reframing your professional identity
Developing the business you need in real time
The role your ego plays in business and how to tame it
Working through the uncomfortable yet exhilarating daily experience of building a business you’re passionate about
The value of manufacturing a catalyst to push you to take the steps you need to
What outsourcing can take away from you in the initial building phases of your business
And learning to lean into your scrappy side
Growing your own small-business can be one of the most gratifying, wonderful, life-changing experiences around. It’s also scary as hell.
We’re here for you, the ones who have made the brave decision to employ themselves anyway.
Connect with Ali and Workpants on IG @_workpants
Check out the Workpants Website at workpants.com.au
Listen to the Workpants Podcast wherever you pod
You can find the conversation transcript at unemployedandafraid.com.au/episodes.
And don’t forget to follow Unemployed & Afraid on IG , Threads and LinkedIn
And show your support for this independent podcast and small business by shouting your host a cuppa at buymeacoffee.com/unemployedpod
You can reach your host on email kim@unemployedandafraid.com.au on IG and on LinkedIn
Keep scrolling for the conversation transcript…
Kim Kerton [00:00:00]:
Welcome to Unemployed and Afraid, a podcast that explores the glorious mess of building your own business with the people doing it. I'm your host and fellow business builder, Kim Kerton. Thank you for being here. Let's get into some good, honest small business chats. Hello Brave Small Business builder and thank you for choosing unemployed and afraid to support you on this epic journey of start growing and scaling your business. The shift from being employed to self employed is a unique experience that, quite simply, if you haven't been through it, it's almost impossible to explain the gut wrenching, soul growing, soul destroying, exhilarating, terrifying feels it brings. But today's guest really gets all side of employment and really understands these feels. Her name is Ali Killaly and she's the founder of Career Counseling organisation Workpants and her story of coming to build and now scale her incredible business will leave you feeling seen and inspired for wherever you're at with yours.
Kim Kerton [00:01:05]:
Plus, she tells her story with a number of super fun metaphors that if you listen to this podcast often you'll know I very much enjoy, but often stuff up when I try myself in this chat. Today, you'll hear about the less than linear path to finding your Ikigai in business, going full circle in your career path, the experience of reframing your professional identity to your peers, developing the business you need in real time as to when you need it, the role your ego plays in business and how to tame it to work for you. Working through the uncomfortable yet exhilarating daily experience of building a business you're passionate about the value of manufacturing a catalyst to push you to take the steps you need to what outsourcing can take away from you in the initial building phases of your business, and learning to lean into your scrappy side. We know 100% that growing your business can be one of the most gratifying and wonderful and life changing experiences around. But it is also scary as hell. So we're here for you, the ones who've made the brave decision to employ themselves. Anyway, let's get into it. I'm here with Ali Killaly, Career counselor and the founder of Workpants, an organisation on a mission to help folks design work that fits.
Kim Kerton [00:02:23]:
Workpants offers career counseling services and packages for workplaces and individuals, or a tailored solution if the packages don't quite fit. I really do love the pants puns in this. Ali and the business she's created are here because she believes work should fit life better, and that given the right kind of support, individuals can take action to make the career changes they want. Ali is particularly passionate about supporting new parents with their return to work, as she herself was made redundant after having her eldest daughter and when it happened again when her youngest was born, she took it as a sign that she should become her own shitty boss. Now it's her purpose to help others who are experiencing the work chafe through parenthood. Think of work pants, less like a career guru and more like a support crew, as when it comes to your work, you wear the pants. That is a sentiment absolutely made for this podcast. And the pun is fantastic.
Kim Kerton [00:03:18]:
I can't wait to hear all about your journey through this Ali. Welcome to Unemployed and Afraid.
Ali Killaly [00:03:23]:
Kim Thank you so much for having me.
Kim Kerton [00:03:26]:
Let's get into our first question, and it's something you've probably heard me ask on this podcast before, so I'm going to throw a little curly one in there for you. How do you think your eldest daughter might describe you?
Ali Killaly [00:03:38]:
Such a good question. My eldest daughter is still at that age where she wants to be like me. So I think she would describe me as someone who likes sparkling water. She notices what I drink. She would describe me as somebody who likes reading, who's a good mum, I hope. That's a really tricky one. You started with the hardest question first.
Kim Kerton [00:04:05]:
Naturally. Well, how about your husband? How might he describe you?
Ali Killaly [00:04:09]:
My husband would probably describe me as curious and ambitious and someone who loves a good laugh and tells very convoluted stories.
Kim Kerton [00:04:24]:
I can relate to the convoluted stories. My poor partner, when he comes home from anywhere because I work here in this home office, home studio alone. And so when he comes home, I have a million things I want to talk to him about and often just mix one with the other with the next thing, trying to get everything out at once and it comes across very long winded and goes nowhere. Can understand that completely.
Ali Killaly [00:04:48]:
I don't know if you know that line from Bridget Jones about introduce people with thoughtful details. So when I tell a story, I give way more color and context to someone's mannerisms. When I'm just explaining did we manage to book an extra day of daycare for the baby? That's kind of how I tell stories, so should be fun for you on this podcast.
Kim Kerton [00:05:09]:
As I said to you before we hit record, I love a tangent, so do not worry about that. And I think that color might come back to what your daughter might say about you and your reading. I think those people who tend to give that context and that extra color, they're avid readers. So what are you reading?
Ali Killaly [00:05:26]:
At the moment I'm reading, I wish I could pronounce it properly. I think it's called ikigai. Oh, I love that one. Yes, it's beautiful. And it's so relevant, I think, to career development practitioners. But anybody should pick it up and read it and just tap into their own ikigai. I feel like work pants is mine, and I wished there was some kind of recipe to find it sooner. But part of me also thinks it just had to happen the way that it did.
Kim Kerton [00:05:55]:
I really relate to that because this podcast is mine, but I can only see that now that it exists. It's not something I could have sat down and drawn the diagram and thought about and then gone, okay, so I'll create this podcast. It kind of is, in retrospect that I can look at it and go, yeah, that actually does hit all those markers for me.
Ali Killaly [00:06:12]:
Exactly. You kind of have to. I mean, that question about what do you want to be when you grow up is so fraught with danger because you've got to set out first and follow a few paths and see what's going on, really. I think most of us, to answer it, most of us don't say, I would like to be an aeronautical engineer at the age of five, and then stick to that and just have a single minded focus, more power to the people who do. But yeah, I think it's a journey of discovery and experimentation. That's what a career is.
Kim Kerton [00:06:45]:
Let's go back. Before work pants was your Ikigai and before it was in existence. So who were you?
Ali Killaly [00:06:52]:
I would call myself a jill of all trades, I guess a bit of a Swiss army knife. I felt as though I was a little bit proficient at a lot of things, but not an expert at anything. And I was trying to find what is the right fit for somebody like me, who's kind of a generalist, who dabbled in so many different things, but is not the expert in any one thing. And so that was really me before workpants. I loved working in environments where I could experiment, where things were really nimble and agile and dynamic, and you could quickly have an idea or a theory and test it out and see what would happen. I struggled in more structured and rigid environments where there was a lot of bureaucracy, even though I could respect it. Having worked in government in a formal life as well, and even getting a teaching qualification, there are some structures within that feel too rigid in order for you to push and test and find a better way forward. You can get a little bit stuck in those spaces I was someone who needed a space to play, and that's kind of what I was doing before workpants.
Ali Killaly [00:08:00]:
I was trying to find spaces to play and learn.
Kim Kerton [00:08:03]:
Really like that description, and I think a lot of us can relate to that. So tell me about, then, your journey from generous life. I love the Swiss army knife reference. Tell me about then getting into redundancy number two and the preceding, I guess, push, as I mentioned in the upfront bio that got you into the space of potentially creating your own business. How did you find yourself at that very decision?
Ali Killaly [00:08:30]:
Great question. How did I find myself Here at workpants? I guess the Hollywood story is that it all happened in a moment. And at the time, it really felt like that I had had my youngest daughter. She was three weeks old when I found out that my company had been acquired, the company I worked for, and that my role had disappeared. And as I kind of processed what that meant, that that career path had ultimately closed and I had to find another way forward. I found myself in hospital with her. She had gotten quite unwell and things had gotten pretty serious. And I think it was a real, I guess, a moment, one of those moments in life where you wake up a little bit and look around and think about what's important.
Ali Killaly [00:09:17]:
She had started to come good, and my husband brought my laptop into the hospital. And for whatever reason, I like to think it was a change of scenery. And it's kind of all the different ingredients of what does it really mean? What does life mean? What am I doing here? What's happened to my career? What do I want next? They all kind of came together in this business name, work pants. So work pants came first. The name came first, and it just popped into my head in this hospital room as Nina was starting to get better. And it was as though I needed to give it a name. And then everything else just came thick. And I say, you know, that it seems as though it all happened just in that one moment, but it could not have happened without, for whatever reason, me going through two redundancies with the girls, me choosing, with no real rationale to do career development.
Ali Killaly [00:10:13]:
I had started studying that before all of this happened, and I didn't know how I was going to use it. I was in marketing to have a teacher background, to have done learning design. All of these jigsaw pieces clicked together, so it felt like a moment, but it was my whole journey up until that point. Everything needed to be there to get this work that fit me, which was work pants.
Kim Kerton [00:10:37]:
I really love that brand development came first for you. And I think that's probably the marketing knife in The Swiss army knife is that sometimes something hits us, a name or a logo or a vibe and we just have to run with it. But I'm really interested in what you talked about there with having done some study in the place of learning and designing. Learning and how then you didn't pursue that in the first place and then you ended up in marketing. What took you away from that in the early days?
Ali Killaly [00:11:08]:
Okay, that's another interesting kind of curvy, twisty, turny thing which we know happens with careers. The linear idea is just old, definitely about squiggly careers now. And the education I had was I had done a grad dip in secondary teaching because I wanted some kind of trade that could bring me to Queensland. I was living in Canberra at the time and I was freezing my ass off. I'm built for subtropical climates and I was like, how do I get myself to Queensland and still land a job, have a decent career? And I was so interested in teaching and education. So I had done this grad dip and I got to Queensland and the registration process was they had sort of said, look, it'll probably take anywhere from up to twelve weeks, I think it was. I thought Jeez, that's a long time to not work. So I applied for an insurance company up here as a sales advisor.
Ali Killaly [00:12:05]:
And on the first day that I started that job, my teacher registration arrived in the mail and I was like, I'm on the ride now. I'm just going to go for it. And so once I got into this insurance company, it was like still in startup mode at the time. I was in an environment that gave me the opportunity to take any tools I had and try them out somewhere. So I worked in an actuarial department to help kind of communicate product training and things like that. I took the grad dip in education and brought that into the learning and development team. And so I think, yeah, it's a pattern that seems to repeat. It's kind of take the tools and ingredients you've got and see what new things you can make with them.
Ali Killaly [00:12:46]:
So where I had thought I was going to end up was definitely a high school classroom somewhere in sunny Queensland teaching drama. And where I ended up instead was designing learning for people who work in insurance. Go figure.
Kim Kerton [00:13:00]:
Isn't that funny when that little fork in the road comes where you're like, oh, but now I've made a decision and now it's kind of like the universe testing you being you sure you don't want to take this other path with this teaching detail coming through. It's really interesting. So I want to then get us back to the alley that was sitting there with work pants churning around in your mind and the business starting to form from the brand developing as a visual and as a vibe generally. What were your first few steps in making it real?
Ali Killaly [00:13:30]:
So I had the name first, I had work pants first, and I really had a gut feeling that I wanted this brand to have a certain look. I wanted it to really appeal to the modern working parent and feel less corporate, less kind of soft and gentle and bold, also a little bit playful. And I had a very young baby at the time, and so I often found myself awake in the very early hours of the morning. And my husband is fantastic at kind of, I suppose, keeping me right. And I thought, you know what? I'm just going to do a really silly, quirky kind of logo for this business, and it's going to look terrible, but it's going to be kind of ironic because it's so terrible. And I had scribbled some logo, and I said, what do you think? Can I just use this and go for it? And he didn't tell me it was terrible. He just kind of was in the voice modulation. He was like, yeah.
Ali Killaly [00:14:28]:
So it wasn't an emphatic yes, do it, it's great. Which is knowing my husband told me everything I needed to know, which is, Allie, you can do so much better than this. So I was nursing the baby very early in the morning. She was going through that I'll feed every kind of 40 minutes phase. And I was on my phone, I thought, okay, well, let's not just scroll. And I got the canva app open, and I started to play, and it happened by accident. And then the visual brand started to come to life with these punchy, bold colors and a really playful little pair of pants. Little sassy pair of pants to tell people, hey, work can be fun and exciting, and you can be bold about it.
Kim Kerton [00:15:12]:
We really do just love a sassy pair of pants. Like, at any circumstance, they're a good time. So at that stage, then finding yourself on the forefront of kind of turning this into a business, did you start to have a commercial model or a revenue model starting to turn around? What are your financial thoughts at this stage about, oh, okay, there goes what I thought might have been comfort. And I think that happens for a lot of people who find themselves in a redundancy circumstance where you have these careers that you think are going to give you some kind of comfort and consistency, and then when they get pulled out from underneath you, it's like, well, now what? It's kind of into that next thing of how's this going to feel? Then working for myself. So how did you start to approach, all right, how can I turn this into a financially supportive offering in a small business?
Ali Killaly [00:16:04]:
I think it's worth pointing out that the role being made redundant the second time around, they had given me a safe space to land, but I leapt like a lunatic because I didn't want to do something that I didn't feel was, I guess, aligned with what I wanted to achieve with my career. So I really threw myself into that crazy space and to figure out how it was going to earn me a living, how it was going to be profitable, I just spoke to as many people as I could about it. Early on, I created a quick pitch deck I had a couple of theories about. All right, so if new parents really need this, and every time I asked a parent, what do you think of this idea? Is this something you need? Oh, my gosh, yes, they needed it, but could they afford it? And were they the only ones kind of paying the price when it didn't work out? And so the more people I spoke to, the more this idea of focusing on the workplace aspect of it, the kind of crash landing that happens when people come back from Parental leave, seemed like a great avenue to explore. And it didn't take very long for that messaging and that brand in the right environment for a workplace to pick it up, pluck it out of the air and say, yes, this is what we want for our people. And that was the indicator I was looking for. Who's putting their hand up to say, yes, this is a great investment.
Kim Kerton [00:17:28]:
Yeah. I think having that flexibility at that stage where you think your business is going to be one thing and testing with the market, it's so timely as it's something I've been talking about with a few people in context to course development in the miniseries that I've done recently, and talking about that testing of ideas and that asking. And I think there's a real push pull with solopreneurs in particular, that you kind of want to go out with something that. An idea that you've babied, that you've seen through, and you get it to a stage where you can materialize in your mind, my life might look like this with this business. Now let me go and make this, because that feels safe, it feels concrete, it feels like you've got a focus, but maintaining that flexibility where you can go, hang on a minute. My business might be telling me and my potential customers might be telling me that this is something slightly different. I think that's a lesson that we all have to learn only by going through it.
Ali Killaly [00:18:21]:
You've got to get hung up on.
Kim Kerton [00:18:22]:
Something to find then what the next thing is going to be. Was that your experience? Was there any push pull for you? Were you like, but this is the thing I thought I was going to do.
Ali Killaly [00:18:32]:
Well, yeah, absolutely. I think I very quickly had to figure out that rigid thinking wasn't going to be helpful. And the beauty, I think, of workpants is that we are effectively talking to the customer all the time in the process of doing the work. So having a mindset of keep evolving this product, this service, so that it keeps meeting the needs of these people is essential to not just where we are now from that first kind of hospital room concept that started to come together, but also where we're headed in the future, which is that we won't be the same business in six months, in a year. We are going to keep evolving with the people that we're here for.
Kim Kerton [00:19:15]:
I find that really interesting in the context to the human behind the business. Now, this might be a fairly loaded question, because it is certainly an experience that I had, or a fairly loaded statement or just line of thinking is when you leave something, whether it's because you've been made redundant, you've chosen to leave whatever circumstances found you at that forefront of starting your own business and creating something. It's the evolution of self within that. All of a sudden, you're going from a Swiss army knife to one of those fancy Japanese laughs. And then you might evolve again into a Stanley knife. I don't know. I can't think of knives. I'm looking for an analogy here, but you start to come out as a new person.
Kim Kerton [00:19:56]:
What you do is so much of who you are, whether we feel that that should be the way or otherwise, it is how people kind of place us in their mind. What do you do as a reason? It's one of the first things that people ask you when you meet them at any kind of event, what do you do? So I'd be interested in just hearing a little bit about your journey of coming out then, as I'm Ali, I'm now working in career counseling and I'm developing this business. What was that experience like compared to your experience of having worked for other organizations doing other different things?
Ali Killaly [00:20:29]:
The experience was really, really nerve wracking to actually put yourself out there as the face behind something and to own it and say, I'm doing this thing. I think as somebody who has struggled a little bit with perfectionism and lack of confidence, at times I had to kind of be the scientist, experimenting on themselves and do the things that I knew that career development theory was telling me people need in those circumstances and to get outside of my comfort zone. So the process was so uncomfortable. But it wasn't just uncomfortable. It was also quite exhilarating because I feel still, I did at the time, I do every day feel so strongly about the problem that we're trying to solve, the people that we're trying to help, and the impact that it can have, and then suddenly it's not about me at all. And anything that I do myself, I realize is necessary to increase our impact. I just have a different mindset about it. It's all part of this journey that is work pants.
Ali Killaly [00:21:33]:
So, yeah, that was a long winded answer, a long winded way of saying the experience has been incredibly uncomfortable and exhilarating at the same time.
Kim Kerton [00:21:43]:
I really like that, and I can completely relate to that. I was just thinking in my mind, as you were speaking of a recent guest who talked to me a little bit about purpose and getting lost in purpose. And when you have these kind of lofty goals for your business, it becomes, how do I get this? How do I get this? But it's more about thinking about who you're serving and how to become the person that is capable of serving at the level you want to serve at. It's just reframing that a little bit. And it's not so much about you then. It's not about how you need to be someone different or do something different. I mean, that's not quite what I mean by that more. So what I mean is, when you think about being in service to other people, you can take the steps that you need to, even if they're uncomfortable, which, let's be honest, there's little about this experience of being in small business at any stage that's not uncomfortable.
Kim Kerton [00:22:36]:
But you can take those steps with a little bit more confidence because you can find a little bit of separation, a little bit of ego separation at best, because it is hard.
Ali Killaly [00:22:46]:
I totally agree. I think your ego is there, right. And you've got to kind of fortify yourself against it to some extent because it's saying all sorts of things. You're amazing. Look at you go. Or that was really shonky. You could do so much better. You've just embarrassed yourself and everybody saw it happen.
Ali Killaly [00:23:05]:
You got to kind of give it a little pat in the head and say, yes, thanks, mate. I know you're there, but we're going anyway.
Kim Kerton [00:23:10]:
And those experiences can often happen in the same day, in the same conversation. If you're anything like me.
Ali Killaly [00:23:16]:
Yeah. In the same thought. Yeah.
Kim Kerton [00:23:18]:
So talk to me a little bit about taking yourself to market. I know there's so many details I'd love to get into with these types of conversations. Your experience of even creating your own website, building your pitch deck, as that started to go, all of those are such important phases. So please feel free to bring any of that experience into it because going to market is all about how you present, how you present your ideas. But I want to know a little bit about your journey of taking your offering to market and finding potential clients.
Ali Killaly [00:23:47]:
I feel like I was very, very lucky to be able to be completing the study, the career development qualification, at the same time that I was preparing to go to market, because I was applying everything I was learning in real time to a real problem. It wasn't theoretical, it was practical. It was happening right in front of me. I found myself up a lot at night when the family was asleep and didn't need me. And that was really sacred time where I felt like I could immerse myself in this brand and figure out what did the brand need to say, what was the pitch, what did the website need to have? And look, to be honest, I'm still kind of fecking around with it constantly. I have still got that little perfectionist thing saying, fix this, fix that, fix this. But the thing that helped me the most was I got a speaking gig at a festival, a workplace wellness festival, and if I hadn't launched work pants before, then I couldn't talk about it. So I had to put my foot down and just speed everything up and just be as scrappy Doodar as I could and get it all together and just get it out there so that I could leverage that opportunity.
Ali Killaly [00:24:58]:
So maybe if listeners are kind of wondering, how do I. A word of caution, how does it happen sometimes? How it happened for me was I had to have a catalyst that pushed me. Otherwise I would have waited and waited and waited for perfection. So if you could manufacture some catalyst, if you could set some kind of deadline that forces you to just get these things done and to think them through, I think that's really going to help your trajectory.
Kim Kerton [00:25:26]:
Couldn't agree more with this. When you set that bar and you've got, particularly when somebody else is relying on you for this and it's outside of you, because, like we've just talked about that ego play, that fiddling, that it's not perfect yet. It's not perfect yet. We can spend years on this stuff, but if you can just set that bar a little bit too high for yourself so that you can reach it, it's so very helpful. It's not dissimilar to the miniseries that I did about building an online course. And through that, I'm talking about this online course that I'm developing and at the time of this podcast being live should have developed. It's about saying things out loud or putting yourself out there and then meeting that opportunity and rising to that opportunity so that you've got something to push you along and keep going. I think that is something that's underestimated by us as business owners and through the journey as well, is that that is necessary.
Kim Kerton [00:26:25]:
Sometimes you have to say yes to something you're not even remotely ready for so that you can rise to the occasion and figure it out. I really love as well that you brought up fiddling with your website. Now, this is something I think about a lot. And for most people going out into small business territory, there's a temptation to outsource a lot and get someone to build something for you or get it created. And I heard you talk about this with rather than scrolling get into canva and make a logo. I think there's really more celebration that needs to be in place for the DIY because of what that does to your belief in yourself, but also your ability to move and make change exactly at the time that your business requires you to. So I don't think I will ever want a stage where I have completely outsourced the running of my website, for example, to somebody else that I have to get in touch with to say, can you please make a change to my website now that is hugely unpopular for people who want to scale? And I am sure there will be a time where it is going to be necessary for me to have someone who can do that for me. But I would never want to lose the ability to be able to fiddle with something, particularly when you're in early stage kind of startup land and you're just building things as you're going those first sort of like three, five years, that ability to jump in and be like, I've got a great idea that's going to help me present this idea a little bit clearer, or I've actually got a different way to be able to sell that.
Kim Kerton [00:27:49]:
Just add that in. It's so pivotal to keep yourself moving 100%.
Ali Killaly [00:27:53]:
I think retaining the keys of the car, getting a copy and sharing it with someone as soon as you can, giving somebody else the ability to help early on, I think is really, really important, but in a way that doesn't relinquish your own ability to jump in there, as you say, and make things happen. We're just working so fast. You've got to be able to change course so quickly.
Kim Kerton [00:28:15]:
Don't worry. The amount of times I have written my about me section, I think I've said it on this pod before. Honestly. I mean, I'm up to website. Well, it's business. Seven website, four or five iteration in the last three years. And the amount of times I have written my about me section or my bio on LinkedIn, I couldn't even tell you, there must be like 16 versions or something on my computer. So do not worry, you're not alone there, my friend.
Kim Kerton [00:28:36]:
We are all doing the exact same thing. I want to talk a little bit about servicing clients for the first time. So you are now Ali, the owner and the person behind workpants, and you are out there and you're in market and you're servicing a client. Can you tell me a little bit about that experience?
Ali Killaly [00:28:52]:
I feel very grateful that I enjoy that part. I feel very grateful that I enjoy working with clients and customers because I hope that in some capacity, I always do, even though I need to have the bird's eye view with work pants and look at it from above and get off the tools. To some extent, I love connecting with people and hearing their career story, because without a doubt, their career story is inextricably linked just with their life story. And there are so many beautiful life stories out there. Career development and career counseling has got some challenges that are perhaps unique in that we can never promise somebody an outcome because we're not there to do the work for them. We're really there to support them, empower them, give them some tools and strategies to help them manage their own careers. So at times the service delivery part of it can create this conflict within you, where you wish so much for a great outcome for your client, but you don't always have the control over that outcome. In fact, you very rarely do.
Ali Killaly [00:29:59]:
You go to them and say, here are some great strategies. Here I am to listen to you, to support you, to tell you what best practice is, to connect you with people, but that individual needs to take the step themselves. So that's quite fascinating as well, to see how do people respond in that situation and how much ownership do they take and how much of it depends on timing and kind of readiness to do the things that we need to do, to kind of wear the pants with our careers. I think being paid for the work, to really get work pants ready to launch, I did a lot of work without being paid, but it was incredibly valuable because I learned a lot about my customers. But it was also very important for me to draw a line in the sand and say, okay, here is the point where this is really worth something now. And I'm not the only one here delivering the career counseling anymore. I have others to help, and it's very important to me that they're paid well. And that's something that I think workpants cares about.
Ali Killaly [00:31:02]:
It's that our client, we want the best for our clients. We want them to be paid well and reach their financial goals. We also want to be a profitable organization. So I think while it's a very purpose led organization, I'm also very driven to make it profitable because I think profit gives us a whole other realm of influence that I would love us to explore. So, yeah, I mean, the service delivery of it to me is just fascinating. It's interesting, it's challenging, and I'm really excited to think about novel ways to do it at scale.
Kim Kerton [00:31:38]:
And I can imagine the experience of even taking on others to do that work with you was an interesting one. Finding the right people.
Ali Killaly [00:31:46]:
Absolutely. You probably should do a whole lot of things. I think that I mentioned about how scrappy the experience has been for me and that I've just had to lean into the scrappy side. But having a very clear idea of who we're for, what we stand for, our positioning has made it so much easier for me to identify when someone's the right fit for our customers, our clients. And it's exciting because usually when the fit is right, they're just as excited as you are to help out and take your business to the next step.
Kim Kerton [00:32:22]:
I want to talk a little bit about marketing and have a fantastic podcast that helps you do a little bit of that, helps you talk a little bit about that to a potential customer. And I'm obviously a very passionate podcaster. I believe that podcasts have a very important part to play in a lot of people's businesses. So I want to talk a little bit about your marketing choices and what you found has been working for you and why you've made some of the decisions you've made and your experience with podcasting as well.
Ali Killaly [00:32:52]:
The podcast, I can't take credit for it. My husband started one when he set up his business, and I was kind of watching from the sidelines going, okay, I wonder how hard this is going to be. And then I realized it's hard, but it's not beyond the realm of my ability, and I probably need to accept that. I may not be amazing from the start, but I should have a go. I think the marketing brain was watching the podcast experiment happen and thinking, wow, this is a content machine. Because you have this really condensed, focused conversation with somebody who shares so much about their career, who can then be the heart of a blog, who has an incredible quote that you can share, who has a whole network of friends and family who want to hear them talk about their career and they want to share their story even wider. And it was kind of also bedding down some of the career development education that was happening in the background as well, because I was exploring these career stories even more. So, yeah, the podcast has been, I've thoroughly enjoyed it, I've thoroughly neglected it, but I highly recommend it as a way to kind of underpin your content strategy.
Ali Killaly [00:34:05]:
More broadly speaking, I am still experimenting with marketing for work pants. I'm trying to find maybe I'm being too scrupulous about it, but I really do not want to pester people with our brand. I want to be a welcome intervention rather than a nuisance, and that maybe is problematic because we've got to be profitable. But what is really resonating is the fun, playful, human centric side of this, and that it is quite human.
Kim Kerton [00:34:34]:
So wonderful to hear. I agree with everything you just said around the potential of a podcast as a content machine to drive your content strategy. A lot of the times I feel like I'm drowning in content some days, which is actually also sometimes a problem because wood from the trees and or however that saying goes, you get a lot, and so it's just about making sure how you can decipher it and make it valuable. And also, yeah, it's so fine to suck at something again. I mean, I've said to the listener before, please do not go back and listen to my first few episodes because disaster, and there's about two or three in particular where I'm like, oh, the audio is so bad on that, but you all have to go through a learning curve. That's just what we have to do. And like that aspect of pestering people. I'll speak about this in podcast land just because it's my world, but to get someone to do something, let alone pay money for it.
Kim Kerton [00:35:21]:
But just here's an example of getting someone to do something for free, which is if you listen to a podcast, leave it a review. I think the average time you have to ask to get. I saw some statistic, who knows where it comes from? But the average amount of times you have to ask someone to leave you a review on a podcast is something like 27. So, listener, if you hear me in the close of this pod, you're like, I have heard you go ask for a review so many times. That's what marketing is really important. We all know that. But yeah, I think that's a real thing that we have to get through as business owners is we feel like we're pestering people, but in order to be there at the right times, we've got to be there at the right times. And the only way to do that is to sometimes feel like we're being a bit of a pain, but it's the only way to get cut through, right? I mean, how many messages are we exposed to in a day?
Ali Killaly [00:36:13]:
It's so true. You're so right. You've got to really be there when they need you. That is your job. It's not about pestering. I think your audience on this podcast, if I could tell them something now, I would say, look around at how generous this community is and how much people are willing to help and know that leaving a review on this podcast is putting something good out into your community that will come back in some way, shape or form that you may not realize at the time. And it is so low touch, it's so low effort, and yet it has so much impact.
Kim Kerton [00:36:50]:
Thank you. I mean, I love that you just did some of my, you did number 26 form tick. But so much of that goes for our small business community as well. So this pod, any person who is in small business, who knows other people in small businesses like our community is, I mean, that's how we connected. We connected through a community called Launchpad, which is all people just like us, just hustling, making small businesses at all different levels, trying to help each other. And I think, don't underestimate the power of community and asking for what you need, be it exposure to a new audience, for marketing, be it an idea for something that's got you really stuck, like business besties and catching up and just having connections and getting ideas and offering your advice to people for free, for nothing. It always just so helpful in the journey. So, yeah, I think we can't underestimate how much we need each other through this process.
Kim Kerton [00:37:40]:
On that note, where do you hope to see your business grow to?
Ali Killaly [00:37:44]:
Oh, this is such a good question, Kim, because I always go back to the problem at the start, this idea that working parents just really need a little bit more career nurturing as they transition through this crazy period, wonderful period in their lives. And so when I think about where do I want the business to go? I want us to have bigger arms. Gosh, this sounds so lame, so cheesy. But I think about giving these people just a massive cheer or a massive hug, and I feel like a Trex right now going, hey, good job, guys. And I just want to be able to, I want it to have a bigger impact and I want that to just keep on growing. I think if you gave me a time limit and said, where do I want work pants to be in a year? I want work pants to be an organization that parents and chief people officers kind of whisper to each other as a little secret society. It's like, hey, do you need to, you need work parents? I think I want it to feel like a really special, treasured experience and for it to be something that the most ambitious and progressive workplaces know about and want, and that those parents who are struggling, who maybe aren't getting that support from their workplaces, that they have an option that's within their budget, that's within easy reach to kind of help them navigate these twists and turns. Very long answer as it should be.
Kim Kerton [00:39:12]:
Because we should have very long and very lofty goals in this vibe. So I think I always encourage people when you're talking about your businesS, don't feel like you have to make it a keynote and get your quips.
Ali Killaly [00:39:24]:
Really?
Kim Kerton [00:39:24]:
Sure. Be like, I want this in five years. I want this. It's like, no, we hold a bigger vision. We hold a bigger vision for ourselves. We hold a bigger vision for those we serve, no matter what we're creating in business. And damn straight, we should have those goals turn around in our mind exactly as they did in yours. Then I think it's brilliant.
Kim Kerton [00:39:40]:
And sharing the experience of building a business and what it feels like, how it challenges you, how it teaches you things about yourself, how it teaches you things about the business itself, it really is a generous thing to do. It's what we're here for in this podcast. And I'm always so grateful to the people who come on and share the insides of their brain and their business with me and with the listener. So in return, how can the listener and I support you to grow workpants?
Ali Killaly [00:40:07]:
That is such a lovely thing to offer. How can you all support workpants? The simplest way would be to talk about us, listen to this episode, hear what we're about, and then talk to people about us. That would mean the world to me and I would be very grateful for that.
Kim Kerton [00:40:23]:
Fantastic. And I'm going to make that easier for the listener by putting Instagram, website, podcast, all of the things in the show notes so you can go get around. The branding is cute. Like really cute, really fun, really punchy. I love a fluro and all of that vibe just gets me in the field. So, listener, go check it out. Enjoy it. See Ali's incredible handiwork.
Kim Kerton [00:40:45]:
It has been such a pleasure to chat with you today, Ali. Thank you for sharing your story with me.
Ali Killaly [00:40:49]:
Thank thank you for listening to unemployed.
Kim Kerton [00:40:53]:
And afraid, the podcast for small business builders, with your host, me, Kim Kerton. If you love it, you can say thanks with a star rating and a review. And of course, join the community on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Find us at unemployed and afraid wherever you're hanging out, and I'll see you there.