Chapter 1: How can the chaos of parenthood qualify you to build a business?
What if the chaos of parenthood was actually the thing that qualified you to build a business? Not despite the nap schedules and the mental load and the constant juggling, but because of it. Most money content for mums focuses on spending less, stretching further, making do, but what if the conversation you actually need is about earning more? on your own terms, around your actual life.
I'm so average. Like I was just a mum, like posting silly videos on the internet. And so if I can start a business, anybody can do that.
Because the skills are already there. The problem solving, the resourcefulness, the ability to spot what's missing and fill the gap. What's usually missing is the road map. So turning that into actual real income.
I don't actually need to go and get a job to earn more money. I can actually make more money myself.
Chapter 2: Why do overwhelmed parents tend to spend more money?
And so then I started to think, well, what other ways could I create money? You know, what other opportunities are there?
Today, we're getting into exactly that. What it actually looks like to build something from scratch as a parent without a tech background or a pile of startup cash. a real problem, community who needed it solved, and the willingness to back yourself.
If you wait until it's perfect, you'll never launch. You'll never start. And if you wait until you know everything, you'll never start. Just, you know, learn as you go. It's like build the plane while you're flying. Just put it out into the world and then just like go from there.
So welcome to Making Sense. It's the podcast for people who want financial freedom without giving up their coffee. I'm Frances Cook, a financial journalist and fellow financial freedom seeker who makes money simple for you. Today, how to build a business that earns more and still leaves room for the life you actually want.
This episode of Making Sense is brought to you in partnership with Odoo, the all-in-one business management platform that brings everything you need to run your business into one place, fully integrated and actually affordable. Go to odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com for more. I want to help as many people as possible reach financial freedom by taking control of their money.
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You are something of an unlikely tech founder, really, because you were a mom and then you sort of realized, oh, this is quite overwhelming and maybe a little bit harder than it needs to be. Tell me about that moment when you're in the trenches of motherhood and you're thinking, This is actually quite full on, really. And I don't know if I want it to be quite this full on.
You're absolutely spot on.
I'm not a likely tech founder. I've got no tech background, didn't come from that perspective at all. But I think I had a young child and I was a full time stay at home parent. And I really was craving newness. I found that the transition to motherhood was quite hard in the sense that I didn't I lost my freedom. I lost that spontaneity in my life.
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Chapter 3: What steps can parents take to turn parenting pain points into business opportunities?
It's funny, isn't it? Because there's so many moms that I've talked to, and maybe this is super anecdotal, but I do feel like there's an underlying trend here. That you have a kid, it's the most intense life change. No matter how you've prepped for it, I don't think you can really know before you're in it. It's such an intense life change, such an intense identity change.
And then I know so many moms who have then, in that moment, started a business. What do you think's happening there?
I definitely agree. That seems to be like a common theme. I know so many people have also done that. I think it's a few things. I think that it's partly that once you become a parent, your view of the world changes and you identify problems or things that you hadn't previously been aware of or a need for something to exist that doesn't exist or
And I think on the flip side, there's a lot of parents that start businesses, you know, especially moms that start businesses because they think, and whether this is right or wrong, you know, we can go into, but they think that it's going to give them more flexibility to stay home with their kids. It's going to give them more time. It's going to give them more like kind of freedom and autonomy.
And a lot of parents, they go on maternity leave and they just don't want to go back to their nine to five or their previous job because And I think that the idea of starting a business or starting like a side hustle, there's the idea that it will give you more time freedom. And like whether or not that is true, you know, I personally disagree.
But yeah, I think that there's a few factors at play when people become parents.
Yeah, it's funny, isn't it? Because this is a little bit of a sidetrack from what we're going to talk to. But it's an interesting thread. I just want to pull on it a little bit more. Because the world of traditional work, I think, can be quite unfriendly to parents in general, but especially mums. And it's quite steady hours that often don't fit with school hours or daycare hours or whatever.
And you're right, you're wanting to prioritize time with your kids. That's why you had them. You want to see them. They're very full on, but you still want to see them. And it's really, really hard to make that work. And yeah, it's... It's a really good point what you're saying because it's a mixed bag on that, right?
Where starting a business is often very full on as well and a big time suck and it's all on you to make it work. And yet there is those pros and cons in terms of you can time shift a little bit. You can maybe do some stuff while they're napping or while they're asleep for the night and you can somewhat more work it around your schedule.
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Chapter 4: How can parents build multiple income streams for financial stability?
But yeah, I don't know of many. No. And I think that it's really hard for parents and you go through different phases, you know, when you have babies and they're in daycare and daycare hours are obviously, you know, they can be a lot longer.
And then when they start school, you go through this whole thing again, because then it's like before school care is needed or after school care is needed or... If you're lucky, you might have grandparent help or neighbors that can share drop-offs and pickups, but it's such a juggle. And I think that companies want to promote flexible working.
They want to sound like they're good places for moms to work. I don't think they are. I think that they're flexible for dads. You know, if a dad needs to attend like a school assembly, you know, once a quarter or something. But for parents that are really needing that flexibility of like the kids are homesick and school hours and things like that.
So I think, yeah, I really don't think that workplaces do offer any kind of flexibility or benefits for working parents. And I think that that's why so many people have kids and they're like...
Chapter 5: What mindset shifts are necessary for starting a business without a tech background?
I'm going to start my own business. I'm going to be self-employed. I'm going to have my own flexibility. And then you do have that flexibility. If you can make it successful, you know, you can work in the weekends or the evenings or nap times. It's a different juggle, but you do have that flexibility to pick your own hours.
And I think what you're picking up there as well is this idea of the overwhelm. It is just such a constant, it's a through line through a lot of the parenting journey is the overwhelm. And I think overwhelm can be really tricky for not just your working life, but also your financial life, right? When you were hitting this overwhelm stage and you had one small child at that point,
Did it start hitting the finances too?
Yeah, I think in ways that you probably don't like first expect. Me staying at home with a young child was actually like quite detrimental to my mental health. And so getting out and about, whether that was just going to a playground, whether it was like going to a new cafe or doing something, you know, like the library or free activity.
There are so many amazing free activities that you can do with kids. Like if we look at Auckland, for example, which is where I first started sharing places to go, there are so many free activities that you can do. And if you don't know about them, you're more than likely going to pay for an activity that you do know about, you know?
So if you're thinking like, oh, I know there's a great indoor playground that we could go to and I have to pay to go there. You don't know that actually like the Maritime Museum is free and has a free make day for kids or something. Sometimes not knowing what's available where you can save money. And for me, often it was the real frustration.
I'm sure other parents can relate to this of like wanting to go somewhere, paying to go, whether it's like a cafe and you're paying for, you know, for a coffee and a fluffy or something to eat or whatever, or you're paying to go to an activity with your kids and then the kids don't like it. It's not what you expected. The coffee is really terrible. And you're like, Why did I pay for this?
And now we're like back out on the street needing something else to do.
The kids are yelling at me. I just spent too much money. This sucks.
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Chapter 6: How does the KiwiSaver gap affect parents financially?
Yeah. You know, now with the cost of petrol as well, if you're driving somewhere, say you're driving across the city to go to something and it's not what you expected, it's disappointing. Your kid doesn't like it. It's not what the Google reviews said it was going to be like, you know, it's even more disappointing because you're like, we just paid quite a lot of petrol to get here, you know?
So I think it's, it's those little costs that all add up over time, especially if you're a stay at home parent and you're looking for things to do like effectively every day.
And I think there's a couple of things you picked up there as well, where it's the money, yes. But also the stress and the disappointment, because, you know, when you said about the mental health aspects, it's such a huge life change. And so many people do struggle with mental health, even if it doesn't hit the level of postpartum depression or anything like that.
I've sometimes described the journey into parenthood as sort of a bit of a phoenix thing, where my old life died. And I really love my new life. I really do. Like the phoenix on the ashes is so true. I love my new life. That doesn't mean the burning down wasn't painful and the letting go of what you had was painful. Wouldn't give it up for the world now. Still hard.
And so I think then when you add in stuff like this and you're trying to balance the finances, but you're also trying to balance this constant background load of everything you have to do. You've got so much more responsibility. You're trying to manage their schedule, keep them happy, raise them well and do things that also work for you.
background load to things is also quite hard right yeah for me the transition from going from no kids to one kid was significantly harder than going from one kid to two kids same because I feel like for me the hardest part of becoming a parent was that loss of my previous life and so where I could just go out for dinner with my friends whenever I wanted I could you know go on a holiday if I wanted I could pick a restaurant based on my own needs suddenly I'm having to think about like
somebody else all the time and just losing that kind of like a bit of freedom and you know working in a job that I really love you know losing that kind of like corporate identity and then also becoming a mother and just everything changing all at once I found that transition so hard whereas when I had my second it was like well I'm already used to you know thinking about naps or thinking about nappies or thinking about have I got wipes in the bag or thinking about like what playground is going to be suitable for my kids today and so a lot of that stuff
was different second time around to first time. But first time I found it so hard because it's like, you don't know what you don't know. And, you know, we had, we have this prams like quite wide and I've been like, is it going to, you know, is it going to fit? I had this one instance, like in a cafe where it was like getting caught on every single chair as we're walking through.
And I was like, never again, we're never coming back here.
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Chapter 7: How can community support influence a parent's entrepreneurial journey?
It's like you have some experience and you're like, oh, actually, yeah, everybody, or at least some people have had this experience as well. And then I kind of realized, oh, like this is a I guess, an opportunity to be something bigger than it is or to be more than just a TikTok recommendation.
From sharing videos on TikTok, I then built this really basic Google map and I made a website on Squarespace. I just kind of YouTube videoed how to do everything, kind of made a PDF that people would get a digital download. And then I was manually adding them, giving them access to this map. And it was so basic, but it kind of worked. I only had about...
I think there was like 80 spots across Auckland on this first one. It was called Roaming Auckland. And that was like the first version of it. And I was just kind of selling that. And I think I maybe sold about 500 copies of that first map. And then I started to think, oh, it would be so, this could be so much better. You know, when I first made it, I was like, this is so cool.
And then after a while I was like, wouldn't it be cool if there was photos? Like, wouldn't it be cool if there was reviews from other parents? Wouldn't it be cool if we could give it a rating? Wouldn't it be cool if people could like search places on here or apply filters like cram friendly or change table?
And then that was when the idea of like, this would be much better as an app kind of started to come about. So that was the very beginning of how Vorm started.
I love, I love the starting in perfect. Because, of course, as you say, when you first built it, you're like, nailed it. So good. But then, you know, it doesn't take long before you're like, this could be better. This could be so much cooler. And I look at even someone like Kayla, it seems. Huge, multi-millions followers on Instagram. But her fitness empire started with PDFs. Right.
And now she has this brilliant app that I use because it's easier for me to use than going to the gym. And it's super sleek. It's great. But she started with PDFs. And you start where you are with what you have and you build something, you test it, you go, here's a cool idea. Yeah. yeah, people are into it. Okay, let's make it cooler.
Yeah. And I think starting with something like a PDF or for me starting with like, you know, videos online and then moving into a Google map, the only thing you're putting into it is your time, but it's really low cost to start it just to test if there's like a demand. And at the time I didn't, I didn't realize I was testing demand. I was just like making videos for fun.
I thought it would be helpful for other parents, but really you, that's what you're doing. You know, you're seeing, is there a, is there a demand for this? And I think businesses often start in two ways. It's either what I did where it's kind of like
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Chapter 8: What strategies can help parents manage financial stress while starting a business?
Wow.
That's off the top of my head though.
And it's probably even, you know, times are so tough at the moment as well. Like people are really having to dip into that. But I think that, you know, they say they, who is they? People in the world say that you're supposed to have three months of your expenses. And that is actually crazy. you know, it can be quite a lot of money. And yeah, we really felt it when he got made redundant.
It was this like fear of, oh my gosh, like it's a bit of an illusion being in a salary job. I think it's easier to plan in the sense that your income is the same every month, but your income can get taken away. And so then what do you do? You know, now being self-employed for me, I have Rome as kind of like one thing that I do and I work on.
And I hope that one day that will be the biggest and that will be
my main you know job that is a bit more stable and a bit more secure but I don't take a lot from it at the moment because we're really in a growth stage of trying to put as much as we can back into like marketing and running events and paying for promotional material or running ads or you know putting it into development for engineers and building the product to be better and so I've had to build out different ways of making money really if you want to like grow your savings the only way to do that is actually to increase your earning
And I think that's where for me, I'm like, if I want to be saving more, if I want to have more of my KiwiSaver, if I want to, you know, put more into Sharesies or I want to, you know, have more income, I need to make more money. Like I can't, you can only save so much. That was a really big thing for me with becoming self-employed. I viewed money very differently and I started to realize like,
I don't actually need to go and get a job to earn more money. I can actually make more money myself through other ways. And then really like leaning into that idea and being creative with that and thinking about that more. And that mindset shift because I always just thought, you know, my whole life, it's like, in order to get money, you have to get a job. And it's like, you actually, you don't.
And so then I started to think, well, what other ways could I, could I create money? You know, what other opportunities are there? The start of this year decided I was going to try and sell as much of my stuff that I don't use as I could on Marketplace and put all of that money into savings. And you've got friends that do this as well. And it's like, you can actually make
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