Learn About Runneth London. Career & Business Coaching and Advice.
Welcome to Runneth. We are here to focus on your working life – whether you are working, would like to return to work, or are just keeping an eye on possible opportunities.
We offer expert career and business advice and coaching, and we share interesting jobs and return-to-work opportunities. We provide a safe-haven to ask advice and get support from fellow working women, and we also have a bit of fun along the way with style and fashion.
helping women fulfil their potential.
As the first generation of women who were told we could do it all, our expectations for ourselves can be sky-high. For the most part, we are highly educated, highly trained and highly capable. We may or may not have hit the heady career heights we hoped for before becoming a mum. We may or may not have taken a career break. We may or may not want to step back onto the corporate ladder where we stepped off.
Life is long – and working lives are getting longer – and, no matter what the circumstances, there is time to develop the career or business we always wanted. To fulfil our potential. To showcase a positive working mother role-model for our children. To remind ourselves just how great we are when in work mode.
At Runneth, we want to help women to do just this – to rediscover their work mojo and to find their own personal balance in the cycle of work/life/family when they are ready for their next work adventure.
Founder, Kath Sloggett, answers the most frequently asked questions about Runneth.
Why did you start Runneth?
When I was about 10 years old, I vividly recall telling my father that, when I grew up, I would own just three suits and five shirts for work – one for each day of the week in the office. Anything more would be a waste. Looking back what surprises me most about this is not how on earth I felt I could manage with only five outfits, it was that I was absolutely certain that I would work in an office and wear a suit.
At that point in my life, I didn’t actually know any women who worked in an office. I didn’t know any women who wore a suit. My mum stayed at home with us when we were young and then later she worked full-time in a retail insurance office in a corporate uniform – blue, belted, with a huge white collar (it was the 80s). Other mums worked in the local supermarket or shops, and one was a teacher, but that was my sum total experience of working women and working mums.
but that didn’t stop me from dreaming about a career in business.
Fast forward a few years, and after graduating with a Business Degree, I was indeed working in an office – at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Sydney – and wearing suits every day. Though not only three! My interest in fashion (albeit mostly misguided) had well and truly kicked in.
After becoming a Qualified Chartered Accountant and working in corporate tax in Sydney, I moved to London and reframed* my experience (a term my clients know well) and moved away from professional services and into commercial and marketing finance roles. I worked at Coca-Cola, MCI Worldcom and BT, before moving into in-house innovations at BT and discovering the world of start ups. From there, I leapt out of the corporate world into start ups and moved from Finance roles into general management, ending with the CEO role at Everyman Cinemas. I started coaching entrepreneurs and start ups, and then launched my own businesses.
From chatting at the nursery and then school gates, I started getting approached by fellow mums who hoped to launch their own businesses. For some, this was their dream and they have gone on to do amazing things! For others, it was because they wanted to do something but they couldn’t face going back to their previous career.
This is when I started the conversation about all the other things they could do with their experience, and I started to actively help people to career transition – to find a career or business role that they would love. And so Runneth began.
*Reframing means looking at your experience through the eyes of a future employer, and selecting those achievements that best highlight your experience for your future desired role. It is not about creating experience you don’t have, or embellishing the truth. It is about selling what relevant experience you do have in a way that someone can better imagine you in the job they have available.
Why is it called Runneth?
Great question! I know it’s a bit of a tricky word to say, but it has such positive meanings for me that I kept coming back to it.
The name was originally suggested by my little brother, Michael, who thought it captured the positivity underlying what we do. It comes from the phrase “may your cup runneth over” or “my cup runneth over”. It basically means “may all good things come to you” and “may you have more than enough for your needs”.
I really like the sentiment of it. And I love that ‘good things’ can capture whatever is important for each person – perhaps that is recognition, or status, or money, or freedom, or creativity, or a mix of those things, or something completely different. What motivates each person is different. At Runneth, we are working with our clients to help them understand what they need for their working life cup to runneth over, and helping them to achieve it.
I also liked the “run” aspect of the word which, for me, suggests action and energy. At Runneth, we are not focussed on maintaining the status quo. We are focused on helping people take action to improve their working lives, we want to create new work and learning opportunities for working mums, and we want to energise women to help each other in their working lives.
Many people have an idea about what it is like to work with a coach. They may have had executive coaching provided by an employer. They may have an understanding of life coaching. Most people also have other coaching relationships in their life that they don’t necessarily think of as coaches – teachers, a personal trainer, your kids’ swimming instructor, etc. All of these types of coaches are different.
And my clients tell me that working with me is a bit different too. For a start, I am not really a coach in the usual sense of a career coach.
My purpose in working with clients is to help them find the right role and to succeed in their working life. So I will ask lots of questions but that is not all I do. I do not leave you to find all the answers on your own. I bring into our sessions my personal professional background across a wide range of industries and functions – from consulting firms to charities, from blue chip companies to start ups – plus my understanding of other areas gained from more than ten years’ experience of working with professionals at all levels, career-focussed working mothers, and entrepreneurs. I will help you to understand how your parenting role might change over time and help you to decide how you want to manage your career and family commitments. I will also challenge you to aim high – not in management terms necessarily, but in striving for something that you really want, rather than assuming that you have to trade-down (to get flexibility, or to return to work, or to do something that is enjoyable).
The process is different for each person. The focus of sessions will be bespoke for each client, but there are some common elements for all coaching clients. We will talk about your career to date. We will do some exercises to help you understand your work motivations. We will consider how you want to shape your working life and work commitments. The outcome is unique for each person, based on their aims for our sessions, but people often give very similar feedback. They say that they are re-energised, that they have rediscovered their confidence, that they are looking at their working life through ‘new eyes’. That they are going for it, whatever their ‘it’ might be.
It is not only about getting a job or securing your next promotion – although I regularly help people with both of those things – it is about creating the working life you want for the next 10/20/30/40+ years!
Initially, I like to hear where you are up to in your thinking, and to chat over what you are hoping for. I can also answer any questions you might have including about the most relevant coaching structure and the cost.
So do call on 020 7043 2292 or send us an email and I’ll arrange a quick, no obligation, phone call with you.
If we agree that there is a good fit for us to work together, we can set up a first coaching session, often within a couple of weeks (or sooner, if there is a time constraint for you).
We also run Drop-In Sessions, small group Workshops and Bootcamps. Please see our Events page for full details.
“Kath helped me to identify my passion and inspired me to come up with ideas that I would never have been brave enough to consider on my own.