My start up story
I love working with small businesses, especially fellow mums, so I thought it was only fitting that I shared my own small business story. I grew up around family businesses. When I was in primary school I thought that it was normal to have both parents at home after school. As I got older school holidays were spent working in the family business and pocketing up to five bucks a day for my efforts (which I promptly spent on Girlfriend and Dolly magazines). Where my journey begins Like so many other business mums before me, my role was made redundant – I can’t tell you how often I hear this scenario from other mums. Too often. My version of this story is that I was six weeks back from maternity leave after having my second child. The new senior management team wanted to make their mark by carrying out a major restructure. My digital marketing role was split apart and merged into other areas and I was offered redundancy. Was I upset? Weirdly no. The truth is I was having a hard time reconnecting with my old work life. Looking back now I think it was a combination of my entrepreneurial roots calling and my focus shifting from work to home life. My side hustle Ok, full disclosure … while I was on maternity leave I started an Etsy shop selling handmade clothes and accessories or girls under 2 yrs. After I had my daughter I wasn’t happy with the clothes on offer for her and felt I had to do something. It became a passion so I decided to pursue it. Today, I’m so pleased how it’s morphing into a new brand. The past few months have been about laying its foundations and educating myself on what it takes to run a small business. So how did I get from there to here? I know that it’s going to take time to build, nurture and grow my clothing business. I’m completely ok with that. It’s going to be a marathon, not a sprint. Because of this, I knew that I’d need to keep working so I started a job search, but each time I read an ad or researched a company it made me break out in a cold sweat. This was when I realised I had gone so far down my entrepreneurial path that my whole mindset had completely shifted. So I did the only thing that made sense: I started...