Award-winning Clare Roberts OBE is in an exclusive group of only 80 UK women to have founded a business that has topped £50m in revenue.
The achievement makes her a ‘Superscaler’ but she told BusinessCloud’s roundtable ahead of International Women’s Day that she ‘cringes’ when she wins women-only awards.
She said: “The reason why it makes me cringe is because I want to win awards against everyone, not just those in the female camp.
“I’ve thought that all the way through my career because I think we are all equal. I’ve always believed that. At school, I used to try and beat boys more than girls, because I just wanted to prove that I could.
“I think we’ve got to do more before people start trying to be entrepreneurs or trying to get on the career ladder to empower females and girls in particular, to think they can do anything, because that’s how I grew up.
“I never thought I couldn’t do something. And yeah, alright, there are things that I’ve done that haven’t been a success, that have been a failure, but I always believed you could try and do anything.”
Roberts won the North West Growth Champion Award at BusinessCloud’s 2024 Northern Leaders Awards and founded Kids Planet in 2008 with her father. It’s grown to more than 220+ nurseries – making Kids Planet the 3rd largest nursery group in the UK.
She told the roundtable: “When I think back to when we started the business, going to networking events was quite daunting because there were even less females when we’d walk into the room than there are now.
“Over the years I’ve built a really strong female network of people who are entrepreneurs or people who work in professional services.
“I think that helps you because it gives you some kind of support around you where you’re not on your own.
“But has it changed? I’ll be really honest, I don’t think it’s changed that much.
“I worked in the pharmaceutical industry before I set up Kids Planet. I was one of two females in a team of about 25 who were senior managers, and I applied for jobs knowing I wasn’t going to get them because I actually thought they owed it to me to train me and give me those skills.
“But men would apply for jobs and you’d think ‘they’ve got no chance’ and they’d end up getting them. But there’s something in men, in how they’re perceived and what people think they can do that’s different to a lot of females, and that’s what we’ve got to change.
“I think that you can do anything. I do. I think most people don’t do things because they’re scared of failing, but actually failing is a really important part of learning, and it’s almost like we’ve got this all wrong.
“I’ve got three daughters, so for me, I feel really passionately about wanting them to grow up in a world where nothing will hold them back, and if they want to do something, yeah, there’s probably a lot of hard work they’ve got to do to get there, but be ambitious. Believe you can do anything.”
She was joined on the roundtable by: Susanna Lawson co-founder, OneFile and Circle of Trust; Alison Ross, chief people and operations director, Auto Trader UK; Janine Smith, director, GM Business Growth Hub; Sharon Amesu, Northwest Business Leadership Team; Lisa Morton, founder and CEO, Roland Dransfield PR; Nicola Merritt, CEO, Cortus Advisory; Kathy Cowell OBE DL, group chairman, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust; Alison Salas, senior marketing manager, Rochdale Development Agency; Shru Morris, CEO Designate at DSW; Tiffany Thorn, founder & CEO, BiVictriX Therapeutics Ltd; Beckie Taylor, co-founder Tech Returners and Empower; Chris Stott, managing partner, KPMG Manchester; Amanda Ruddiman, director, corporate finance. KPMG; Kirsty Smith, KPMG Emerging Giants team; Emma Birchall, partner, JS (Jackson Stephen); and Christy Foster, managing director, The Nursery Store.