Nikki and Soph understand that finding a babysitter for your precious little ones isn’t easy. It can be a stressful, overwhelming and deeply personal process to navigate. This is what inspired them to create their village: a supportive community that parents can turn to for care they can count on, where real connections matter. It Takes a Village was formed with a simple mission: to rebuild the village that modern families need, creating a trusted network of sitters that empowers parents to take a breather and enjoy life, knowing your children are in safe, capable hands – and making parenting that little bit easier. Here they share what inspired them to start their business, how they balance work and family life, and the challenges they have overcome along the way.
The Passion: What inspired you to set up your business?
As two busy mums with full-time jobs and four kids under four between us, Nikki and I deeply understand the chaos, love and challenges that come with raising little ones. Without any family around, we often found ourselves wishing for a trustworthy, reliable way to find babysitters who genuinely “get it” – people who we’d feel completely comfortable leaving our kids with. And so, one day (my daughter was just 7 weeks old at the time), while we were chatting over a coffee, it hit us: if we needed this, surely other mums did too. And so, It Takes a Village was born, inspired by the idea that parenting doesn’t have to be a solo act.
The Launch: How did you start out in the beginning?
Honestly, it started with nothing but that dream. We would go back and forth with each other: “Should we do it?”, “Let’s do it”, “Nah, it won’t work”, “Of course it will work” … I think you get my gist. Then we had a few late-night brainstorming sessions (fuelled by coffee and interrupted by crying babies), and that shared vision to create something meaningful, for us, but for other mums and dads and parents out there who are in the same boat. Our first step was connecting with other parents in our community to understand their struggles and hopes. Slowly but surely, we had a list of amazing babysitters and a contact list of early adopter parents. We did a bit of Facebook marketing about what we wanted to do and realised, well, now we have to build this platform. And so we sat, on all our free mornings, any free afternoons, 12am calls and 3am texts between each other and developed a platform that prioritises trust, ease and peace of mind for parents. We originally wanted it to be a mobile app, but that proved to be way too technical and far too expensive – especially since we were bootstrapping the setup at that stage. So we settled for a website.
The Innovation: What was the biggest breakthrough for you with your business?
This answer is two-fold. One of the biggest breakthroughs came when we realised that we wanted to be different from the other options out there – this wasn’t just about babysitting; it was about building a community. It wasn’t just a business anymore; it’s a small step toward making parenting feel a little less overwhelming. Then our proudest achievement was integrating Facebook Graphs into our website. This allows parents to see shared connections with babysitters, like mutual friends or common groups, adding an extra layer of trust and familiarity.
Yin and Yang: How do you balance work and family?
Balance is a bit of a myth, isn’t it? Some days, we nail it. Other days, it’s a total juggling act where work calls happen with a toddler on the hip. Hence why we decided to fill that gap in the market. But I guess to answer that question, we lean on each other! Oh, and our husbands, who have been incredibly supportive (despite using up all our passive income on developing ITAV) and our friends! We remind ourselves that we’re showing our kids what it looks like to chase your dreams while keeping family at the centre of it all.
And I don’t know about you, but finding time for exercise among all of this can be tough, so we came across a concept called ‘Habit Stacking’ in a book called Atomic Habits by James Clear. It means adding a new habit to one that you already do. We were already meeting weekly to strategise for the week, so we added in a long fast walk during our meet. It gets the creative juices flowing, and we feel like we get more done and we feel more motivated.
