How I’m rebuilding my business as a busy mum in my 40s

Have you ever felt like your dream of building your own business will never fit around motherhood, work, and everything else life has to throw at you? Same. 

Even after actually running a business, I still feel this way all the time. Constantly asking myself how on earth I’m going to start a business with everything else going on in my life and maybe now isn;t the time because I don’t have the time to dedicate to it. 

I know what it’s like to be a busy mum, juggling full time work, trying to keep a house clean, keep a family fed, actually have some semblance of a social life, a relationship with my husband, spending time with family…the list goes on and on.

But one thing I’ve learned from starting, stopping and starting again with my own business; there’s never a right time, or enough time. 

Life is hard, busy, chaotic, all those things, but if you really want something, you have to go for it. I’m going to tell you exactly how I’m building my business, as a busy mum and wife in my 40s with a full time job.

I promise that this post will show you it’s possible to rebuild and make progress, in small, manageable, realistic ways.

Before you can rebuild, you need to understand your starting point.

For me, it’s as good as gone. I haven’t booked travel for anyone in 9 months, so my commissions have all dried up, and whilst I do have a (very) small team of agents, the passive income I earn from building a team isn’t even enough to cover my streaming subscriptions every month (maybe that’s more a comment on how many streaming services I pay for…I digress)

I want to start building this business, but I also know I don’t want to do it like I have before. Feeling like I’m stuck on a hamster wheel cashing business and putting so much effort in for very little return. So I had to get very honest with myself about what worked and what didn’t work before, and I suggest you start there too.

Ask yourself

What areas of the business you’ve run before drained you, and what energised you? If you’ve never run a business before, think about what excites you about the idea, and what bits make you nervous?

What are your priorities right now? Maybe you’re happy to take your time and build up a client base, maybe you need your first sale, quickly. The approach you take is going to depend on what your priorities are. So make a note of 3 things that you want to focus on building and critically, why. 

Time is limited, but that doesn’t mean progress is impossible.

Once you have an idea of the areas you want to improve and why, then you need to make time to actually get those things done.

I certainly don’t have the luxury of so much annual leave, I can take a week off work and lock myself away somewhere to plan and execute all the things I want to get done in my business. So that means creating space in the busy lives we have. 

My approach

Weekly, I look at my calendar and see where I can fit in small, micro blocks of time to get work done, during the days and the evenings.

I’ve tried the whole ‘get up an hour before your house to get stuff done’ method, and it’s not for me. I’ve never been an early bird, and I never will be. My goal certainly isn’t to start my own business so I have to get up at 5am every day!

So, a 30 minute lunch break at work? That’s a couple of pieces of social content created and scheduled. A late finish in work? I’ll start an hour later and spend that time talking to someone about setting up their own business, or getting a travel client’s quote back to them. 2 hours lazing in front of the tv in the evening after my boy goes to bed? I’ll make sure that for 1 of them, I watch with one eye and do some work at the same time. 

It doesn’t have to be all consuming where there’s no space for anything else in your life. What’s one small task that you can slot into your calendar this week to move things forward?

Building a business isn’t just about the hours you put in, it’s about approach.

I’ve had to work SO hard this time around on letting go of perfection. I’m a millennial eldest daughter for goodness sake, perfectionist is practically my middle name. I’m practically chanting the phrase ‘Done is better than perfect’ to myself, like a woman possessed at this point. But I need reminding of this. Constantly.

It’s so easy to get lost focusing on getting every little bit of everything you do right, that it ends up with everything sitting in drafts and you wonder why NOTHING has happened in your business when it feels like you’ve put in so much effort. (Can you tell I’ve been there, got the scars?)

So, where to focus

Focus on progress, not perfection. What thing will make the difference, move the needle? Do that thing. Not tomorrow. Not when you get enough money to access a fancy bit of design software, not when you’ve just had that chat with someone about their opinion. Do it now. Messily, imperfectly, but now. No matter what you do, you’ll learn from it; good or bad. And the key is, you’ll have made progress, and that is ultimately the goal here. 

Then, celebrate it. Whatever it was you did, you should celebrate it. If you put out a piece of social media content that will help you find your next customer, if you sent a message to that person you really want as a client, it’s all worth celebrating. 

Measuring success

One thing I’ve been careful to do this time around is really think about how I measure success, so I can celebrate. It’s not just money and team members and sales. It’s doing it whilst also staying sane! Did I tick off my to-do list this week? Yes – great. But did I also tick it off whilst getting a decent bedtime and not being on my phone all the time when around my son because I felt like I needed to do ‘just one more thing’ – AMAZING! 

The goal is to build a business, but the mindset shift this time is to do it sustainably, whilst also enjoying the rest of my life too!

What’s one win you can celebrate right now? Maybe it’s just reading this blog post and aligning yourself with a world you want to be part of by looking into what a building a business takes. Whatever it is, celebrate yourself, no matter how small. 

Building A Business Isn’t Easy. So Make It Worth It.

I’m not here to tell you that building a business is easy, because it isn’t. But by taking stock of where I am now and where I want to be, understanding the small easy to digest steps I need to take to get there, planning them around my life, and doing all this with the right mindset, I know I can build something beautiful that I can be proud of. 

It might be a bit slower than other people, but that’s OK, because this is my life. I’ll stay in my lane, do things at my own pace, and get there when I get there.

I’ll never get this time in my life back and I’ll never have my son at this age again. So I want to stay present for all that too. If I can take the action needed to build a business around being a busy mum, then so can you.

Take one action this week to move things forward. And when you’ve decided what that is, I’d love to celebrate with you! Make sure you follow my journey on Instagram and Tiktok.

Drop me a message to let me know what action you’ve taken to start building your business today.

Take care,

Laura x