Mum Means Business

Sonica Beckmann is a British Asian qualified solicitor, entrepreneur, UK 40 Under 40 winner and mum of two. Raised in a low income migrant household, she was the first in her family to attend university and went on to build a distinguished legal career across major multinational organisations. By the age of 31 she had been appointed Head of Legal at a multi-billion dollar company. In 2023, Sonica...

This week's solo episode is a natural follow on from episode 77 , where I dug into resilience and shared some of my favourite business fails. This time I want to talk about something I hadn't quite clocked before: that resilience is not linear and that as cyclical women our hormones shift how we experience our businesses from week to week, sometimes from hour to hour, no matter how well practised...

Amanda Reidy is a PE teacher, women's fitness, lifestyle and wellbeing coach, founder of Radiate Fitness, host of the Perimenopause & Motherhood podcast (formerly Happy Thriving Mums) and a passionate advocate for helping women thrive through midlife. A mum of two, she understands firsthand the realities of juggling family, work, wellbeing and the ever-evolving demands of modern life. Combinin...

This week's solo episode follows a heart to heart with the ladies inside my Print Over Pixels community about what it really takes to face disappointment in business and the resilience muscle every solo trader, freelancer and founder has to build along the way. So I decided to share my own catalogue of business fails. The Etsy shop that sold precisely two travel prints in two years. The maternity...

Shann Jones is a wife, a mother and a grandmother who brings together entrepreneurship, family life and her deep love of nature to challenge conventional thinking about leadership, resilience and what it really means to build something that lasts. Originally from the States, this former journalist and radio talk show host fell for a Welsh farmer and settled their beautiful blended family on his hi...

This week's solo episode comes to you from the launch lull... that strange, uneasy stretch between opening the cart on a launch and closing it, when everything is scheduled, there is nothing left to do but wait and the doubts creep in. Have I done enough? Should I have pushed out more content? Is there something else I should be doing right now? This is only my fourth launch, so I am treating ever...

Leila Ainge is a British Psychological Society accredited psychologist, doctoral researcher and podcast host whose work sits at the intersection of identity, trust and working life. Her research explores how online communities shape the experience of freelancers and independent workers, with a particular focus on belonging, psychological safety and the systems that influence confidence and partici...

This week's solo episode goes behind the scenes of the fourth launch of Print Over Pixels , my signature course helping family photographers lead with print in the digital age. Launches are full on at the best of times, and this one has arrived just as the kids went back to school and the pace of life picked up dramatically. But before diving into the launch itself, I wanted to take you back to wh...

Jane Bilham is the founder of Vireo Tuition, an international tuition business that began with one tutor working in a local library and has grown into an oversubscribed global business with a team of over 60 tutors supporting families worldwide. A former Assistant Vice Principal in an outstanding UK secondary school, Jane worked nationally as a Specialist Leader in Education before the birth of he...

Back in episode 59, I shared my plan for surviving the summer holidays as a self-employed parent... what I would keep going, what I would let go of and where I hoped to find some balance. Now, in the final week of the holidays, it felt like the right time to check in and be honest about how that plan actually held up against six weeks of real life. This episode is an audibly fatigued debrief. What...

Helen Bullen is a business mentor, speaker and award-winning author who works with solo business owners who want to make a living doing what they love. In 2020 she retired from clinical practice as an osteopath, having single-handedly built Fine Fettle Multi-Healthcare, a large, multi-award-winning clinic with over 20 practitioners and a full reception and admin team. In June 2021, following a rou...

After I finished recording episode 68 with Human Design practitioner Emily Armitage, I was so fascinated by what came up during our conversation that I booked my own 'Alignment Hour' with her. It actually turned out to be an 'Alignment 90 Minutes', during which time Emily gave me an unnervingly accurate breakdown of my personality, my patterns and shone a light on the very thing that could be hind...

Emily Armitage is a business and identity strategist for financially ambitious women building service-based businesses. Having become a fully fledged business owner and a mum at exactly the same time, she understands firsthand the particular chaos of building a business and a family simultaneously. She uses human design to co-create legacy businesses that work with her clients' energy and in their...

This week's solo episode started with a last minute photography enquiry that came through a Google search the day before we hit the road in the van . It led to a beautiful golden hour maternity shoot that evening and a very welcome reminder that people still use Google to find local service-based businesses. It also sent me down a rabbit hole I have been meaning to explore for a while. My website,...

Leila Green was raised in a family of entrepreneurs, started her first business at 26 and grew it to six figures without any outside investment. Then came the curveball that changed everything.  After two heartbreaking unexplained miscarriages, she became pregnant with triplets. Fast forward and Leila is now a mum to three threenagers, the founder of the F*** Mum Guilt movement, one of the UK's To...

This week's solo episode is a little different. It is the story of a project that pretty much took over my life in 2018 and 2019.  A project I have been thinking about sharing ever since a recent visit stirred up a lot of mixed feelings. It is the story of the D-Day 75 Garden , a commemorative show garden at RHS Chelsea in 2019, conceived to celebrate the Normandy veterans of the Second World War...

Ella McKay is a self-proclaimed food obsessive, a marketing professional turned entrepreneur and the co-founder of FATSO , a premium dark chocolate brand on a mission to prove that dark chocolate can be every bit as fun, flavourful and full of personality as its milkier counterpart. The idea was born in lockdown from a conversation about how boring and overly serious dark chocolate had become. Wha...

This solo episode is coming to you from a converted VW Crafter in Tours, France - heavily loaded with me, my partner and two small children with all their associated paraphernalia, snacks galore, an expanding laundry bag and a portable penguin potty! Van life has this idyllic reputation, doesn't it? The footloose digital nomad, laptop open, bikini on, six figure launches via personal hotspot as th...

Emma Bardwell is the founder and managing director of BardWood Support Services, a fast-growing recruitment business specialising in security and facilities management. Driven by a desire to create flexibility for her young family, she left her career in recruitment in 2015 and began building her business from the ground up with two daughters aged two and five and no guarantee of where it would le...

This solo episode is coming to you from a bench on the shoreline of Brittany, recorded after a day of full sun, a generous glass of wine at dinner and several failed attempts to get the usual tech setup working from a campervan. It was a perfectly imperfect way to mark the first birthday of the Mum Means Business podcast. A year ago I was a 39 year old mum of two with tech overwhelm, raging impost...

Beth Heyer is a single mum who launched Babysitting Connection from her kitchen table in Texas in January 2020, six weeks before the world shut down. By 2022 she had scaled to over 700 families across six locations and been named Austin Businesswoman Employer of the Year. She has since expanded her vision with Petsitting Connection and now dedicates a significant part of her time to empowering oth...

This solo episode lands on the first day of the summer holidays for most children across England and it feels like exactly the right moment to talk honestly about what this season actually looks like when you are a mother with a business to run. As you'll hear there are no perfectly scheduled content calendars, completed to-do lists or clean skirting boards here! Just the reality of sliding into s...

Claire Hill is not your usual business coach. She identifies as the 'Queen of Unstoppable Self-Belief' and works specifically with the "I thought I'd be making more money by now" crew - teaching women in business how to stop leaking money, energy and power so their income can finally match how epic they are at what they do. A mum of one, Claire understands the real, messy, powerful reality of buil...

This week's solo episode takes you behind the scenes of one of the most fun projects I have worked on this year - the rebrand of the Mum Means Business podcast and my photography business, Victoria Phipps Photography . I share why I decided the time was right to invest in a professional graphic designer, what the process actually looked like and how working with the brilliant Liz Mosley of Buildin...

Michelle Newman is a business transformation specialist, founder of Flow Business Support and an award-winning advocate for women in business. Combining years of corporate expertise with a passion for entrepreneurship and self-care, she helps founders to streamline operations, reduce overwhelm and scale sustainably without the stress. A mum of one and stepmum of seven, Michelle's own journey into...