I am a Nutritional Therapist, specialising in women and children. I am planning for my business to grow up alongside my own two children. I love my job, but it wasn’t always like that. Let me tell you how it all started.
Becoming a mother – working part-time
Despite being told I may never be able to conceive I fell pregnant the first time we tried. That was of course, the moment I had just started my dream job in marketing for a blue chip company. For the first time in my career I was working for a great boss, in a great team, working with great brands and managing exciting projects. The timing wasn’t perfect!
I returned to work when my son was 7 months old, back into my old, supportive team but working three days a week, and it was great for about 12 months.
However, I changed jobs in the company, work pressure increased and my boss was very unsupportive. On top of that I had a miscarriage.
Changing direction
I was very lucky to become pregnant again four months later. I had accrued family leave which enabled me to stop work when I was 5 months pregnant.
Due to personal experience I have developed a strong passion for the power of food over our health. I used my extra time at home to research my options of making this passion into a living. I found the right part-time course and when Henry was 9 months old I started my foundation year.
My plan was to study part-time and return to work. But it turned out that fate was on my side, and I was made redundant when Henry was one year old, which gave me the means to fund my training for the next three years.
Studying and childcare
Juggling childcare and studying proved to be fairly straight forward for me, and as the demands of my course grew, so did the childcare provision for Henry. There is a three and a half year age gap between my children, so when I started my course Joseph was in full-time school and Henry was just 9 months old. The demands of my first year of study were fairly minor, and I did a childcare swap with a friend one morning a week. She had a little boy who was a year older than Henry, and this worked really well for a year. In my second year a friend’s Nanny looked after Henry two mornings a week. By my third year, when the study time required was greater, Henry went to pre-school three mornings a week, and then in my final year he was in school nursery for 5 mornings a week. The timing couldn’t have been better.
In addition I would study in the evenings, and my partner is a very hands on dad so he looked forward to my study weekends, planning adventures with the boys.
My own business and childcare
The timing of my redundancy and study happened to be perfect, https://www.eta-i.org/provigil.html when Henry started Reception, I had graduated and was setting up my own business.
With both boys in school, and one day a week in after school club, I have enough time for my business and can offer clients later appointments one day a week. I also offer consultations on Saturday mornings, and this coincides with my partner taking the boys to their football lessons.
I am lucky to have a great network of friends who are also mums, and we all help each other out, which is a good back-up for unforeseen events.
Key challenges
I love working for myself – it’s so rewarding, challenging and exciting to see my business grow. Networking gives me my social contacts. Networking used the terrify me, but now I run my own network of local therapists; run a networking event of my own (Nutritious Networking), belong to Athena and Ladies at 11. My employed friends think I’m the queen of networking!
My key challenge is balancing ambition with what is actually achievable in the time that I have. I am someone who has lots of ideas, and I am constantly presented with new opportunities, but have to balance the time I can devote to my business, and the time that I want to spend with my family
One of my key principles is that I want to be able to pick my children up from school. I want to walk them home and give them their tea, and find out how their days went.
Making it work financially
I funded the start-up myself, and as I work from home this wasn’t a huge investment. I made a small loss in my first year of trading and in my second year I made a small profit, but increased my turnover by 500%. I expect that during this third year of trading that I will earn enough money to contribute to the family income – signs are good so far.
I have discovered that I need to have a number of income streams to make my business financially viable. As a result, as well as my core business of seeing clients on a one to one basis, I run weight loss classes (zest4life), host a networking event (Nutritious Networking), and work on a freelance basis for a branding agency on food brands drawing on my marketing skills and nutritional knowledge.
What next?
I know it’s early days, but I have ambitious plans for the future. I would like to open a holistic health centre, a one stop shop for all your health needs – with a store, clinic rooms offering a wide range of therapies, a workshop space and a healthy café.
I’m planning for my business to grow up alongside my children – as their need for my time diminishes, the more time and energy I will have to devote to my business.
Author: Emily Fawell, founder of 4Well People and zest4life weight loss coach, mother of 2 boys under ten.
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