Building a Business With Two Kids Under Five

People sometimes assume that once both girls are at kinder or daycare, I've got a full, uninterrupted workday ahead of me. I wish. Here's what it's actually like.

The Five “Real” Hours

Frankie's kinder hours are 8:30 to 2:45. Take out drop-off, pick-up, and the drive between the two, and what's left is about five real hours.

Five hours sounds like plenty until you break down what actually has to happen inside it: building the business, creating and filming content, coming up with what's next, pitching to retailers, keeping the website running, chasing down whatever IT problem has popped up that week, staying across best practice. All before pick-up.

Then there's everything else that doesn't stop just because you're “working”: groceries, lunchboxes, dinner, washing - squeezed in wherever it fits. Most days that means planning the whole five hours out properly, almost hour by hour, because there's no slack in it for figuring things out as I go.

And That's the Good Weeks

Kids get sick - properly, back-to-back sick. Then, usually right as they're better, you get sick too, because you've spent two weeks running on adrenaline and not much sleep. The list doesn't get shorter on those weeks. It just waits.

I know I'm not the only one doing this. Most parents I know, whether they run a business or clock into a job, are doing some version of the same squeeze. Mine just happens to come with a website that needs looking after, and every decision (good or bad) is mine to live with.

What's Actually Helped

A few things:

I stopped trying to do everything to a high standard, and started deciding, on purpose, what's allowed to be “good enough” that week.

I lean on other people more than I used to. Asking for help used to feel like admitting I couldn't manage it. Now I just think of it as the actual system, not a backup plan.

I protect a small window of properly uninterrupted time, even if it's only an hour, and treat it as close to sacred. It's rarely enough for everything, but it's usually enough to move the one thing forward that is needed that day.

None of this is a solved problem. I don't think it ever fully is, while kids are this little. But it stopped feeling like I was failing at both my career and parenting simultaneously once I accepted that some days, one of them gets less of me than the other and that's not a flaw in the plan, it's just what this season looks like.

Still learning. Still building.

 - Ella