Then and now... Kirsty Hulse

In the latest instalment of Bdaily's Then and now series, Kirsty Hulse, author, chief executive of tech firm Neuroworx and founder of training organisation Roar! reflects on her career, from her first role to the present day, highlighting the lessons she has learned from her personal and professional evolution.

Did you always want to work in the tech sector? Or did you have other ambitions when you were growing up?

My career began out of desperation.

I just started saying yes to things. Anything.

That led to a brutal, commission-only, door-to-door sales job, which eventually helped me gain a foothold in digital marketing.

I never imagined I'd be the chief executive of a tech company.

However, I have always wanted to connect with people, make them laugh and tell stories that matter.

What was your first job – and did you enjoy it?

Door-to-door sales, working purely on commission.

I worked 18-hour days, six days a week, trying to convince people they needed a new energy supplier, and it was absolutely awful.

But it taught me everything about resilience, rejection and the importance of believing in what you’re selling. 

Were there any mentors or individuals who helped shape your career? And are you still applying lessons you learned then to your workforce of today?

Absolutely, though they were less in the traditional sense of mentors and more just incredible humans.

My mum Val is the source of so much of my resilience.

My nan Vera was a poet and a spiritualist, who taught me that "laughter is the smallest distance between two people" and that "kindness costs nothing". 

And then there are people like Fergus Clawson, a kind man who gave me my first real chance in the digital world after I’d emailed hundreds of agencies offering to write for free.

What attracted you to the tech sector?

I was never attracted to a particular sector; I was more repelled by a broken one and decided to build something better.

The real catalyst, though, was my own burnout.

I was running my first agency in my 20s, and we’d hit nearly $1 million in revenue in our first year.

However, I was utterly miserable, and it all came to a head when I suffered a series of panic attacks. 

I became passionate about fixing the things that make work unfair, unproductive and uninspiring.

It’s what led to Neuroworx – I saw how biased and broken hiring was.

It’s also why I started Roar!—to replace boring corporate training with something that actually creates joy and connection.

How do you feel you’ve changed as a person over the years? Have career roles brought new dimensions to your personality?

The biggest change is that I’ve gone from having a deeply fixed mindset to a growth mindset.

For years, I believed that abilities were innate – you were either good at something or you weren't, and I was terrified of failure because I saw it as a verdict on my worth.

A huge turning point was an international speaking gig in San Francisco early in my career.

The audience started laughing at me because the live captioner couldn't understand my northern accent, and I completely unravelled on stage and finished a 40-minute talk in 14 minutes.

I didn't get on a stage for months.

It was only when I forced myself to read the genuinely very scathing feedback, categorise it in a spreadsheet and actually learn from it that I was able to move forward.

You’ve seen many changes to the employment world across your career – how do you see the workplace evolving in the years to come?

Back in 2016, I wrote a book about flexible working being the future, and a client called me an idealistic little girl.

Now, that same company has a work from anywhere policy. 

The next big evolution is already here, and it’s being driven by artificial intelligence.

But while everyone is panicking about robots taking our jobs, I see it differently.

As artificial intelligence and automation handle more of the technical, data-driven tasks, the skills that will become most valuable are the ones that are uniquely human. 

Hiring will have to shift from scanning artificial intelligence-generated CVs to testing for real-world skills and human capabilities.

And corporate development will have to stop being about boring compliance and start being about fostering genuine connection and confidence.

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