Intro

Hello. I’m Caroline Marshall, and welcome to Bump to Business Owner the podcast speaking to mums in business. You. I’ll be in conversation with some of the most inspiring women and mothers in enterprise about their journey, how they created their successful businesses alongside raising their children and what that looks like in work and family life.

Caroline (00:00):
Hello and welcome to today’s episode of Bump to Business Owner. I’m your host, Caroline Marshall, and we are back for another solo mini episode. And today I’m going to be talking about childcare. I’ve been thinking about doing this mini episode for a while, and there’s been lots of little signs that pointed me towards it, and especially one that happened yesterday when as I record this Sunday night, middle of the night, my second suddenly got croup, half midnight I rushed to A&E because he definitely needed steroids. The breathing had got quite bad just quite quickly. Suddenly nothing triggers someone whose baby has had to be reused and because they stopped breathing then a child getting coop again. So that was delightful. And I was in A&E until 4:00 AM. Obviously he couldn’t go to camp, which I’d paid for the next day.

(00:48):
And so he was at home with me and I had a lot to do that day, and I just had to get on with it and juggle, which is something many of us know as parents we have to do. But for me, and I think there should be the goal for everyone, that is when you have to do it and need to do it and in exceptional circumstances when there’s inset days, sick days and you can’t take, I mean, especially as a business owner, it can be extra challenging. I wish it was easier for employed people. It’s not always, because I think as self-employed, we can sometimes think, oh, employed people are so lucky they’re not. And it can be hard for them to also take a day’s leave for their child, especially if they’re going through a particular bad phase in toddler years and settling into nursery.

(01:30):
But so I get it, but I’ve been wanting to talk about this for a while because I see a lot on threads. Threads especially is particularly bad. Instagram, TikTok, I try not to delve into it overstimulates me, but on threads, especially posts trying to sell this dream to mothers that you can be a stay at home mum and work and earn money. And there is a lot I don’t agree with in this narrative, and I feel it’s really important for me to talk about this because we are not encouraging this narrative with men because it’s an unachievable narrative. And actually I’m not having a go at the women who are doing this. I want to make that clear because they are doing it because they have to as well. So I’m not having a go at them, but I think there should be a narrative that stops, and I feel quite passionately about it because it’s doing a disservice to a lot of people.

(02:23):
When I posted a Thread about this recently, it was actually a couple of stay at home mums and one of them who homeschools as well. So it was actually already doing two jobs that actually said, thank you for that post. Because they felt the pressure of being stay-at-home mums that they should be earning money at the same time. So it is doing them a disservice of the job they’re doing already. It’s doing a disservice to mums to be go and listen to fixed mildew. She felt she was failing by not managing to do business and babies at the same time. And a lot of what I do is to make things easier for future parents so they don’t have to go through some of the things that we had to go through just to be financially independent or for caregivers, for mums who have chosen the path of being a stay at home mums, to be respected with those roles and not be penalised against in the workplace if they choose to return.

(03:16):
On WhatsApp. I am on a lot. There’s a lot more communities about now for founders who are mothers. I feel like I started a trend, so I’m on another one. And a woman actually who I’ve spoken to already before she runs a marketing agency was like, I just want to be on my baby all the time. How are people doing it? I don’t get it. So she’s very early on in her motherhood journey and she feels like she should be giving her business attention when what she wants is to be on maternity leave. And that is a huge empathy for her and the struggle. But a first question I said to her is, what does your childcare look like? And she’s like, oh, I don’t have any, we’re hoping to start in April. And I was like, well, in that case, be kind to yourself.

(03:56):
You shouldn’t. And it’s this narrative that is slowly forming that we should be doing both because we can work from home that we should be doing both at the same time. And there’s all this hus, it’s again, it’s a new, that’s it. It’s a new toxic Hus culture thing. This is the latest in toxic hustling that we should be doing this, that we should be having our kids at home and working in nap times. Firstly, that’s if you have a kid who does nap, they grow out of it. Or also a lot of us have been there where we might only have a child who only naps on the move or naps on us, and we should be able to enjoy that time, which out the pressure of having to work as well. We are already working. That’s what I’m trying to make clear is that motherhood is, if you are the stay at home carer for a child, there’s a reason Childcare is an industry, it’s a job.

(04:41):
And what I really want to say as well is I have such empathy because childcare costs are huge. They are. And I can see now more than ever, I think people are desperate to try and avoid those costs because work from home is something you can do. And Instagram threads are throwing people who are like, I’m doing it at the same time, really have a look at these profiles. Some of them only have a hundred followers and they’re selling faceless templates. And I’m going to say this, they are basically an MLM scheme. I think from what I have seen or a pyramid scheme also known as, and I don’t want to bad mouth them, but you look at the people who are at the top of these companies and the people who always get targeted, I get targeted a lot or did in the past and when I was a performer, so obviously poor, when I became a mother, and there’s a reason.

(05:26):
So two of those, I looked financially vulnerable and they were targeting me. And I know people get hate for maybe saying things, I’m not going to go into that side of it, but what I’m saying is look into what they’re actually trying to sell you here basically if they’re trying to encourage you to do that. So the reason I want to talk about this, what I want to do is not add to this narrative and I want to share what my childcare looked like while I was setting up because I set up my business, my virtual assistant agency, Upsource, I set up in April, 2020 in Covid. And on paper that looks like I was at the time my brief stint as a stay-at-home mum during Covid running around after a toddler pregnant with my second. So that looks like I was doing it all. I wasn’t.

(06:13):
My husband also worked from home, so I had the privilege of that. He had to work dinga wrong all day every day. But when he’d take his breaks, he’d time it with me, going to have a break. So normally around four o’clock my kid was done with me. He’d literally wave and be like, see you later to mum. Before then, my husband would take a break before the dinner routine and I’d swap back over and I’d either work a bit on my business or I would take a nap or have a bath because I was pregnant, especially in the first 12 weeks. And so I wanted to know I wasn’t hustling, I wasn’t working and trying to do that. My main focus was actually my child at that point and trying to have some sort of routine that works for him and me and also not stress myself out my second pregnancy like I did when my first, so my focus wasn’t upsource, my goal for Upsource, I did have a goal and that was to be able to work on it at least four days a week by the summer and bring in an income I thought hoped.

(07:10):
And it ended up being the case that that’s when my child could go back to nursery. So that’s what I did. And I got help on my website, I got help on my contracts, I got help with my logo. So actually the calls I was doing was with people to help me. They were doing the work and I was there basically directing them and helping me supporting it and starting even things like I joined a VA membership group. I remember messaging her going, oh, sorry, I’ve just not been able to contribute anything. I’m too tired, I’m exhausted, feeling sick all day every day. The joy of the first three months, three, four months of pregnancy. And so I want to make this quite clear that I did not start a business while running around after a toddler. And while I have said that, and I’m very proud of what I achieved, I was not, it’s not the same as having, say if I was working VA three or four clients, which I was by the summer, three or four clients building a team and where I was basically chained to my desk for a few months until I could step back away again from maternity leave.

(08:09):
So the four days a week I went back to work. I actually went back to work five because my lovely cousin then helped me on a Friday. At the time she was childless. So I actually had help when Covid opened up. I had nursery, I had my cousin and my mum. My mum could also help. When they opened up the bubble, she lived on her own. So when they opened up that system, gosh, and bringing up all these covid terms to try remember. So that was the help I had at that point. And then I had my baby December, 2020. Covid, lockdowns got even worse. So we didn’t have anyone for a while, but I had built a team around me to help fulfil the client work. And also my lovely lady, Soo on my team, my community manager, was there for all the urgent needs of the clients, the team as well.

(08:56):
And there when our child was in NICU. So I had a lot of help on the business side, but when I started to return to work, so I used my kit days quite, if you listen to Nugget savings, their podcast, talk about kit days. And I used them strategically. And again, my husband got made redundant a few weeks after my son came out of nicu. So I actually did have him at home while he had job hunt. I didn’t have him full time and also NICU trauma. I didn’t want to go back to work full time. I had help with him where I could be communicate with him, be like, I need to do this on the business. I need to do my invoicing. I need to prep some social media content, whatever it was. Or I’ve been offered to go on a networking call or a client call.

(09:35):
Can you watch the kids? I would never try and do both at the same time. Occasionally I would have to, wasn’t trying to build my business and do childcare. So this is what I did. Once I was ready, four months after I had my baby, I decided I wanted to come away from statutory maternity pay. I wanted to be able to work when I wanted. Now let’s make this clear as well. I had a plan that I could probably buy around six months, work evenings. Not all babies are the same. So my first was an excellent sleeper, especially in the evenings, very bad in the mornings, wake up very early, but loved going to bed my next baby, not so much. I did not have evenings for that whole first year. And if I did have a sneak of an evening, that was not the time to work.

(10:18):
That was the time for me to kind of reset and process everything we were going through in that bubble of Covid, early years, NICU, processing, all of that. And then even earlier this year, I didn’t have my evenings. We had a really rough time just as my child hit the three-year-old stage on bedtimes and tantrums. So I want to make that client clear as well. Never rely on having evenings to work and never rely on having naps to work. Just because it works for one mum doesn’t mean it’ll work for you. And I’ll say that again because it’s the same for everything. Just as it worked for one mum doesn’t mean it’ll work for you and it’s not you. It’s the fact that your child is their own human being, which I sometimes think we like to forget, but if you look at how your sibling is very different to you.

(10:59):
I mean mine both are, yes, we have similarities. I can see similarities with both my siblings. We are all very different. And turns out that has happened with my children. So four months after we bought my second home, I was like, I’m going to come away. Turns out I found out you can still be on statutory maternity May part-time, but I have the freedom to work two days per week, which is what I decided to do. And how I did this with childcare was I found out about this lovely gym called David Lloyd’s, and I’m going to mention their name, manifesting them, maybe sponsoring the podcast if they want to support working mum’s. Hey, a gym called David Lloyd that had a crash I found out had a creche for two hours in the morning and the world was opening up then before that, that wouldn’t have been possible.

(11:38):
So we joined this really expensive gym basically. So I could work there and have childcare for two hours in the morning and it worked really well. I’d drop off my kids, do some phone calls occasionally I’d even do it. And I didn’t do it every day. It was available five days a week. I’d probably did it, I don’t know, two, gosh, I actually have no idea how many times I did it, but I would drop him off there and sometimes I’d go swimming, I’d actually do something for myself. But a lot of the time I’d take calls and one lovely cafe guy who worked there called me super mum for dropping off my kid. He’s like, you’re working as well, you’re doing it all. And I was like, yeah, Tam make, I felt an old lady. Feel good. Thanks. So I had the help of the gym creche who were lovely and the women still work there now.

(12:19):
My son is now almost four. So it’s still lovely to see them and feel like they were like my little village there that helped me achieve that. And so not only them, but I also used an amazing app called Bubble. I’m also manifesting will be a sponsor of this podcast at some point because I know they support founders as well. And I used Bubble app and they were amazing, especially at this period. I think there was a lot of teachers who weren’t necessarily going in and things. So I had some amazing sitters just come to the house and it was like they were here as well so I could do my phone calls, but if I knew I was breastfeeding or if I knew he needed me, we had this little type bond that you can sometimes have with NICU babies and he needed me.

(12:56):
He was just in the next room and it was at that stage it was very easy to do that. So a lot harder with toddlers to lock yourself away. And then it gets easier again as they get older. This is what I’m discovering, although people have older children don’t often say that it’s a lot easier to explain to a 6-year-old about your job and your work than it is to a three-year-old. I’ve literally got that balance right now. So bubble app would come over and this all cost money, don’t get me wrong. So I was privileged in that sense. I was working or actually also in Covid, I didn’t have that many outgoings, not a lot to do during Covid, but I meant I could have this childcare without committing to it. And then also my mum did come as well. So I think during that point my mum would pop down as well and I could take calls, take things.

(13:41):
It was chaos at that stage, leaving her were both kids. But my eldest at that point was in nursery four days per week and I would use bubble up and the gym creche at eight months. I was actually full transparency. It was at nine months. I was going to put my youngest in at two days per week in nursery. And it was actually my husband that said to me, look, you want to work? You’re struggling. Let’s move that to August. And at eight months he had two days per week. And again, the odd bit of family help and then increased that to three in January, 2022. And then when he was about two, two and a half, I increased that to four days per week. But then I was hit by school hours. So that was a whole other kettle of fish coming.

(14:18):
As I will say, school hours slapped you in the face. So in summary, the reason I have been so transparent, I’ve shared before my return to work what that looked like, but I paid for childcare before I could afford it. I still can’t afford who can really afford childcare. We were living in a time where three hours, I think they only came at two year olds for some and three year olds for some, it’s different now, but I know it still doesn’t make it any easier now because the nurseries are still costing so much money and getting places is even harder depending on what part of the country you are in. And when I said family help, my mum lived like two hours away. So it wasn’t exactly easy for her to come down. Some live closer to grandparents. Some you might have those friendship groups where you can form little bubbles, which I just didn’t have at the time.

(15:00):
So I think there are so many options out there to be creative, but it’s really hard is what I’m going to say. So I’m not going to sugarcoat it. And I get the temptation to think you can work on your business, it’s your own business. We are not asking the same from men. So please, let’s stop putting the expectations on ourselves to do this and work. But I would also love to note your experiences. Did it work for you? I’m open to that. If it really genuinely worked for you, please come and tell me and how you did it because I want real success stories here. And also it would never just be a success story. There’ll always be a trade off for it. So I want to hear your real story about it, but also did you feel you had because you ran your own business or going to start a business that meant you should be doing both at the same time?

(15:50):
Because also I’m very open as well. Now my kids are at school or preschool. And in year two now, there are so many business owners that say, no, I did this so I can take all the school holidays off. And that’s not why I’ve set up my business. My business now, and I’ve become clearer, clearer on this. I’m running a business I want to grow. It’s a virtual assistant agency that I want to be a flagship virtual assistant agency. And I’m not going to get that at the minute by just taking or only working 10 times. And also that’s not for me. I love my children. I shouldn’t have to do this disclaimer that we all have to do, but it’s not for me. I don’t want to take eight weeks off in the summer. And my kids love camp and I love the fact I take a hell of a lot more holiday than if I was restricted to annual leave.

(16:33):
And I’m a hell of a lot more flexible and do most of the school pickups. But I am not building a business because I want the lifestyle. I’m building the business also for growth and to see what we can achieve as a growth business and how else I can grow other businesses, maybe spoil that. But I just wanted to make that clear as well. When we’re living in a world, I think it’s becoming more acceptable. I’m feeling more empowered, let’s just say, as a mother to say that right now because there’s been a few amazing groups pop up for growth businesses for mothers. And I think more of that is needed. I am here for lifestyle businesses. I think if you can achieve your income and only work down times, I think you’re doing something amazing and well done. Keep going. I want to hear your story, I want to hear about that. But I also want to hear more stories of growth businesses as well. For that, we need excellent childcare. So let’s keep pushing for the next generations to get better childcare and get better support, better villages around them. And thank you for listening to today’s episode, and please as always, drop me in the DMs. Maybe you have done something really creative with your childcare as well, so let us know.

Outro

Thank you so much for listening to Bump to Business Owner. I hope you enjoyed the conversation. Please do rate, review, follow or subscribe wherever you’re listening. It really helps us to connect with more mums and business owners. You can DM me at Bump to Business Owner on Instagram and I’ll be back next week.