About

Hello, I’m Helen Lindop

One Friday in September 2008 I took my four-month-old daughter to visit a nursery. I was going back to work four or five days per week the following January and had to sort out her childcare. As I left the nursery, I was shocked to discover that I simply couldn’t leave my baby anywhere for four or five days a week. It wasn’t the nursery that was the problem, it was me.

I hadn’t a clue what to do next. Like most families, we couldn’t make ends meet on one salary but I couldn’t leave my baby in a nursery either. It seemed like an impossible situation. I’d had a permanent job for a while, but before that I’d been freelance for six years. I knew that being self employed might be the only option open to me, but as a new mum I had no idea how it might work. What type of work could I do? Was it even possible to run a business around a small child?

I needed information, and with the end of my maternity leave not far away, I needed it fast. I read internet forums, websites and books. I blogged, I Facebooked, I Twittered and I even met real, live mums face to face. Eventually I found most of the information I needed, as well as some amazingly creative, supportive and determined Mums.

I started Business Plus Baby in July 2009 because I wanted to share all the information and insights I’d picked up along the way. I knew I wasn’t the only one not wanting to go back to a full-time job at the end of my maternity leave and I wanted to help other mums.

That was a month before baby-number-two arrived. To our surprise (OK, shock) we’d found out I was pregnant again when baby-number-one was eight months old. So now it was going to be business plus two babies – and the escape-hatch marked ‘job’ was firmly closed this time as childcare for two kids under age two would cost almost as much as I earned. There was no going back; now this business thing had to work.

I carried on blogging over the next few months, despite having two babies with a fifteen month age gap. I realised there was a huge pool of experience and knowledge out there and I wanted to share it. So I started to feature guest bloggers and that meant I met even more business mums.

I’ve even started an exciting joint project with one mumpreneur I met through blogging – I’ll tell you more about soon.

After almost a year of blogging, my two babies are nearly two toddlers (Baby Boy would be chasing Toddler Girl if he could!). My need to escape employment and full-time childcare has changed from a problem into a new career and a way of life. My challenges change almost weekly – managing my time, keeping motivated, coping with being tired, keeping my little ones happy, working next to bottomless baskets of laundry. Each new challenge means I have questions to ask of people who are ahead of me on the path, and I hope I can pass this on to mums who are facing the same challenges as me.

So what did I do before I had babies?

After a very short career as a design and technology teacher, I decided I’d rather be working with adults and became an IT trainer.

My first proper training job was training teachers on educational software. That was a vital stepping stone on my way to going freelance in 2000. Over the next six years I trained on a wide range of subjects from Microsoft Office to mentoring skills, working with clients from food manufacturers and IT services companies to community organisations, both face-to-face and online. During this time I also completed my life/business coach training with Coach U.

By 2006 I was getting tired of the freelance life. I’d done some IT contract work that had given me useful experience, I’d tried my hand at personal development training and coaching, but I’d lost my focus and the unreliable cash flow that often comes with freelancing was getting me down. And it was getting lonely.

So I went back to the employed life as an IT Trainer for Capita IT Services. I had a good couple of years as part of an applications team, writing documents, training face-to-face and online, testing software. I even went to train staff in the new call centre in Mumbai.

Then the babies arrived and a whole new life began.

Helen Lindop, Bedfordshire (UK), May 2010

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