How to develop your transferable skills

Sarah Ellis: Hi, I'm Sarah Ellis.

Helen Tupper: I'm Helen Tupper.

Sarah Ellis: You're listening to the Squiggly Careers podcast where every week we talk about a different topic to do with work and discuss practical ideas and actions to help you find your way through the Squiggly world of work.

As we talk to you today, we have just recorded our TED talk, and we wanted to say a quick thank you to everybody who supported us.  I know lots of people bought tickets to come along to the virtual live event on Saturday.  We got lots of really kind messages of people saying, "Good luck" and cheering us on and supporting us when you're not really seeing anyone, ever, at the moment!  It would mean a lot anyway, but I think it meant even more to us to just feel like we had people all over the place just saying, "Good luck", and, "I hope Squiggly goes well".  People have been really kind, and people who were there have shared it on LinkedIn and places like that.  So thank you, all; we really do appreciate it.

The talk will be released for everybody to be able to watch in a couple of weeks' time.  When that does come out, we'll talk about it a bit more; I think we might even do an episode on what we learnt from the TED talk; not how to do a TED talk but more -- I think we learnt some very probably useful lessons about public speaking, about working out what you want to say, working together remotely, I think, at times.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, it definitely put some pressures on that point!

Sarah Ellis: It really did! 

Helen Tupper: We're still friends! 

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.

Helen Tupper: We still work together!

Sarah Ellis: I think we perhaps got the closest to having an evening off each other though, didn't we, during the process?

Helen Tupper: Yeah.  I think there was a moment when we were like, "There is no good going to come from this continual WhatsApp chat about how we should make this better when we don't agree with each other!"

Sarah Ellis: So fun!

Helen Tupper: We laugh now, everyone!

Sarah Ellis: What will you remember about the day itself, about turning up to Abbey Road Studios and doing that talk?

Helen Tupper: I will remember wanting to hug people because I'm so excited and not being able to, and just be like, "Aargh!  I want to hug you!"

I also remember, when we did the talk, we had these boards; one of which is actually on the wall behind me right now.  We had a board with the ladder on, which obviously we got rid of, and we had a board with a squiggle, which we were holding up high. 

There was just a lot of debate in the process of recording our TED talk about when to bring the boards on, where to put the boards, how to hold the boards so they didn't create a shadow.  Sarah and I had a screen between us.  I think we spent so much more time talking about the placement of the boards than we did --

Sarah Ellis: The talk?

Helen Tupper: -- any details about the talk. 

I remember Maryam, who is the Co-ordinator of TEDxLondon, we'd finally sorted out the boards plan out, and she's like, "Just have a go; just go", and then we just did it.  And I didn't realise that was going to be the one.

Sarah Ellis: The one!

Helen Tupper: Then we sort of delivered it, and it's ten minutes long, and then it was like, "Okay, you're done now", and I thought, "Oh no.  I wanted to saviour the moment a little bit and make it big in my head".  The boards actually probably distracted us from the talk itself, which maybe wasn't a bad thing.  What about you?

Sarah Ellis: I'll always remember turning up and doing a COVID test as the first thing, and the nervousness of -- I'd not had a COVID test before; I've given my toddler multiple COVID tests but this was the first one that I'd had to do.  That's a very weird way to start an event that you're already quite nervous about.

I will always remember the nurse who administered the test for us, and you get instant results, and he was just so kind to me and supportive, and obviously could tell that I was nervous.  He was just really reassuring; I think you know when you just really need it in that moment.  But anyway, we are really grateful for everyone who turned up and supported us, and we'll talk about it more in the weeks to come.

So today, we're going to be talking about transferable skills.  This is a topic where a few listeners have asked us to maybe dive into this in a bit more depth.  So it's been on our mind for a while.  And actually we're starting to notice, I think probably increasingly during 2020, lots of people thinking about either proactively changing careers, or pivoting in some ways; some people having to react to the situation we all find ourselves in and wanting to spend some time figuring out what their transferable skills are.  Then there's a bit of a disconnect when you actually then listen, or read, or watch people talking about transferable skills.

It's such a big topic that the real risk I think is that it becomes generic and not particularly useful.  So we have really tried to think today about -- we'll talk a bit about why they're important, but really think about what they are and how do you figure this out for yourself; how do you work out what are your transferable skills; what's useful; what actions can you take; what could you be doing today on transferable skills?  That's where we're going to try and get to in the podcast over the next 20 or 30 minutes.

Helen Tupper: So we'll start I think first with why are transferable skills an important thing for you to focus some time on?  Frustration aside that they seem to get talked about as some magical wand for your future; we'll get onto that point; but just generally, why is it worth thinking about the set of skills, and maybe also what are the key transferable skills?  We'll talk about that as well.

The "why" is really about the way that work is at the moment.  So if you think about the amount of change that we've got in the way that we're working; where we're working; what we're working on, that's given this need for us to all look at upskilling and reskilling, because it's very likely we're going to do jobs that don't exist yet with skills that we don't even know we need yet. 

Therefore, we have to have the ability to keep learning and developing new skills.  That's all great, and some things will look very different from role to role that you go to because of that, but there are some things that will stay with you as you squiggle.

So whether that's a different role internally, or because you're going onto a new job; you have quite a lot of control over what those things that you want to stay, those skills that you want to stay with you as you squiggle are.  The point is that those skills, which we will call your transferable skills, the things that you want to stay with you as you squiggle, they are the things that give you some consistency and control in an uncertain and quite complex world of work.

So, when there's a lot of change going on, you don't have to change all of your skillset all of the time.  Actually, there's almost like a baseline I think you can take a lot of confidence from, like a baseline skillset that no matter what job you go and do, and what company you go and do it in, you know that you are going to bring those skills.  And you can keep investing in them, and you can keep improving them, but you don't need to radically change them; whereas there might be some other skills that you do need to radically change because technology is different, or it's a completely new product that you're working with, or something like that. 

There will be some things that are brand new, but these transferable skills are things that you just continually build on, you continually get better at them, and they're like a confident baseline that you can take with you.  So that's why they are important; they give you some consistency in quite an uncertain and, at times, quite complicated world of work.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and I think that distinction between what skills stay with you and making sure you've then also got enough space for new skills, is a really nice way of thinking about it, because I think we know that having a beginner's mindset, we know that there will just be some things that we want to learn that we just don't even know about yet; and so we always want to create the space and make sure that we leave some space for that. 

Then we want to, at the same time, be confident in, "What's going to stay with me wherever I squiggle, if I'm going to have five different types of career?" and those types of career could be about the industry you're working in; how you're working; where you're working; what you're working on, those changes can look at feel very different for us at different times in our life.  This kind of idea of sticking in space I think is really helpful to consider.

Helen Tupper:  So can I talk a little bit about the master list of transferable skills?

Sarah Ellis:  Of which there isn't one!

Helen Tupper: So we started to look, everybody, for -- everyone talked generically about these transferable skills; what are the top ten transferable skills?  There are so many reports.  And there are some consistencies; like communication problem-solving comes up quite a lot.  Some of these lists have like 21 transferable skills you need; some have 10; some have got 100, and we got to the point of thinking we don't think it's that helpful to have a generic list of uber skills, because there are lots of different lists, to be honest with you. 

Also, these skills are just so big that it's not that helpful to say, "Oh, Sarah, you need to know communication problem-solving and analytics", because if Sarah does a completely different job to me, then actually what those skills look like in practice for Sarah are going to be really, really different because they're almost just too big to be helpful.

Sarah Ellis: So one of the things that we found helpful in our workshops and that we've done ourselves, when we're thinking about transferable skills, is start with yourself; not worrying about other people or any of these lists of skills that we'll talk about in a second; but think about how you do your job today. 

So often, some of our job-specific things are more in the "what we do", whereas the "hows", how we get our job done, tends to be something that we can transfer regardless of industry or career.

A useful coach-yourself question here is to think about, imagine you are going to do your friend's, someone in your family's job on Monday; so a job that you've got zero experience in, no knowledge or expertise in; what are the skills that you would take with you into that job?  So, this is not you pretending to be them, this is you being you and going to do this imaginary role and thinking, "Okay, well I wouldn't be able to rely on knowledge and technical expertise; the only thing I would have would be my "hows", so what would those be?  What might I take with me?"

So Helen, let's give a couple of examples to people here.  So what job are you going to imagine yourself doing?  I always find this really fun; I love imagining different jobs.

Helen Tupper: I am going to go and be a teacher; I'm going to be a lecturer in a university.  That's what I'm going to do on Monday.

Sarah Ellis: Okay.  What are you going to lecture in?  I need to know the specifics!

Helen Tupper: Oh gosh, Sarah!  You're asking me lots of hard questions today!  I don't know, behavioural science, not that I could!

Sarah Ellis: That's the point!

Helen Tupper: If I'm just plucking things out of the air, I'll go and do that.  I'm somebody's infill for the day; they're sick and they've gone, "Helen can teach behavioural science".

Sarah Ellis: Okay.  Let's assume you don't know very much about behavioural science, which surely you don't.

Helen Tupper:  Not that much, no.

Sarah Ellis: So what would you take with you?  What might your "hows" be?

Helen Tupper: Okay.  So, rapport building really, really quickly with lots of people, so the other lecturers.  I'd be like, "How do you run a session with students?"  That's what I'll ask them really, really quickly; I'd get their lesson notes.  And probably, with the students in the class itself, I would build that sense of connection with people really, really quickly.  So that would be my go-to Helen skill that I would use.

Then I think the other thing would be energy.  So, I'd think, "Okay, it might not be the most expert session you've ever been in because I don't know this topic very much, but it will be the most energising".  So I would get people talking to each other and sharing, and they'd come away going, "That was amazing!  I don't know what I learnt, but I feel a lot better".  So yeah, energy and rapport would probably be my go-to.

Sarah Ellis: I could actually imagine you doing that job, whereas when I do these things, I just think, "Oh, what can't I do?" or, "What do I really not know anything about?"  So I went with gardening, partly I think because I'm missing -- I love visiting gardens at weekends; most of the ones that I particularly like going to are closed at the moment, or you have to be very organised to book, and I never am.  So I'm missing going to those gardens, so I'm imagining turning up and being a gardener in big grounds, like in a National Trust property or something. 

I think one of the things that I would always take into any role is being able to come up with ideas from scratch.  So, if somebody said, "We don't know what to do with this bit of land" or, "What could we create here?" that doesn't faze me.  I would always go, "Oh, I find that interesting and exciting".  So I'd be thinking about, "Oh, could we do a sensory garden?  Could we do something that would be really fun for babies?  Could we do something that would be really fun for kids to climb on?  Could we introduce some animals here?"  I would find that just really fun. 

So I think, if they needed any kind of inspiration for, "We've got a space here and we're not sure what to do with it", I think I'd always really enjoy that.

Different to you, I think I'd build rapport and relationships in a very different way to you.  I think often the thing I'm good at is I'm good at spotting when people need help or are a bit stuck or maybe struggling, and you always say the thing that I'm good at is knowing when someone needs a coffee.  I think I am good at going, "Oh, do you want a cup of tea?  Shall we just go for a little walk and have a coffee and just have a chat?" and not putting people under pressure but hopefully, being there to listen and to help.

Helen Tupper: I think you probably build relationships primarily, at least at the start, through empathy, whereas at the start, I probably do it through energy.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, that's true.

Helen Tupper: Probably a little bit of a distinction between us.  I think it all nets out.  Hopefully, it's good relationships with people that are slightly more diverse than just those two things, but our starting point probably is you coming at things from a position of empathy and me from the energy point.

Sarah Ellis: So we definitely recommend having a go at that first.  So before you get into any of the actions that we're going to talk about, almost put yourself in the shoes of another role that you don't know anything about and just think, "What would you take with you?"  That'll give you a good starting point for, "These are some of the transferable skills I already have".  Then we'll now figure out, okay, what are you going to do with them?

Helen Tupper: Then the other thing that we wanted to talk about before we get into some sort of practical things for you to think about your transferable skills, is that if you google "transferable skills" you'll come up with loads of lists.  There are lots of different reports that have been on this but honestly, I don't really know how helpful they are because some of them have got like, "Here's your top ten transferable skills", and there's other ones that have got, "21 transferable skills that you need right now", and it's just a bit overwhelming and it's also just a bit generic.

So what we would say is that this is a really personal thing, and we'll talk a little bit about how you can personalise those transferable skills for you and your career, but just not to treat this as a tick list.  Our careers are as individual as we are and, whilst there might be some guidance on the skills that are becoming increasingly important across a broad range of organisation and industries, it's not a list to tick your way though.  I think, if you treat it like that, it could be just quite daunting. 

You could just spend all of your time trying to be amazing at communication, and amazing at whatever other generic skill is put on there.  I just think it would be really difficult as well for you to see yourself making progress when you just look at some of those big headings and the uber skills that a lot of those lists reference.

Sarah Ellis: It's an impossible task, isn't it?  We've spent quite a lot looking through those in preparation for today's podcast; we actually probably prepared for this more than we do most podcasts because we really wanted to make sure it was going to be helpful.  Actually, I think the conclusion we definitely came to is there is some usefulness in these lists, which we'll talk about, but certainly not as a way to go, "Oh, brilliant; that's my answer for what needs to get done".

Helen Tupper: So the first thing that we want to do is to help you to get to a list of transferable skills that are manageable for you to invest your time in improving, but are also relevant to you and your career, so getting away from that generic tick list into something that's actually useful for you.

So, let's break this down a little bit.  The first thing for you to do that will make it relevant for you is to think about your personal career possibilities.  These are the opportunities you're interested in exploring for your career; that might take you in lots and lots of different directions.  Maybe just start with three possibilities that you're intrigued by.

So, for me, that would be the one that I'm doing at the moment, so running our own business; it might be working in learning and development for a company; and maybe I'll put that lecturing one down.  So that would be three possibilities that I'm interested in finding more about.

The second thing, once you've got those possibilities, is almost use the list, and we will put these on our website for you so you can use them as a bit of an input, but scan down all these lists of transferable skills and think about which ones of those skills are consistent across the different possibilities. 

So, rather than just this generic list, look at them and think, okay, well for me, for example, analytical skills is not one of the things that's consistent for me across those different possibilities; so whilst it might make the uber list, it's not necessarily that relevant for me and what I want to do in the future.  But maybe, I don't know, problem-solving, or creative thinking, or something around communication, that might be something that I could almost tick on each of the possibilities that I'm intrigued by.

Then, once you've got that match, that these are the things that I'm interested in exploring, and these are the couple of skills that stay consistent, then you're able to prioritise your investment in developing on those skills. 

It's not that you never want to pay any attention to the other ones, it's just that with the limited amount of time that we all have to invest in our learning and development, prioritising that on the skills that are consistent across the possibilities that you want to explore and find out more about are where you'll really get more value out of your efforts.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and I think there's one final stage here when you've done that; I'm sure Helen will talk you though a matrix very, very shortly, everybody, because we've had a chat about what kind of assets and resources can we create for everybody on this topic.  I think the other thing that's really important is to know your possibilities so that you know which ones you want to explore to connect the skills that will stay with you to those possibilities.  

The third area is think about, do you enjoy those things, because I think there could be some possibilities you're intrigued by and then you could identify a skill that you could think, "I can see, objectively, how that could be useful across all of those possibilities, but it's not something that I enjoy".  It's something that perhaps you then identify you need to be good enough at, because you don't want it to hold you back and you don't want it to be a barrier to doing the things you want to do, but it's probably not one you're going to want to overinvest in if you don't enjoy it.   So that has to be the final filter almost, is just ask yourself that question. 

Then, if I was doing this exercise and I was starting to think about this, I would be thinking, "Okay, usually there's some sort of creativity, developing ideas in most of these master lists somewhere along the lines", and I'd go, "Brilliant; that's something I'm already good at and I really enjoy and I can see how it's relevant for what I do now and what I want to do in the future.  Great, I'm going to really overinvest in that".

I might identify something else, like critical thinking, that I can also see would be useful, but perhaps it's something I don't enjoy quite as much, and so with that area I might think, "Okay, well how do I make sure that I just get good enough, but without worrying about spending too much time and energy and effort in that area?"  Can you see the matrix, Helen?  Is it forming?

Helen Tupper: I can see the matrix!  I can see a two by two matrix, I've got four quadrants.  I don't know how clearly I'm going to explain this to everybody so PodPlus might be a good thing for people to join us on this week.  But I think the matrix is something around, do you enjoy it, high and low; and is it useful, high and low?

So, for example, something that is high enjoyment and high usefulness, that's definitely a priority area, but something that is useful but isn't something that you enjoy, it might just be something that you give a bit of attention to because you don't want to ignore it.  If it's useful for you in your career, you want to be aware of it, but you don't necessarily want to engage in it. 

I'm going to give it some more thought, Sarah, and then maybe, on this week's PodPlus, I will draw it and share it with everybody.

Sarah Ellis: If you're listening and you're thinking, "Oh, I can't make PodPlus", we do it every Thursday at 9.00am UK time for 30 minutes.  We record every episode, and we usually share any of the models that we create on Instagram as well; so that's just @amazingif.

So the second idea for action on transferable skills is to break them down.  So, the problem with these transferable skills is these are really big topics in their own right.  So, even as I'm looking at them now, there are just these big headers that just say "creativity", "leadership", "communication", and you think, "Crikey, that's a life's work in themselves for even just one of those, getting really brilliant at those things". 

So I think, when you start to think about your transferable skills, just be wary of sweeping statements, I sometimes call them.  Like going, "Oh, it's all about communication".  I think instead really challenge yourself to break down that big master transferable skill into loads of subskills.  So what are all the skills that you need to develop that ladder up to and build up to that big skill? 

So if was something like communication, you might think about, "Okay, well, if it's written communication, what types of written communication; is it listening; is it listening in certain contexts and certain meetings; is it about speaking; what sort of speaking am I doing; is it spontaneous, as in within a meeting offering thoughts and options; is it practice presentations?"  What are the other things that will help you with that communication?  Is it things about confidence, like self-confidence?  Are you usually doing that communication by yourself or with other people? 

So really start to break down that skill so that then, again, you can start to think about, "Actually, I feel quite confident in my written skills".  For example, you might think, "Actually through my day job…" perhaps you get a lot of practise doing those things, but it might help you to really identify in a very specific way, "But, do you know what, I've not given much thought to my listening skills", for example. 

That's exactly what I've done for this year, for 2021.  When I was thinking about this for myself, communication, obviously really important in what Helen and I do, whether that's talking on a podcast or running a workshop or writing, but very particularly, when I broke down all the different kind of parts of communication, I recognised that I'd really wanted to improve my listening skills.

I'm definitely an introverted person who sometimes your brain is working so quickly and whirring so hard, you find it hard to listen.  You're actually not as good at listening as a result; you're not as present.  So I was like, "Okay, listening is the thing that I really want to get better at".  Even that's pretty big. 

Then you can break that down even further and think about, "Okay, so when do I really want to listen better; what might that look like; how will I know that I'm making progress; what am I going to start to do differently, because this won't just happen?  It needs intentional effort".  And actually I'm probably five weeks into the year now, it's really interesting, it's really helped me to then actually think about, "Okay, if a transferable skill, kind of uber skill, is communication, I'm already starting to feel confident by the end 2021, my listening skills will be, if they were a five out of a ten, my ambition is going, 'Oh, I'm going to try and get them to a seven.  What would it look like to get into a 7 out of a 10 in the next 12 months; what are all the things that I could start to do?'"  Just by doing that breaking-down process, I've got to a very specific learning objective that feels much more relevant and useful for me.

Helen Tupper: One thing that might help you -- it might help you too, Sarah, I don't know; but there's a transferable skills inventory that I found that has come out of a division of Harvard somewhere, and it takes some of the significant skills and then breaks them down into lots of subskills. 

So, for example, non-verbal communication being a bigger heading, and it talks about, even within that skill, there are subskills like your ability to listen carefully and attentively, the point that Sarah made; using body language to make other people comfortable; developing rapport; expressing your feelings through body language; responding to non-verbal cues.  There's almost like a list of ten subskills under each of the specific skills which might sit at the transferable skills index level.

So if you can't do it for yourself, if you can't take the communication and break it down into a number of subskills that then you can think about prioritising, maybe go and have a look at the transferable skills inventory that we'll put on the blog post that goes with this podcast on our website.  It might just help you to think about, "Okay, well, what is a subskill that I feel that I could focus on so that I'm not so distracted by this really, really big skill that feels quite difficult and hard to do meaningfully?"

Then, the last thing that we think can really help you to make this point around transferable skills practical; so I guess the first one was about connecting it to your possibilities, that was about making it personal; the second thing was about taking the uber skill into something that you could move forward so you could make progress; the last thing is about making it really practical with what you could do today. 

There are a few things that you can do here.  So the first one is about job-crafting.  So, once you've got the clarity, so Sarah, for example, talked about listening, she's taken communication, she's made it much more specific to her and turned it into listening being something she wants to prioritise; the first thing that Sarah could do is she could look at her job as it stands today, how she spends her time in an average working week, and think about how she could develop that skill in the context of her job.

So maybe it is in certain meetings that she's in where she wants to play with a different role; rather than primarily leading it, she's going to think about how she could take a primarily listening role in it; or, maybe there's certain things that we do in our business that Sarah could do more of, where she could play more of that listening role.  But this is about you looking at your average working week and thinking about, "What could I do differently in the job that I'm in today that would give me the option to develop and demonstrate that skill more?"  That's the first one.

Maybe you can come up with those ideas for yourself; maybe you could talk to a manager or a mentor or a colleague, and they might be able to spot some of the opportunities for you to use that skill in a slightly different way than you might be using it at the moment.

The second thing that you could do is think about how you keep learning.  We often talk about curating your own curriculum, and this is about thinking about the sources and resources that you can invest your time in that can help you to improve your skill.

So maybe it's something that you are reading; maybe there are some books on this topic, like creative problem-solving or listening or building rapport, that you could read; maybe there are some TED talks where people have talked about this and their perspective and how they've done it; maybe there are some podcasts that are really specific on the topic.  It's about you bringing all those sources together and spending some time with them because it might help you to think about how you develop that skill in different ways.

Then the last thing, in terms of practically what can you do right now to improve that skill, is to look outside of work.  Are there initiatives, projects, volunteering, passion projects for you?  Are there things that you could get involved in outside of work that would help you to use that strength and develop that skill in a slightly different context, because this doesn't always have to be about the day job? 

Sometimes when we develop skills in very different contexts, it can help us to be more skilful because we just have a more diverse experience of using that strength.  That might be because you're doing it with different people, or it's a completely different environment that you're doing it in than a day job, but ultimately, we talk about frequency builds competency; the more you use that skill the better you will get at using it, and you can bring that betterness to whatever context it is that you're using that skill in.

Sarah Ellis: So we hope that's been really helpful for you and we've done our best to try and take what is a big topic and make it useful in the here and now. 

We'd love to know from you if there's anything we've missed, or if you've still got gaps, or you're stuck, let us know, because this is not a topic that's going to go away and we want to make sure we can bring all of our practical usefulness to it.  We will start to think about, there might be some resources that create outside of the podcasts, Helen will get on the case with her matrix, but if there is more that we could do here we would love to know. 

Usually, the easiest way to get in touch with us is on Instagram, we're just @amazingif, or you can always connect with one of us on LinkedIn and send us a message there.  Just let us know you've listened to the podcast just so that we know who you are, and then again, just give us some feedback in terms of what does this topic mean to you and is there anything else we can do to support you because I'm sure we'll keep coming back to it over the next year or so.

Helen Tupper: So, just to recap on a few things that will help you, if you do want to have a look at some of those lists and the skills inventory that we mentioned, just go to amazingif.com.  It'll be under the podcast, and you'll find all of that there.

The other thing would be PodPlus.  So, if you do listen to this in time, you can come to the live session on Thursday of the week this podcast goes out, or just go to www.amazingiflearning.com, and then you'll be able to catch up on recording.

Then, last but not least, Sarah did do a podcast, it's number 183, I'll link to this as well in the post, which was called A Re-skilling Revolution, and that was with Pip Jamieson and Jimmy McLoughlin.  That could be a really good follow-on listen as well if this is an area you think you want to immerse yourself in a little bit more, and you want to hear some other thoughts and perspectives on it as well.

Sarah Ellis: So we hope that's been useful.  As ever, if you get a moment to rate, review and subscribe it means that we can share our podcasts with lots more people, and it does something clever with algorithms that neither of us quite understand but we know they're important --

Helen Tupper: That's not one of our transferable skills!  It's got to be consistent across our possibilities.

Sarah Ellis: -- and a way that you can always support us on all things Squiggly is doing that.  If you've read the book, leaving a review or just a star rating on Amazon really, really helps us.  It's one of those things I think, until you're in that world of being in a small business, you don't probably appreciate just how much those things matter, and they're free and they hopefully only take five minutes.  They're one of those five minute favours that we sometimes talk about.  So, perhaps if you have a spare five minutes, you could do that for us.  We'd be immensely grateful, and also we read them all, and it's our way of getting a little bit of feedback.  So it makes us really happy.

Helen Tupper: I looked today at podcast reviews, and they really made me smile, and I was like, "Ahhh".  It's the nicest feeling.

Sarah Ellis: So I think that's everything for this week.  We hope that's been helpful, and we'll look forward to speaking to you again soon.  Bye for now.

Helen Tupper: Bye, everyone.