Here on our website, I explain a little about why I started Lifemin. I saw a big, frustrating inefficiency in the parenting space, one that falls disproportionately on women, and I felt like I could do something about it.
But that doesn’t tell the whole story.
I spent many years feeling and stumbling my way along ‘a career track’ as an employee at different organisations. After getting an MBA (my second attempt after university to figure out what to do with myself professionally) I ended up in strategy and business development roles at newspaper and magazine companies. I ostensibly had a ‘career,’ some might say a successful one, but it never felt right. Despite enjoying many aspects of my work, I continued to feel like I was constantly stumbling.
Finally in 2019 after a quick whirl on the start-up roller coaster, where I was laid off, I decided that I’d had enough of working for other people and would work for myself for a while - consulting, and maybe start my own thing if I could come up with a decent idea. My sister told me that someone had told her to think of the things in your life that annoy you, and come up with a business idea based on that. And in that spirit, Lifemin was born.
I absolutely know that stepping away was the right decision. But because I have always been driven and ambitious, stepping away from that trodden path was hard and complicated and felt like a failure. I now recognise now that I am much better suited to smaller organisations: I value close relationships at work. I’m the opposite of a political person. If there’s a parapet, trust me to raise my head above it. I call things as I see them and I tolerate no BS. And I feel a need for impact and ownership. Those things are what make me successful, but they don't tend to play that well at bigger companies.
Working for small companies, or for yourself, however, doesn’t tend to get you the biggest pay packets, power, or recognition. That tends to come with bigger, established companies, organisations and career tracks. So a part of me, as a driven overachiever-y type trained on recognition, rues that I can’t call that path my own.
I still deeply want other women to pursue and stick on that path, if it’s right for them, and Lifemin is my way of rooting for these women from the sidelines, and the men who support them, both practically, through my product, and spiritually, through my brand.
Lifemin is for any parent who could benefit from help keeping organised, but there is a special place in my heart for the women who are defying the odds in the male-dominated corporate world (e.g. the 9 women CEO's in the FTSE 100), and the men who are defying stereotypes by stepping up on the home front to give their partners the space to thrive professionally.