Lucy is the Career Remote and crucially my friend and inspiration for life!
There is nothing she won’t try, will always put herself out there, is endlessly encouraging, thoughtful, funny and cool. I am VERY lucky to have her in my life.
This page is here to inspire you in your career – or indeed to inspire you to change your career.
Every month Lucy runs the Working Women’s Networking Club in Holmfirth and my word, it is a joy..
So now Lucy is going to guide us through the melee of being a working woman in 2026.
The Question I’d Never Been Asked Before: “What Are You Doing for the Full Moon?”
“What have you got planned for the full moon tonight?”
I overheard one woman ask another over coffee at Working Women Club, and it stopped me mid-sip. I realised I had never heard that question posed so casually before. I had heard people remark on the moon’s size or brightness, how low it sat in the sky or how unusually luminous it looked, but never what you might do with it.
I listened intently to their conversation of the possibilities of setting crystals outside to cleanse and recharge them, or journalling, letting thoughts spill out uncensored, or practising gratitude by candlelight. Moon-bathing, I learned, was also an option. I admitted to the group that I had been feeling scattered and out of sorts. Without hesitation, someone suggested I go and moon-bathe to cleanse my internal energy. I did it later that evening, slightly sceptical, walking alone under the rising full moon. To my surprise, it worked. Whether through placebo, pause, or something more elusive, I felt calmer. That, in itself, felt like a small revelation.
There is a quietly spiritual undercurrent to this corner of West Yorkshire that I had not fully noticed before. It is woven into conversations, rituals, and ways of being. An oracle card reading recently by Soulfull by Samantha gave me unexpected food for thought. She doesn’t give definite predictions, but gentle prompts for each month ahead: where gratitude could soften working relationships that felt misaligned, and where old patterns were ready to be released. When she suggested a visit to The Crystal Apothecary in Holmfirth, choosing stones to reflect the challenges and opportunities she saw ahead, it was less about the crystals themselves and more about the feeling of being connected to something larger than my to-do list.
Since surrounding myself with women who are open to these practices, I have found myself much more curious, less dismissive, and more willing to sit with ideas that do not need to be proven to be meaningful.
That openness surfaced when a group of us from Working Women Club attended a fellow member’s financial wellbeing session. She blended practical financial knowledge with a softer, more symbolic approach. We wrote notes we were to bury in the garden, intentions rooted quite literally into the ground. Other notes, filled with self-sabotaging beliefs, were ripped up and discarded, an act of release from financial restriction. Some might raise an eyebrow at this or call it “woo-woo” but what followed mattered more than the ritual itself.
The exercise unlocked a conversation about money beliefs many of us had never voiced. What we were taught about earning. About asking for bigger budgets. About charging our worth. About who money is “for” and who should feel grateful simply to have it. The discussion turned, inevitably, to unpaid labour. To women who stay home to raise children and run households while a partner contributes financially. Whose savings are they, really, if only one income is visible but both are essential? It is a debate worthy of its own space, but the question lingered.
Beliefs, like habits, are often inherited rather than chosen. They settle quietly and shape behaviour long before we notice them. Perhaps that is why rituals matter, whether you believe in the moon’s power or not. They give us a moment to pause, to name what no longer serves us, and to consciously choose something different.
Maybe on the next full moon, we do not need crystals or candles at all. Maybe we simply take a moment to cleanse the belief that women should shrink their ambition or apologise for earning well. Under the same moon, after all, we are allowed to want more, ask for more, and contribute back into our communities in ways that feel both grounded and expansive.
Working Women Club is a facilitated networking group built on peer-to-peer support and shared learning, designed to help women grow confident, sustainable businesses. Lucy Shutt-Vine is the founder of Working Women Club and The Career Remote® and brings a background in sales, learning and development, and career coaching.
Not Just Ladies Who Lunch: Rethinking How Women Do Business Together
“Oh, so have you got your ladies who lunch event on today?”
He was referring to Working Women Club. It was meant as a joke, but it landed heavily because beneath the humour sat a familiar assumption: that when women gather, it is social rather than serious. Conversations about starting, building, and sustaining businesses somehow shrink into a coffee morning the moment they happen over cake and coffee instead of boardroom tables.
No one asks whether business conducted on a golf course is merely a day out. The difference, of course, is not the substance of the conversation but the environment in which it happens. The environment quietly shapes how seriously we take what unfolds within it.
Many traditional networking groups are built around visible outputs: referrals made, contacts brought, deals won. Groups like BNI are structured around measurable performance, with pressure baked in to justify attendance through results. I was invited to several meetings like this, but they never quite fit. I am a relationship builder, but my approach is slower, softer, and rooted in trust rather than transaction, really rather feminine wouldn’t you say.
There is another dynamic I have noticed in these spaces. Often, you are the only one who does what you do. The logic is clear: if someone needs an accountant, there is only one to refer, and eventually the business flows. I understand the model. It is efficient but it assumes scarcity. I operate from a belief in abundance, and that there is room for more than one version of excellence in any field.
Competition definitely has its place as it sharpens thinking and keeps offers, products and services relevant. But I believe choice matters more. If there are three brand designers in a room, and you need branding support, the decision should come down to shared values, understanding, and the right solution for your specific challenge, not because one person happened to secure exclusivity.
That belief was quietly validated during a Working Women Club session when two financial advisers attended on the same day. Instead of tension, something else happened. Romany, new to the group, waited nervously to introduce herself until she heard Julie speak. In that moment, she saw a future version of herself. Another woman navigating a male-dominated finance world. Another woman making it work. The shift was visible to “if it is possible for her, then it is possible for me too.”
There was no competition between them. What followed was genuine peer-to-peer support. Romany later shared how nervous she had been to attend. As the youngest financial adviser in the country, still finding her place in the industry, she had pushed herself to network for the first time in what felt like a safer environment. When she spoke about her vision to help women gain financial control and build wealth, and her frustration at how often women are sidelined in financial conversations, the room responded instantly. Stories surfaced about jargon-heavy meetings, about advisers speaking only to husbands, about feeling patronised rather than empowered.
What happened next mattered. Romany did not just leave with a ready made support group, she left with validation. Proof that the problem she wanted to solve was real, shared, and extremely urgent. That single session built confidence not only in attending networking spaces, but in her business itself. Since then, I have watched her grow, take up space on conference stages, and speak openly about why she does what she does.
The first step into a room like this often feels like the hardest. Walking in without knowing who you will meet or how you will be received takes courage. But when the environment is right, what emerges can be transformative. Not because women are “having lunch or coffee mornings,” but because they are building something together, in a space that finally allows the conversation to be taken seriously.
Working Women Club is a facilitated networking group built on peer-to-peer support and shared learning, designed to help women grow confident, sustainable businesses. Lucy Shutt-Vine is the founder of Working Women Club and The Career Remote® and brings a background in sales, learning and development, and career coaching.
From Outsider to Founder – How Working Women Club Became a Community for Women in Business
If the room you want to be in does not exist, there comes a moment when you stop waiting for an invitation and quietly start setting the chairs out yourself.
That realisation is rarely dramatic, it often arrives disguised as loneliness, restlessness, or the sense that a whole part of you has gone oddly quiet. Creating Working Women Club was not a grand plan. It was a response to that silence.
When I moved from London to West Yorkshire in 2021, I arrived as an outsider. A neighbour told me, only half-jokingly, that even after twenty-five years you can still be “not from here” if you are not a Yorkshire lifer. Recently married and moving to my husband’s home turf, I became “Sam’s wife.” After my daughter was born, I became “Penelope’s mum” at The Nest, Baby Sensory or MummyFit. Being a mum is a role I will never resign from, but one that, quietly, began to eclipse a big part of me.
What I noticed almost immediately was how little work featured in conversation. In London, most people I knew were there because of work. Careers were the common denominator. After-work drinks were normal, and conversations revolved around office politics, promotions, disasters, and small, hard-won victories. People lived across the city with housemates rather than families, and work was the thread that connected you.
In Yorkshire, the rhythm felt very different. Conversations centred on new restaurant openings, local favourites like Norman’s or The Dunkirk, family updates, or the latest council upheaval. None of this was wrong, but it was unfamiliar. Something I had relied on for making connections had disappeared.
I returned from maternity leave to my London adtech role fully remote. For someone who draws energy from being around people, it did not suit me. Then Society opened in Holmfirth, a co-working space that felt like a lifeline. I imagined it as a place to meet people who wanted to talk about work without the baggage of office politics, because everyone worked for different businesses. It was energising, but something was missing. Most of the people there were men!
Working with Zoe, the owner of Society, I pitched an idea: workshops designed to bring women into the work conversation. A reason to step away from kitchen tables where working hours blurred into laundry, toys, and unpaid labour. A space that acknowledged that many women were building careers while holding households together. The first workshop had two women attend. Some would call that a failure. I saw it as proof of appetite, however small, and a reason to keep going.
The workshops needed a name. Working Women Club. A space for women to share business ideas, to practise speaking up even when crippling shyness takes hold, and to support one another through the layered reality of working life in the Huddersfield area.
What makes these sessions powerful is how quickly the conversation deepens. One minute we are talking about social media strategy. The next we are unpacking rejection, self-doubt, or how our brains shift through hormonal changes. No topic is off the table, because working life does not exist in neat compartments.
I have watched women cry in these sessions, not from overwhelm, but from relief. Relief at being seen and being listened to. Relief at realising they are not failing; they are navigating something really complex without a map.
Working Women Club exists because it needs to. It continues because the need has not gone away. Sometimes the community does not arrive fully formed. Sometimes it starts with two women in a room, an idea that refuses to disappear, and the decision to build the space you were quietly searching for all along.
Book your place at Working Women here
