Category: Business Mindset

Some of the best business advice I have ever received was from a manager at McCafé.

Running your own business as a mum of young kids will look every sort of way. For me, for a while, it was with 2 small kids in a sunless cottage, operating 2 businesses out of the spare room. Things weren’t going well.

Two businesses, two kids, one shady cottage

It was at mum and dad’s I started my entrepreneurial journey. Initially starting Blooming Beautiful, where I sold second hand maternity clothes on behalf of others. Then Lioness, where I designed and made breastfeeding tops so women could “breastfeed in public privately”.

After a year or so of living with my parents (plus a brother and his wife) we rented a small 3 bedroom cottage on the wrong side of a hill in Glenfield. I discovered how important the sun is to me and think I experienced mild depression. 

At this stage in our married lives we only had one car which Tim would leave with me as I had the kids. Jack wasn’t sleeping much longer than 40 mins at a time during the day. I was still running both businesses from the spare room in this little shady house with 2 small kids.

Tim would bike 7km through busy Auckland morning traffic to get to his job as a teacher and then back again uphill all the way.

One way I coped was by putting both kids in the double pram (absolute life saver!) and walk up along the ridge (finally in the sun) along to McCafé at a nearby mall.

Walking there put the kids to sleep and if timed correctly I could get a coffee in and walk back before they woke up.

The best business advice, from a McCafé manager

One day I had made it along the ridge and went through the doors to McCafé. To my devastation I saw I had gone in the wrong doors and was greeted with a set of stairs!! 

I must have looked exhausted as the manager came down to help me carry the double pram up. Having to exit and go around the building to the ramp entrance was well too much for me.

The manager brought me my coffee and then went on to give me this wonderful piece of advice. I have since offered it to many others, and it was a huge game changer for me. 

Write down EVERYTHING that is bothering you. Just free write. Anything at all. The flowers that need to be thrown out, the summer shoes out when it’s winter, the calendar you don’t like, the cracked cup, the business courses you’ve bought that you can’t remember, the house needs a vacuum, you’re so tired etc 

At that time, the standouts on my list were how exhausted I was, and that Jack didn’t sleep.

Once you have everything out of your brain, then put it aside. Just leave it. And when you are in a better mental state, come back and look at each item individually and objectively come up with a plan.

My plan was:

I was exhausted = I bought some great supplements and started eating more protein

Jack wasn’t sleeping = I took him to a baby cranial massage. 

Still using it 20 years later

I am still doing this over 20 years later. 

Earlier in the year I was finding myself overwhelmed by the various business and life stresses on me so I took a large piece of paper and wrote all the things that were bothering me. 

does my overlocker need to be fixed or thrown out? 

I need to design my website. 

start writing blogs, 

start a newsletter, 

get rid of indoor plants that are dying, 

clean the windows, 

Fix link to FB community page, 

All the online business courses I had bought

I stuck it on my office wall and could literally feel the stress leaving me now it was out of my head. 

When I had time I would choose one and deal with it. 

I numbered the online courses in the order to do them and have gone through 7 so far. 

I bought WordPress for dummies and designed the website.

You are reading my 10th blog.

I still have some indoor plants that are not surviving my care and I finally cleaned the windows yesterday.

This applies to business, life and a combo. I find by writing it all down it relieves the mental pressure in my brain and then I can objectively come up with a solution for each issue. 

Think you don’t have room to start a business?

Even if you aren’t yet in business and instead are wanting to start one but not sure if you have the mental capacity, this works. Write everything down that is bothering you. You might find that half of what is bothering you can be binned, delegated or fixed in 10 mins and suddenly there’s now more room for business than you thought.

A random manager in McCafé gave me this pearl of wisdom and I am now giving it to you. Try it. Grab some paper (I like large and visual on the wall of the office but the fridge also works) and list everything you can think of.

Then if you are still thinking of starting a business, add my free class to your list, then cross it off tonight. It’s 30 mins and you can listen/watch while you cook dinner. Sign up here. 

I have started 3 businesses. I sold the first 2 because the reasons I started them were no longer relevant. 

It’s a freeing realisation that you don’t have to have a business for any longer than you want to.

So don’t think you need to go into starting a business feeling that this is your one and only, and it’s this one forever. 

Your situation will change and so your business needs will change alongside them.

Why I started my first business

I started my first business Blooming Beautiful when Ruby was around 8 months old because watching her grow turned out not to be as riveting as I had thought. 

In Blooming Beautiful I sold secondhand maternity clothes on behalf of other women. I was pregnant with my second child. My life was trying to find maternity clothes that looked good and were affordable. 

So this business was super relevant to me. I related to every woman coming through my door whether they were buying or selling their clothes. 

Blooming Beautiful was started because I was a bit bored. I loved staying at home with Ruby but that alone wasn’t enough. So I started a business for mental stimulation.

(I wrote more about the WHY behind starting a business here)

After a while, I had set it up and it was running smoothly. We were doing well. Only I found myself wanting more of a creative challenge. Then I saw a friend wearing a breastfeeding top. I had a certificate in Pattern Making and Garment Assembly so I decided to design some breastfeeding tops myself and make them for the NZ market. It was perfect to meet that creative need of mine. So Lioness was born. We sold these tops in both retail shops and through our own website. 

So now, we had Ruby and Jack (3 and 1). We had just bought our first home and were about to move 2 hours south from Auckland to Cambridge. 

When your first business idea has run its course

By that stage, the reasons I started both businesses weren’t there any more. I was no longer bored and instead of giving me mental stimulation and a creative challenge, these businesses were now stressing me out.  

A while before we moved, I received a shipment of breastfeeding tops from the seamstress. These were meant to go to a retail shop and I was looking at them, thinking something was off. I realised that the colourways were wrong. They had been cut with the arm colour as the body and vice versa. 

I can still remember where I was sitting and the feeling. I broke out in a full body sweat, closed my eyes and thought “I don’t need this”. 

These were businesses I chose to create and they were now wrecking my day! I felt like I was on a moving train that I no longer wanted to be on.

 It wasn’t till I spoke with a life coach that I realised selling the businesses was an option. 

The reasons I started the businesses were no longer relevant so perhaps I didn’t need to keep them anymore.

This was a wonderfully freeing realisation. If the businesses no longer worked for me, I could let them go. And instead of just stopping, why not try and sell them?

So I did. 

It was obvious in the end, how past their use-by-date those businesses had become for me. The joy and mental relief I felt once they no longer belonged to me indicated the timing was right.

Why selling was the right call

We moved to Cambridge with our 2 young children. Having sold both Blooming Beautiful and Lioness, mentally, I was free to just think of our new place (first home owning and all the things that come with that) and our young family and it was just wonderful. 

It’s such a freeing realisation to know you don’t have to have a business for any longer than you want to.

My advice would be, I wouldn’t worry about where your business is going long term, or even where the one you’re still thinking of might end up. We don’t know how our situations will change, but just know that as things do change, you are able to adjust, or even sell your business alongside those situations. 

Businesses have seasons too. I am in an interesting season with my 3rd business, Once Upon A Garden Landscape Design. I am working through what I now want it to look like and which areas we might reduce and where we want to build etc. 

So if the fear of picking wrong is what’s holding you back, let it go. Your first business doesn’t have to be your forever business, it just has to be the right one for the season you’re in. And the way you find that? You start with your why. That’s exactly where my free class begins. I walk you through getting clear on the reason you want to start, because that’s the part that holds everything else up. Come and join me.

So often the fear of starting a business comes from comparing ourselves to others. Where we are versus where they are. This stops us moving forward. I have had my own business for over 20 years now and still compare myself. When I see some of my fellow business owner friends succeeding in any area that I find daunting (social media), I come up short.

The Comparison Trap

It is so easy to compare ourselves and imagine we are less than and this imagining can keep us in the same place for years. We envisage others in a place further advanced from us and growing into where they are is scary so we stay in place. This comparison and the resulting hindering fear is our brain keeping us in our comfort zone. Our brain likes ‘safe’ and that means familiar. Stepping into unfamiliar territory can be terrifying. When I first started videoing myself for FB ads it was pretty nerve wracking but I tell myself, I want this business to work. Other people are doing it. So why can’t I?

A Family of Starters

I come from a family of business starters. When I was young, my parents had a friend who was working as a carpet cleaner for a company. He would have to use his car and petrol to drive all over Auckland, giving quotes and then he would get a percentage of the profits from paying customers.

My parents saw this, how their friend did all the work yet received such a small portion of the profits and thought, why not cut out the middle man?

So, they invested in a carpet cleaning machine. My brothers and I would draw pictures of dad and the machine that they would use for their marketing.

They ran this business right into the middle of my teens. After that, they did familiarization tours for foreigners considering moving to New Zealand, then mum created forestry maps for my uncle’s Forestry business while dad worked on those same hills culling goats. They eventually settled on creating vinyl cut signs for cars, shop windows and boats.

With this background, starting my own business wasn’t that big of a deal.

You just start.

I had a friend tell me she thought it was really brave to start my own business and it wasn’t something she could do. Due to my upbringing, owning your own business was never a big deal, if mum and dad could, then we could too. Both my brothers have had their own businesses too.

Starting Your Business Without Financial Fear

I remember talking with mum about a friend who started his own business and straight away had expensive cards printed, hired a graphic designer, and racked up costs before he had a single customer. I don’t think the business did well, and he had created debt from day one.

Mum and dad’s approach, and the one I have adopted, is to start minimally. Not meaning don’t buy what you need, but don’t buy what you don’t need.

My thought has always been to only spend money that is ok to lose. Meaning if the business goes belly up or never makes a dime, our family has not been put in jeopardy.

Removing the financial stress has taken away a lot of the fear of starting a business. Even now, I am aware of how much I am willing to spend on courses. I do invest when necessary – I have spent thousands on retraining and courses and I fully believe we need to be prepared to spend money to grow. But for my stress levels and peace of mind I only spend within our means.

Some elements in business we may find easy. Like I love learning new things. 2025 was a year of massive learning for me. I taught myself things I never imagined I could: course creation, AI, funnels, email automations, Pinterest strategy, website building, and starting a blog! My not knowing something doesn’t scare me the way it used to. I have proven to myself that I can figure almost anything out.

The Fear of Being Seen

But the fear of being seen is a different story. That’s in its own category.  Something I have to remind myself is good enough is fine. Perfect doesn’t exist on social media and waiting for it means you’ll never start.  When I have put things out there and they are less than ideal, that’s ok. I can do hard things. That includes videoing myself and posting it on social media.

Your First Steps

I so love having my own business and all the learning, experiences, growth, money, and freedom that comes with it. I want to encourage any woman who wants to do this for herself.

This is what my course Your First Steps is about.

Just starting.

Just take the first step and then the next one.

My free class covers the very first step when considering starting your own business and it’s one most women haven’t thought of, but it will shape everything that comes after.

It’s free and it takes about 30 mins.

Sign up here.