Category: Being a Mumpreneur

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Mumpreneur Conference and Awards: What a Fantastic Event!

The Mumpreneur Conference and Awards took place this weekend and it was fantastic for so many reasons!

Organised by mumpreneurs Amanda Farren and Laura Rigney, there were great seminars, inspiring presentations and the awards that genuinely left me with a lump in my throat. I’ve wondered many times if it’s really possible to run a business as mum to small children and the award winners show that you can achieve amazing things as a mum. It was wonderful to see Sam and Helen of Mums The Boss win the best Business Support Award and to finally meet so many mumpreneurs that I’ve got to know on Facebook and Twitter.

A highlight for me was that I finally met my co-author, Antonia Chitty. We’ve written the book Start A Family Friendly Business together but hadn’t actually met face-to-face until yesterday! This is a video of us together at the conference…

So what will I be taking away from the conference? As I mention in the video, this event proved to me that we simply can’t do this alone. It’s so easy to sit at home, making your thing and selling it over the internet and feel like it’s you against the world. Not only is it crazy to try to do it all alone when there are so many people waiting out there to help, you simply aren’t going to get very far on your own. We all need to connect with other people in many ways: to outsource, to start joint ventures, to take on projects that we don’t have the time or skills to tackle alone or simply to get the word out about what we do.

I asked Amanda and Laura just how they managed to run a business each, bring up almost seven children between them AND organise the awards. Of course there is a lot of hard work and organisation involved, but what really stood out was that they work so well together. They really understand each others’ strengths and divide the tasks between them according to those strengths.

I can’t wait for next year! Maybe I’ll see you there?

(Big thanks to Wini for agreeing to be our camera-person on the spur of the moment – you did a brilliant job!)

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Top Tips for Managing Your Time as a Mumpreneur

Today, Laura Morris of Rentabuggy gives us her top five time management tips for mumpreneurs. Rentabuggy is a pushchair rental service that you can use if you’re on holiday or just want to try out a buggy for a couple of weeks before you buy. You can find out more about how Laura started Rentabuggy here at Business Plus Baby this Friday 30th July.

When I started my business I was married and even though running a business was tough at least I had two pairs of hands to ease the workload. Now a single mum to my daughter Ashleigh, who will be shortly 4 years old and also now running not only my own business www.rentabuggy.co.uk but co-running another one, has definitely been an insight into a whole new world that has taken a lot of adjustment.

My work day life now revolves around meal times, school runs, piles of washing and various other duties, not including my ever growing workload. Trying to maintain a routine has been tough and if you are a mother yourself as you will know sometimes illness and a variety of other stuff seems to pop up in the middle of an important meeting or deadline! Here are my top tips on managing your time.

  1. I work in blocks of 30 minutes. I have found that if I have sat at the computer all day I seem to not get as much done. Seems silly when put in such context but if you try the ‘30 block trick’ it works a treat as you get a break and your mind has time to be restored and focus. I.e. Breakfast 30 minutes, Phone calls 30 minutes, School Run 30 minutes etc
  2. Every morning when you wake up write a to-do list. Many people keep there to-do list within their head but it is important to write it down. The biggest reason for this is that when you cross items off it you can see the progress you have made and this gives you more motivation.
  3. For a long time I had a massive guilt that as I was not only trying to be a role model for my daughter and earn an income I was also not spending enough time with her. In reality I was but it is a massive guilt every mother seems to carry. My daughter is now old enough to love the fact of helping around the house and by doing this together she knows she is helping mummy but we also get to chat about our day’s and share some time doing stuff together even if trivial.
  4. It is very easy when running a business from home to basically get sucked in and to work all night every night. In all honesty, I am quite a sucker for this but I recently decided that to actually be more effective I needed to switch off some evenings. Again, for the first few nights I sat there racked with guilt (especially after a big bar of Galaxy!) but the next morning I woke up feeling refreshed and more focused. We all need to switch off. Even if you had your own office somewhere, you would have to come home at some point!
  5. I recently was at an event where there was an Inspirational Speaker that I really connected with. She was telling the story that every morning before she switches on the computer she goes for a run. She say’s when she comes back she feels refreshed. She says she sees the time as working as it sets her up for the day. Unfortunately, I don’t get time to run every day but this is something I do 2-3 times a week. It really helps me de-stress. So remember who you are and still keep passion in any hobbies you may have!

‘Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent’

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Why is it always about mums?

I began this website because I thought starting a business would give me the flexibility that my job couldn’t. Looking around, I saw lots of other new mums struggling with the same things as me – not wanting to miss their child’s first few years by working full-time, not wanting to spend a fortune on childcare and being disappointed by the part-time jobs on offer. And I wanted to help.

Helping people take back control over their working and family lives has to be a good thing, doesn’t it? For cultural and financial reasons, it tends to be the mum who works part time and manages the family while dad works full-time. But surely we should be moving towards a more equal sharing of these responsibilities? By encouraging mums into business, am I keeping mums in the home and dads in the office?

I hope not, but I do have good reasons if I am. Starting a business and becoming a parent are both tough learning curves. Doing both together is enough to make your head spin. Changing the traditional roles, starting a business and becoming a parent all at the same time is a step too far for most of us! Plus I’m blogging from my personal experience – I would love my husband to work less than full-time and spend more time with our children, but we haven’t found a way to do it yet. When you’re starting out in business and parenthood at the same time it helps if there’s at least one steady income in the family. And it takes time to get a steady income if you’re building up a business.

There are dads out there who have started businesses so that they can see more of their children. A few people (including my brother, in fact) have asked me why I don’t include dads in Business Plus Baby, so I wanted to redress the balance a bit and introduce Dadpreneur Week. The trouble is I haven’t exactly been inundated by guest posts from dadpreneurs! If there are any men out there who have started a business so they can spend time with their babies or toddlers and would like to be guest bloggers, please do send me a message!

You’ll be able to read a post from my one and only dadpreneur guest blogger tomorrow – I hope to feature a few more blokes around here soon!

Creative Commons License photo credit: jessica.garro

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