Hi, my name’s Dr Paul Brewerton, the strengths guy, Doctor of Organisational Psychology and Founder and Chair of Strengthscope. Today we have on the show Rachel Carrell, CEO of Koru Kids.
By way of introduction, Rachel is the CEO of KoruKids, building the world’s best childcare service. Previously, Rachel was CEO of DrThom, a healthcare company which she grew to 1.3 million paying users in 3 countries. Before that she spent six years at McKinsey. Rachel has a DPhil from Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and she is a current WEF Young Global Leader. Rachel was named ‘Best Business Woman in Technology’ at the 2017 Best Business Women awards, and also won the ‘Inspirational Mother’ award at the 2017 Inspiration awards.
What a bio!
Rachel, thank you for completing your Strengthscope before today as we’ll get into that shortly. For our conversation today, I’d love for us to cover your career, which I just trailed in the intro and then get into the parts of what you do today that you love and don’t love so much – bringing in the strengths piece there.
I’d love to get into a conversation around finding incredible nannies and how you do this at Koru kids. Also strengths in leadership and in entrepreneurism and your views there. And I think that’s plenty!
- So Rachel, can you tell me your career story to date. How you got to where you are today and what key decision points brought you here.
- Rachel, what do you love about what you do? And what are the bits you don’t love so much?
- Linking to the what you love part, I want to understand more about how your strengths have played a role in shaping your career and career choices – what would you say are your standout strengths – your Top 3 or more, what have they meant for you and how have they helped you make the career choices you have?
- And linking to the don’t love so much bit, what about risk areas – any strength in overdrive risks that you’re aware of or energy drainers that can get in your way? How do you manage these risk areas and have they ever tripped you up? What did you learn/do differently as a result?
- We’ve talked before today about recruiting the best nannies at Koru Kids (I know you’ve hired more than 10,000 to date and counting!) – how do you go about doing this and how do you get a read on the strengths and watchouts of nannies?
- What about getting the best from yourself in a leadership role, what’s your brand as a leader? What are your watchouts? What do you think are the ‘strengths of an entrepreneur?
(you don’t need specific strengths to be an entrepreneur, it’s more knowing how to use them to get things done/your vision achieved and we could maybe compare our own strengths as a demonstration)
- If people want to get in touch with you, what are your favourite ways?
- Rachel’s LinkedIn
- Twitter @rachcarrell
- Instagram @rach.of.koru.kids
