Inspired Learning Ltd | Emma Shepherd

"Education isn’t just about textbooks and classrooms—it’s about growth, confidence, and unlocking potential."

In this episode Emma Shepherd of Inspired Learning Ltd, a company dedicated to helping individuals thrive through innovative learning strategies and personal development, shares her journey, the philosophy behind Inspired Learning Ltd, and how she works to create meaningful learning and training experiences. 

Beyond her work in learning and development, Emma is also passionate about bringing people together in the Nantwich area. She runs goal-setting and vision board workshops twice a year, helping people reflect, set goals, and get creative in a supportive space. 

She also founded the Cheshire Ladies Walking Group, a growing community that meets for relaxed Sunday walks, finishing with coffee, cake, and conversation.

Reach out to Inspired Learning Ltd

https://www.inspiredlearningltd.co.uk/

https://www.facebook.com/inspiredlearningltd

https://www.linkedin.com/company/inspiredlearningltd/

Nantwich Events

Cheshire Ladies Walking Group

Goal Setting Workshops on EventBrite

If you would like to feature as guest on a future episode of This Place, Our Voices, submit your application via our form: https://bit.ly/podme

"This Place, Our Voices" Credits:

Host: Elyssa Germain
Produced By: OneZeroCreative https://www.onezerocreative.co.uk/

Transcript

In this episode, we speak with Emma, the driving force Behind Inspired Learning Ltd. A company dedicated to empowering individuals to unlock their full potential. From innovative learning strategies to fostering a love for growth, Emma's work has been making a meaningful impact in our community and beyond. 

Welcome, Emma. 

Hi. Thank you for having me.

Thanks for joining us. So can you tell us a little bit about Inspired Learning and the journey that's led to its creation?

Inspired Learning started in 2018. I had been working in lots of corporate organisations up to then and so I've worked in retail, healthcare, facilities management. I was in a role at the time in the facilities management company where I was the only learning and development manager for 55,000 employees. I started to think that I was falling out of love with what I'd chosen as a career and training. I wasn't feeling motivated and thinking, why am I not enjoying what I'm doing anymore? So, I did a bit of soul searching and real that actually I wasn't falling out of love with learning development. And what I did, it was the fact that I had 55,000 people and I wasn't in the room seeing those light bulb moments and I thought, right, I'm either going to need to go and get a job at a smaller company where I get that job satisfaction again, or maybe look at starting up my own business and doing it myself. That's where Inspired Learning came from. because I made the leap, it was a very risky and hard decision to me, just kind of giving up the day job, the company car and everything that comes with it, that security and speaking to my husband, who was my partner at the time, to say, I want to do this and trust me and if I had a pound for every time I said, if it doesn't work out, I'll just get another job. So that happened in 2018, and I had at the time as well had experience of being a manager myself. So, it made sense for me to focus on management and leadership development. So, I brought my experience doing that from a training perspective, but also been there, done that, got the T-shirt in terms of managing people and know all the wonderful, challenges and the highest and lows that come with managing human beings.

55,000 people is a lot of people.

The training that I was doing, If I had 16 people in the room, you just feel what I'm doing right now just feels like a dip in the ocean. It's not making much difference. And I do get a lot of job satisfaction from seeing people develop and grow and I might have only been with them for one day and then never seen them again because they, you know, I'm on to the next 16 people and I was never going to reach 55,000, let's put it that way.

What kind of services or programmes does Inspired Learning often and who are they designed for?

We mainly focus on management and leadership development but we then do a suite of other topics that have kind of grown really over the years but also backed with experience that I had before I got into management and leadership development in those corporate roles. So anything that comes under that banner. We do programmes and workshops with first line managers right the way up to senior execs and then we deliver lots of different workshops that come under obviously making them better managers and being able to fill those skills gaps within organisations. But we also deliver customer experience training, sales training, mental health awareness, menopause awareness is something that I've started deliver in the last couple of years because of my own experiences and I've learned so much. So now I want to pass that knowledge on to other people. I kind of find it easier these days to say anything that doesn't fall under the banner of finance and IT. A lot of people call them soft skills but I'm on a mission to call them human skills because that's ultimately what they are. A lot of it is emotional intelligence and you know, there's a lot of talk out there around what's more important. Is it IQ, is it EQ? There's a lot of research that also shows that people are quite often hired because they've got high IQ but fired because they've got low EQ. A lot of the managers that I come across on my programmes have maybe started off in roles where they've had to have a high IQ, and might have been scientists, engineers, very good at what they do and then when they start to get promoted in the organisation they become managers. It's a natural kind of progression route and it's almost then you kind of get them where they wake up one morning and go I'm m now responsible for people and I've got to do people stuff and how do I do that? So that's where we come in and support.

You mentioned previously that you've done quite a few different roles in different sectors. But what drew you to the field of training and coaching?

In my early 20s I was actually an area sales manager for Avon Cosmetics. So I had a team of about 380 to 400 Avon reps in the area that I covered. And that's where I got into kind of seeing that satisfaction from maybe recruiting an Avon rep, training them up on how to know do what they needed to do and then going back and coaching them and seeing them flourish and grow and develop. I really enjoyed that. And when I left Avon, I then went to Phones for you, if you can remember, Phones4U you no longer exists, but I was there for seven years. So when I joined there I joined in the recruitment team. But Phones for you are very good at investing in there people and growing people through different departments or promotions, that kind of thing. and the training team at Phones4U seemed like they were having a very good time and I thought this sounds like something I might want to do. And I was a manager at the time and I attended a couple of the management programmes that they delivered. And I remember just sitting in there, not only taking in the learning for me as a manager but thinking I feel like I could stand up and do that. Like that would be something that'd be really interested in. So I just spoke to my manager and let the business knew that that's maybe what I an appetite for. They allowed me to go and shadow some trainers and then a few months later there was a vacancy. I applied for it and ended up in training. And that's how it all started really.

It's scary to think that had that day not happened as it did, that you wouldn't potentially be where you are now.

Absolutely. And there's even another poignant moment before that that I talk about quite a lot, which is before my job as an area sales manager at Avon, I was working in a business. It was a printing company, SG World and Crewe. For anybody that knows where that is. Not far from Nantwich I wasn't particularly enjoying the role. I've been doing it for about four years, you know, ready to move on. And I actually started to do Body Shop at Home parties in the evenings. And this is going back a long time ago now. I remember going to a friend's house again. I was sat there, there was somebody doing a Body Shop at Home party and I thought, oh, she looks like she's having a lovely time. I might want to do that in my spare time whilst I'm still doing my full-time job. I remember telling a friend I decided to do it and this just gives you a sense of how shy and quiet I was at the time because she said, oh, I've told my mum that you're doing body shop at home parties and I said, oh, really? What did she say? And I thinking my friend might say, oh, she said she'll have one. No, she said, Emma DeChoux doing Body Shop at home parties. And that's my maiden name, by the way. I was really, like, taken aback. And I knew I was shy, I knew I was quiet, but I just thought, oh, wow, that's how people perceive me. And that was only standing in somebody's house of, you know, 10 to 15 people sat around having a glass of wine and just happened to buy some Body Shop products. But that was the perception that people had of me. And she was right, because I went to that first Body Shop party and this is coming to that poignant moment where I turned up to the person's house 45 minutes before due to go in and set up, and I just sat in the car and turned the engine off. And I found myself just like I was holding onto the steering wheel for dear life. Like, like I said, the engine was off. I wasn't going anywhere. And I was breathing in and out and having palpitations. And if anybody would’ve walked past the car, probably thought I was about to give birth or something because I was just hyperventilating because I was so nervous about, going into this house. But I went in and I pushed through that barrier of my comfort zone, did the party. And yes, I was nervous, but it all went fine. But for the first few months of me doing that, every time I kind of caught a glimpse of myself in someone's mirror in their living room, I'd noticed that I had, like little red patches coming out the bottom of my sleeves on my T shirt and all up there, you know, the red rash on the neck, I could have quite easily just gone, you know what, yeah, my friend's mum's right. This isn't for me. I'm just gonna be happy and sit behind my computer all day. But I didn't. I just persevered with it. And a few months later, I ended up being one of the top salespeople and I ended up growing my own team there and really built my confidence. And now, like you said, when you look back to see how far you've come, when I'm stood on a stage or I'm stood and training people day in, day out doing what I do, I just have to think back to that moment and think, if I would have fast forwarded and said, well, in a few year’s time, you're going to be doing that, I never would have believed it. It is like you said those moments where you just reflect back on.

Yeah, just give yourself so much credit for how far you've come.

And that's another thing in terms of what I like to do now for a job when I'm coaching people is inspiring them to do the same. And that's a story that I tell right at the beginning of when I do public speaking presentation skills workshops. Because I say the key message there is if I can do it, then you can. 

Do your own experiences shape the way you approach your work at, inspired learning?

Yeah. So I think that links in nicely with what I was just kind of saying. There is that, absolutely, I've been the person that's not been confident. I've had imposter syndrome. Just like everybody gets it at some point. I've been a manager that's fallen into management and hasn't been given the training. So I'm very passionate about succession planning and training people before they become a manager. Absolutely. All those experiences in the workplace, but also my personal life and just some people that have grown up around that, have been doing the same job for a long time but haven't enjoyed it. life is too short to be unhappy in what you do for a living because before you wake up you can be 70, you're retiring and you've, you know, you're like, actually, I spent my whole career not enjoying what I do. That's just a waste of time. So I've always been a big believer that if you stop enjoying a job, in fact it's probably before you stop enjoying it, it's time to look for something new and move on. And so part of what I do when I train people is because if you don't feel, there's a niggling feel in the back of your mind that you could be doing your job better and you've not had the necessary training. There's nothing worse than going home at the end of the day just thinking, oh, just my confidence isn't there, or I don't know how to do it or I've not had the training. And so if I can support people with that skills gap, whether it's through training or coaching to make them feel happier in their job. And then there's a byproduct of that because if I'm training managers to do a better job of being a manager, not only are they happier, but then their teams are happier as well. It kind of has a knock-on effect.

Absolutely. There's nothing worse than working under somebody who doesn't want to be there.

Absolutely. That's what I love about having the business now, because when I'm working for one organisation, I feel like I'm making a difference in one business, whereas now I work with so many different organisations, so it's spread the inspiration about even more, which is great.

How do you keep yourself inspired while you're inspiring others?

Oh, yes, that's a good question. I do a few things, really. I definitely read a lot of books and I am one for recommending a lot of good books. I do often cost people money in bookstores or Amazon. I definitely love to read a book to keep me inspired and bits that I take from those books, you know, inspire me to go, oh, that's something that I can share with the next group. And they've become part of my stories or tips and tools that I share with people along the way. Podcasts as well. Always listen to podcasts. I do a lot of travelling up and down the country with my training, so rather than having the radio on, I've always got some form of podcast on that's going to inspire me. So I love Diary of a CEO from a mental health and wellbeing perspective. That helps me, but also, again, helps me when I'm coaching people. I love listening to Dr. Chatteree's podcast. Lots of different people that have inspired me over the years and ultimately the main thing that inspires me is the people that I coach and train. Because when I see those light bulb moments, as I said I was missing in that big organisation I worked in, that gives me my purpose and my reason for getting out of bed in the morning. And that's why I do what I do. And that's the whole reason why the business is called Inspired Learning, because it explains my why. My why is to inspire people to achieve the results and be the best that they can be. That's kind of the main thing that when I see that feedback and I see that change in people, that I sit back and go, yeah, that's why I work hard and that's why I get out of bed in the morning.

What has been the most rewarding moment in your career so far?

Now, I always struggle with these types of questions where it's like, what's the most? Or tell me what your favourite song is or your favourite film. Because I can never pinpoint it it down to like one thing I would say it's too hard to kind of mention one in particular. It is definitely the times where I've worked with people and Again, going back to the fact that we're talk about emotional intelligence here and the human skills side. So it can often be hard to measure. So you've got to go with that verbal feedback that you get from people. And when I've been coaching someone or they've been on one of my workshops and they either say at the end of the day or I see them a month later, the training and the tips that you've given me have changed my life. Absolutely. They're the rewarding parts. And I remember someone was with me a few months back and the programme consisted of some workshops and coaching sessions in between. I saw about a month later, for a coaching session and she didn't even say hello to me when she came onto the Zoom call. She just said, Emma, you have changed my life. I was taken aback a bit and I was like, oh, hello, how are you? And she was like, I have done this, I've done that since like last saw you. That was particularly around personal effectiveness or what most people call time management. I don't like to call it time management because you can't actually manage time. So I call it personal effectiveness. But she'd gone away and done lots of the tips that I'd given her, and she, you know, said it had changed her life. So things like that. I also coach people who are looking to get a promotion. So when they actually tell me I did it, I worked for the interview, I got the promotion, those kind of things are really rewarding. I did say I find it hard actually to pinpoint it down to one, but there is one that is sticking out for me which again then this coming back to that ripple effect and this go back a couple of years ago, but it still stands out in my mind now I'd not spoken to him for about eight years and I trained him at Phone4U to be a manager. And he messaged me out the blue, just ask me how it was. And I think he'd just seen a post that I'd put on social media and he said, I just want to say to you that even though I've not seen you for about eight years, I'm a manager now at this other company and I still use a lot of the things that you taught me eight years ago. And then the best bit is when he says, and I've got two children now. And a lot of those life changing things that you taught us, I don't just use them in the workplace, I've actually used them to bring my children up and that was just like, wow. The fact that people are remembering that years later and it's affecting then the next generation that are being born, like, that's a proper ripple effect for me.

Yeah, that's a legacy. And the effect that you're having on other people.

I like to think so.

Do you tailor your programmes to meet the unique needs of each client?

Yes, we do. All our clients, where we'll start off with some initial conversations, depend on the client and, the way that they want to do it. We'll do some form of learning needs analysis. They've maybe done a little bit of learning needs analysis themselves before contacting a training provider. it tends to involve me going on site, especially if it's an industry I've not worked with before, for me to understand how it works. Recently, doing some training with cleaning operatives and security officers that work in shopping centres. That's involved me walking around some shopping centres and seeing how that works. I was like, oh, is this work? walk the shopping centre. You know, we'll do things like that. We'll go and meet people, maybe meet a few people that are going to be on the programme. So I kind of get to, make sure we're tailored it to the right audience. And then something that I'm really passionate about, I'm quite well known for talking about is values. It's really important for me. The training that I design and deliver for each organisation is aligned to their values. It kind of becomes that golden thread then, throughout the programme or the workshop, some leaders. I play a bit of devil's advocate because at the beginning of all my leadership programmes, I asked them to tell me, if I was starting in your business tomorrow and in your team, how would you induct me and how would you tell me what your vision and values are? More often than not, they really struggle to tell me that. They tend to come up with them as a group eventually, but you get people going, oh, we've got them on the posters at work, they're on the walls. It's right by my desk and I can't think what they are. Or, oh, we've got mouse mats with them on and, you know, they're on our screen savers. Which my answer to that is, well, your screensaver comes on when you're away from your desk, so you're probably not going to know them from that. But when they tell me that they're on the walls, I'll say, well, if you don't know them, that's telling me that they're on the walls but they're not in the walls and you're not living and breathing them. And if you don't know them, your team aren't going to know what those values are. So it really creates a thought provoking moment for leaders when they go, actually I need to go away and not only look at this and get to know what those values are and understand them, but somehow bring them to life with my team. That's something I'm really passionate about in making it bespoke for each client and just making sure it's fit for purpose for them and their needs.

I think the most effective way of getting employees invested in them is to involve them in writing them. That can't obviously happen with new starters, but I think it's how a company delivers their vision, mission and values.

Yes, if you're going to bring out some new values, getting the existing employees involved, in fact it's something that I do, I go into organisations and help them to facilitate like focus groups so that they can come up with some new values. Ultimately people give, be more bought into it if they feel like they've played a part in it. And ultimately when you're trying to create a culture, it's the people that work within it that create that culture.

What's been the most unexpected challenge you've encountered in running Inspired Learning. And how did you tackle it?

Having set the business up in 2018, there was this little thing that came along just literally two years later called Covid, which I know has affected, you know, pretty much every business in some form or another. And at the time my business was probably, I'd say 95% in person training businesses weren't doing teams or zoom or anything like we are now pretty much every day. The 5% was probably coaching clients that I was doing a little bit of zoom around coaching sessions. I got sent home one day after finishing a training session. I was meant to be there delivering a day two the following day and I was in Derby because the client rang me and said don't know if you've seen the announcement, which I hadn't at the time because I was in training delivering. Everyone's been sent home with immediate effect and if you can just let the hotel know we won't need them tomorrow and if you're alright to find your way home. So got on a train home and woke up the next morning. My diary has pretty much been wiped out. I always work quite a fair few months in Advance. So we're talking March and my diary is pretty much full until August, so everything just wiped out. I just kind of woke up the next day and said to my partner, what do we do now? Because one thing that I haven't mentioned along this journey so far is that, a year after me setting the business up. So in 2019, my husband left his job of 24 years and joined me as the operations director. So we didn't have any other income supporting us. It was this business and was it. So it was a fair few weeks, like it was for everybody of what's this new world going to look like and what do we do? But gradually, to kind of cut a long story short, my existing clients started to get back in touch with me and say, look, I feel like this is going to be for the foreseeable, so, can we look at some virtual training and what I'd been doing in the meantime? pretty much the day after all this happened, I just started learning more about virtual training, signing up for workshops myself, going on to programmes and literally just studying through the night because I thought, I need to get on top of this and be ahead of the game. When my clients started contacting me again, I was like, yeah, absolutely, that's fine, we can change it to virtual. And it was a big change at the time for me, going from being in a room with people. Probably the only virtual things that I'd done was one to one with people coaching. So to then do that in a group and breakout rooms weren't as good as what they are now. When we first started going into lockdown and learning all of that. But then as much as that was great and it started to pick up in that way. I can remember saying to my husband, I don't know how this is going to work financially. The same as it's worked going out for a day, for eight hours, charging a day rate to my clients of delivering training. And then it felt like all this virtual stuff was very bitty. So it was like, how is this going to piece together to, be the same as it was before in terms of financial point of view? And I was just like, this isn't going to work. I appreciate it at the time because I do talk about the change curve on my leadership courses that I was going through, that grief curve of wanting to work the old way of working. I just had to keep going with it, really, because I had no other choice. I'm very big on goal setting and I work at 12 weeks at a time, so what I did was just to keep me motivated and keep me going is I just stripped that back and I was working to goals three weeks at a time, because that's when we were being put into lockdown in every three weeks. And I thought, right, well, I know what's happening now for the next three weeks, so I'll just plan that and do the best I can do, really. Which everybody was doing anyway. Now we'll fast forward. To cut a long story short, in that first year, our business actually grew by 68%. In those first few weeks when we went into lockdown, I did not think that was going to happen. I thought it was going to dramatically go the other way. What it enabled me to do once everybody started to get on board with the virtual training, is, yes, pack my day full of virtual learning, but also start to deliver in other countries and now we deliver globally because I can sit in my little house, Nantwich, and be delivering to people in India, Spain, France, Italy, everywhere. I’ve delivered in pretty much every country. Sometimes at the same time, I'm on people's big screens across different countries, which is always a bit daunting. But I couldn't have done that before COVID So actually as much as at the time, it was the worst thing in the world for my business, we grew by 68%. So I was happy with that.

That, is an amazing statistic. The amount of people I've spoken to who have had the COVID experience, but it's had a positive effect on their business. It just goes to show how it's changed how we work, how we live, how we learn. Feels like overnight you changed the direction of your business to fit with the current situation.

A lot of businesses had to get creative and pivot; hospitality where they were doing takeaways. And, so many different businesses had to be creative in that way. It's down to survival, really, is it? In those first few weeks and months, and for a lot of people, I mean, when I talk about stress, the two main causes of stress are, the fear of lack of control and the fear of loss of approval. And so that was a big thing that no one was really in control of. And the loss of approval for me was probably when I started delivering those virtual sessions. I kept coming off the sessions going, I can't do this. I'm rubbish at this. I need to be training people face to face, because that's all I've known for 18 years at that point. So that loss of approval was like, the clients aren't going to book me again because that just didn't go well. It was rubbish. And that was me having that imposter syndrome. And the feedback's been great.

Are there any particular events or initiatives coming up that you're running in the local area that our lessons may be interested in taking part in?

So, yes, I do like to do a few things in the Nantwich area when I'm not busy travelling up and down the country, or delivering virtually across the world. A couple of things that I do is goal setting and vision board workshop. So tend to run those towards either the end of the year or right the beginning of the year as we're going into a new year. and then I do them mid-year as well. June time, I tend to run those. I use, Loco in Nantwich. So we hire the room upstairs and we get together and set some goals, do some reflection and everybody leaves with their own vision board. So I provide all the materials, magazines, glue, all sorts and we get a little bit crafty on that. Tend to do those twice a year. And then I also have the Cheshire Ladies Walking Group, which is a Facebook page. so this has been something that was created at the end of 2024. We've got hundreds of people in there from the Nantwich area mainly. and the aim is that we arrange walks, tend to be on a Sunday and, we do sometimes change some of the dates and tend to have them throughout the month depending on what's going on. All you need to do is follow the Facebook page and there's an events tab in there, so all the walks will be in there, if you just register your interest. The idea is that we go for a walk just under two miles and then when we come back into the town, meet at a coffee shop, have a coffee, tea, sometimes cake, and just enjoy each other’s company, get to know each other more.

If you could share one piece of advice or inspiration with our listeners, what would it be?

So, because I am big on goal setting and we are coming to the end of the first quarter of the year, my advice and a little bit of inspiration is probably going to be around goals, I would say. So first of all, if you haven't achieved already what you set out to achieve in 2025 and whatever's happened, something in life has kicked that out and taking you off course in the first quarter, don't get sidetracked by that. First of all, be kind to yourself and know that life does happen. That's okay. But this is where my methodology of goal setting can really help because I work to quarters. I worked to something called a 12-week, year. I said before, I like to read lots of books. So there is a book called the 12 Week Year and what it helps you to do is rather than get overwhelmed and think about, kind of have this annualised way of thinking and think about your goals for the year. It helps you to kind of break it down into 12-week cycles. So what this does is it reduces overwhelm, it also makes your goals more focused. And I'm a big believer where focus goes, energy flows and so if you've got a clear focus and an action plan of what you want to achieve in the next 12 weeks, even really down to the smallest of steps, and break it down as small as you can right up until the next step feels manageable for you. So if your first quarter hasn't gone so well, just take that time to reflect, refocus and just think about the smallest steps that you can make. Like marginal gains are so important. We often overwhelm ourselves thinking, I've got to take this big leap. And then, we don't do it because it feels like too much. So just really take this time now. At the end of every 12 weeks we have a 13th week. It's like a golden week really. And in that 13th week it gives you a great opportunity to reflect on the last 12 weeks, plan again, maybe tweak the plan if it hasn't gone quite as you have thought, but get yourself back on track and then plan again for your next 12 weeks and then you go all in and just let that goal consume you. If you're someone that isn't very good at saying no to things or you get that shiny object syndrome, it really helps you to keep on track because you've got your plan in front of you and you know those steps, those daily actions you need to take. So it's about keeping on going through that but also knowing that if life does happen, you've got that next 13th week to get back on track again.

And if anyone wants to contact you about doing some training or even just the personal coaching, where would they contact you?

We have the website so inspired learning limited so limited.co.uk my main social media platform, is LinkedIn and I am Emma Shepard DeChoux on there. So I've still got my maiden name at the end so people can find me. And we are on Instagram and Facebook as well as Inspired Learning Limited.

Thank you so much for your time today, Emma. It's been really inspirational and I'm definitely going to be asking you for those book titles.

I've got a list as long as my arm, but yeah. Thank you for having me today. It's been a pleasure.

Great stuff. Thanks, Emma.