Before becoming a mum, I had a very neat idea of how running a small business alongside family life would look. There would be boundaries. There would be balance. There would be clearly defined work time and home time.
None of that happened.
What did happen was messier, louder, more exhausting, and somehow more joyful than I expected. These are a few of the things I wish I’d known earlier.
1. Work and home will never be separate
You can tell yourself you’ll keep work stuff and home stuff separate. You won’t.
Your child will be in your packing envelopes. They will steal your stickers. And if they ever get hold of the tissue paper for wrapping, that’s it — it’s fun, it’s colourful, and it’s extremely scrunchy.
The business doesn’t live in a neat little box anymore. It lives in your house, your routines, and your everyday life.
2. You can let them help
I’m not advocating for an underage workforce, but if I’m packing for a market, I’ll happily get Lucrezia to help put things into boxes.
If they’re interested, let them be involved in a way that’s safe and appropriate. Don’t fight it. It doesn’t slow things down as much as you think, and it becomes part of their world rather than something that pulls you away from them.
3. You never have as much time as you think
Mum life already feels like a 30-hours-a-day job. Running a small business can feel the same. When you combine the two, burnout becomes a very real risk.
You have to learn to prioritise, even when it feels uncomfortable. For me, that often means working from 10pm to 2am because I want to play with Lucrezia while she’s awake. It’s not glamorous, but it’s a choice I make intentionally.
4. Pressure to do things “like before” doesn’t go away
There’s an unspoken pressure to keep doing things exactly as you did before you were a mum. For me, that shows up most with social media.
I always struggled with posting videos to TikTok, but now I post almost nothing there. I won’t include Lucrezia in content — that’s a personal choice. If she can’t consent to a digital footprint, she can’t be part of it. That decision naturally makes filming harder, and it means my content looks different now.
And that has to be okay.
5. It really is okay to not do it all
It’s okay to go slower while somehow working harder. It’s okay to feel like you’re constantly juggling. It’s okay to not do everything.
My order is simple: child first, then me, then the business. If I put the business first, she suffers, and that’s not something I’m willing to accept. I only get these early years once, and I refuse to miss them.
(As I’m typing this, she has stolen the backing boards for memo pads and my thermal label printer for printing barcodes, so this lesson is very much ongoing.)
6. Have a plan. Accept it won’t work. Wing it anyway.
Have a plan. Then realise the plan isn’t going to work. Scrap the plan. Wing it.
You might think today is the day you’ll write a blog post, photograph a new product, and film some content. In reality, today will be the day they have the biggest cold and need snuggles all day. Or the day you desperately need to crash on the sofa will be the day they’re calm, quiet, and perfectly happy playing — and suddenly you’re drowning in guilt because you could have worked.
There is no winning combination here. The plan will always clash with reality, and that’s not a failure. It’s just how this works.
7. Your business priorities will change
Do I miss doing a market every weekend? Absolutely.
Do I wish I’d done more in the run-up to Christmas? Also yes.
But I did one market where Lucrezia came with me, as she always does, and it was so cold by the end. She was exhausted, upset, and the tears broke my heart.
Business-wise, the event was completely worth it. Personally? I’m still not sure.
That’s the thing — “worth it” isn’t one single calculation anymore. It’s financial, emotional, and parental all at once. And sometimes reflecting on whether something was worth it matters more than whether it was successful on paper.
8. Where you’ll be in a year is just a goal
I have ideas about where I’d like to be in a year, but they’re goals — nothing more.
I don’t know if Lucrezia will be in nursery yet. I don’t know how my health will be. I don’t know if sales will pick up enough for me to continue in the same way. There are too many unknowns for rigid plans.
What I do know is that I’d love a small but regular selling space one day. Maybe an indoor market, maybe a small shop — something stable. If it happens, that’s great. If it doesn’t, but it’s for the right reasons, that’s also okay. The only outcome I know I’d be annoyed with is not trying at all.
9. You will have to hit time-out
There will be moments when you’re in a real flow. Tasks are getting ticked off, everything feels productive — and that is the exact moment your child will need something.
They’ll get into a drawer. They’ll need a nappy change. They’ll be absolutely adamant they need a hug right now. Something will happen that breaks the rhythm every single time.
You’ll feel frustrated. You’ll feel like you need to keep working but can’t. And it’s okay to hit time-out. It’s okay to scream into a pillow if you need to get it out of your system.
It’s not a failing. You’re juggling a lot. And when you work from home as a parent, you don’t get separate “work” and “home” modes — everything overlaps.
(For context, I’ve already stopped four times writing this because she found an Alexa pod and decided it needed to be swung around.)
10. Lean on other people
This is one of the hardest things to do, and something many of us don’t do enough.
It’s easy to look at other businesses on social media and assume everything is perfect. We don’t stop to wonder whether they’re wearing a jumper over their pyjamas to give the illusion they’re dressed. (For the record, I frequently work from home in my pyjamas.)
Comparison is easy, reassurance is rare, and nobody really tells you, “Yes, they’re doing well — but so are you.”
Lean on other people when you can. Other small business owners. Other parents. Other working-from-home parents, whether that’s mums or dads. The experiences are often more similar than we realise.
Even something as simple as saying, “Let’s both take an afternoon off and go to a play centre for a coffee,” counts. I’ll admit I struggle to make friends and that part doesn’t come easily to me — but it’s something I’m trying to work on.
Because doing everything alone is exhausting, and you don’t actually have to.