Yin and Yang: How do you balance work and family?
Over the last 2 years, as I’ve been expanding my business, I’ll admit that I haven’t got the balance right at all (as my partner would testify to!). My children are grown up now so at least I don’t have the mummy guilt anymore, but my partner does have to remind me to step away from the laptop from time to time.
I teach in the day and the evenings are spent with marketing, student liaison, lesson planning, updating the courses, accounts and everything else. Teaching the classes is a tiny proportion of the time spent running the business.
The drive: What challenges have you overcome?
Goodness me, all of them! Imposter syndrome seems to be order of the day for me (and most of my strong, powerful and successful female friends too!). So, I work hard on keeping that one in check.
As the only person in my business, I must wear all the hats, and some fit better than others. I walked naively into the course creation. The teacher training took the best part of a year to write, and the BodyMind Birthing course took 9 months (and I’m still working on it). Over the last year, I’ve also created a beautiful card deck called ‘BodyMind Parenting’ which is a deconstructed book of uplifting thoughts, reframes and practices for new mums. It was a joint project with my designer @emily_theconsciouscreative and my eldest daughter @whereispoppie, a tattoo artist who did the beautiful illustrations for me. Again, this was much, much more work than I originally thought it would be. I have absolutely loved creating all these offerings but do find the lack of a marketing degree a bit challenging.
For better or worse: What are the pros and cons of running your own business?
I get to take the credit for the successes, but I also take the full rap for the failures. I was always very grateful for being able to fit my business around the children and never missed a school play and could stay home if they were poorly. But having no sick pay or holiday pay can be quite problematic.
Hopes and dreams: What next?
Having done all the hard work of creating the courses and the card deck, the coming year will be all about marketing.
Photography credit: Kirsty Grant @kgrantphoto.
Photo shoot location: @flourishwellnessuk.
Visit www.bodymindbirthing.co.uk and @bodymindbirthing for antenatal courses in-person and online. For pregnancy and postnatal yoga classes and teacher trainings, check out www.unityyoga.co.uk and @unityyogabumpsandbabies.
