Motivating Mum UK

2012 has been an amazing year for me so far. Motivating Mum is expanding in more ways than I thought possible when I first started it, with five new franchisees starting this month alone. My Cambridge Weight Plan business, sorely neglected by me, has nonetheless expanded all by itself.  And I have started a third, very exciting business stream with Send out Cards, which looks amazingly promising. Wherever I look , things are going well.

As we head towards the middle of the year (what already?) I feel compelled to make a public display of gratitdue for the past 12 months which have been amazing for me on both a personal and business level. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently an overzealous cleaner ruined a £690, 000 artwork because she thought it was dirty. Now, not all work errors land up as a headline in the media but it is important for people to know how to deal with the stress of ‘messing up’ so they can move on.

Messing up at work does not have to be the end of your job, with the correct approach after you’ve realised a mistake has been made, you can still move onward and upward.

Here are 5 steps that have worked for me. Read the rest of this entry »

At the end of the Spring term, on the last day before the holidays, Eoin came out of school and presented me with a sunflower plant in a yogurt pot.  To be honest, it was a pathetic specimen, about two inches tall, tied to a lolly stick but bent over at a right angle about half way up its length.  But he presented it to me with pride and love and so I accepted it with thanks and a smile.

Then I saw his eyes were moist. “I know I’ve broken it”, he said. “Do you think it will be alright?”

Without hesitation I answered straight back.  ”I’ll see what I can do”. Read the rest of this entry »

How do you prioritise your time day-to-day when running your business?  To ensure that your business runs smoothly and is successful there are numerous factors to keep on top of, all requiring your skill, time and energy. From customer care to administration to marketing it is vital in this current financial situation to use your resources and time to their best advantage. As a Mum you also have the added pressures of parenting and organising home life alongside running your business. As a small business you do not necessarily have the resources to employ extra staff to delegate responsibility to. Read the rest of this entry »

There is nothing like being ahead of the game!

For a growing business an excellent team of staff is key and vital to keeping your company ahead of the game. In order to maintain their standard of work staff need to be monitored, trained and assessed. If time and money is invested into training staff to meet the required standards it would be an advantage to keep the staff!  Therefore we need to look after the needs of our staff to ensure they stay motivated and feel valued. How can we do that? Read the rest of this entry »

I took my son to London Zoo at the weekend.  He absolutely loves taxis, so as the zoo is a fair way from the tube, I treated him to a taxi ride each way.

The London cabbie is a very interesting kind of a chap. Due to the nature of “the knowledge” qualification test to be a London cabbie, you will often find them a bit more bright and switched on than your average taxi driver. But we had two very interesting experiences, which got me thinking…. Read the rest of this entry »

As I’m sure most of you reading this will realise, being a Mum is sometimes a tough call. We aim to please everyone sometimes getting it right but occasionally it can go very wrong! I think one of the most difficult things to get just right is the family holiday. There is often a big expectation of perfection from the much longed for break. And when you’ve been saving all year to finally get away it can be a bit of a let down if things aren’t what you expect.

I don’t claim to be an expert but I’ve learnt a few lessons the hard way over the years. We had children long before most of our friends so we weren’t able to call upon their expertise to guide us away from the pitfalls that are so easy to fall into! Read the rest of this entry »

I read with a huge amount of interest, the recent post on Rosie Scribble’s blog about sponsored posts and disclosure policies. (http://rosiescribble.typepad.com/rosie-scribble/2012/04/where-i-opt-for-full-disclosure-part-2.html) .  I started accepting commercial posts about a year ago, and I have found that the volume of them has been increasing rather than decreasing this year.

Reading Rosie’s stance, and the comments that followed it, I realised that my own policy on sponsored posts and disclosure had been a little wishy washy – developed according to what the agencies were offering me.  I did have a policy and an ethical stance, so I thought, but revisiting it I realise that I have been happily accepting the money available, and have let a couple of links and bits slip through the radar, which it seems the OFT would raise an eyebrow at. Read the rest of this entry »

“Time is Money” …that’s what my Dad used to say.

Time-saving and money-saving – can savvy Mums combine the two? Read the rest of this entry »

One thing that I have found very funny since the press got hold of me and my ‘extreme couponing’ habit, is that they all want me to show them my stockpile, and/or get it out to be photographed.

I guess a lot of journalists would like to poke fun at me – what they really want to see is a  huge room piled high with stuff that I could never use.  One journalist who shall remain nameless, read back to me an article she had written, and she had put something along the lines of: “Everywhere I move in house there are piles of groceries – every time I open a cupboard they run the risk of falling on my head”.  Needless to say, I asked her to remove that part.

The press want to make out that stockpiling and couponing is something crazy – that it takes over your rational brain and ruins your home.  I’m here to put the alternative argument. Read the rest of this entry »

Like many businessmums, I run what is euphemistically termed a ‘portfolio business’, which means I don’t have all my eggs in one basket – I am running a series of businesses concurrently.

Over the last nine years since I gave up full time work to have my children, I have started a succession of such businesses – some of them have been franchise or distributorship businesses, and some of them ideas which I have had myself to set up in business.  Some have been more successful than others, and it has taken me quite a few years to come up with a combination of businesses that suits my style and my skills, and makes me a small amount of money. Read the rest of this entry »

My goodness, it’s my turn again.  It’s been a bit of a long time – so much so that I have almost forgotten how to blog.

So, that was Mummy Mentoring Month, and I hope that you agree its been an absolute cornucopia of good and interesting posts.  I hope that you have all been informed, delighted and entertained, as I have, and I just wanted to say a great big thank you to everyone who took part this year. Read the rest of this entry »

As a parent of children in the 21^st century you have I am sure many fears – maybe worrying about keeping our children safe outside the home? Maybe you have the perception that your child is in danger due to the news stories about child killings and paedophilia. The reality is however that with the introduction of new technologies and social networking sites the risks are possible as great inside our homes as well. “There are places your kids shouldn’t be hanging out in. Dark alleys. Street corners. Websites.” Reports J.Kaplan from Fox News last week.

How well versed are you in the use of Facebook; MSN messaging; SMS and Twitter to name just a few? Our role as parents is to educate and we can only do that when we are knowledgeable about the risks involved. Cyber bullying is a real risk and the impact can be devastating not just for the victim but also for the perpetrator. There are a growing number of girls and boys (but particularly girls) as early as Year 5 and Year 6 setting up social networking accounts. Are you aware of what your children are doing? Read the rest of this entry »

Home is increasingly where we Brits spend our time these days and as people shift to spending more of their social time at home, it is also becoming the place where the money is. We spend more money on entertaining at home than we do on going out these days and increasingly we are doing the shopping from the comfort of our own homes too.

It seems that, the stay-at-home trend is here to stay and smart businesses are looking for ways to cater to their customers within their own living rooms. Read the rest of this entry »

I was having a ‘water cooler’ moment a few weeks ago which was a bit strange as i) I work from home, ii)  I was by myself and iii) I don’t have a water cooler. Hmmm… however, I was thinking, “is career management relevant to mums who work from home?” After all, you have decided to leave the 9 to 5 behind and follow your passion to start your own business, or to get a better work/life balance and to ‘be there for the kids’ – with all that that entails.  You are now totally in control of your own outcomes yet somehow many mums that I’ve spoken with either don’t really have a career focus or they don’t articulate it. I suppose that behind this is a belief that somehow ‘career’ doesn’t relate to them as they are not ‘corporate’ and perhaps the prospect of having to manage your career without the support of HR may feel daunting,  but it needn’t be. These days, understanding clearly what you are able to offer and to define your strategy to help you achieve your goals is a key skill. Read the rest of this entry »

Mums go back to work for a whole range of reasons.  Some of us are very career orientated, others do it because we enjoy the jobs we do and the company we work for, for some it’s the adult social interaction and for some, it’s we have to for the money.

So the decision was made and you are now back in the workplace and all of a sudden you find yourself feeling different.   You know what’s coming, yes that ‘guilt’ word creeps into you mind and ‘what about your poor child/children’ and then ‘how do you do a good job’.

Above all, it’s important we enjoy our lives.  We want to have good times with our children and if we decide we need to work, we need to be both competent and confident in our working lives. Read the rest of this entry »

Starting a business can be one of the most exciting yet stressful things you could do in life. There’s the euphoria of being your own boss, choosing your own work hours and following your passion, and then there’s the stress of getting your product/brand out there and staying motivated when times get tough. To ensure your business gets off to the best possible start, here’s my personal 5 step guide to making your business a success: Read the rest of this entry »

I wrote a blog for last years ‘mentoring month’ on motivation. My life at that point was calm – although balancing all aspects of family life, working on my coaching business, and managing everything else was not an easy task – the waters of life had gentle waves with the focus on the future.

Then, my Mother (my last surviving parent) took ill. Although she had suffered for many years with various ailments and had started with Dementia, the call that came to say that she had months, perhaps weeks to live was a complete shock. Life became a circle of visits, phone calls and trying to maintain some form of ‘normality in-between. Utilising the power of laughter, music and positivity helped throughout this period. Read the rest of this entry »

Feeling connected is lovely. In this scary age when old people can lie undiscovered for days in their homes, stricken strangers get stepped over as commuters run to catch their trains, or people wonder if you’re crazy if you smile at them at the bus stop or attempt conversation in the supermarket, the internet can make us all feel closer.

We interact with our hundreds of friends on Facebook and feel cared for, we meet new friends or colleagues on Twitter, and we run our lives – business and social – via email and text message. Read the rest of this entry »

We were given a copy of Happy Feet 2 to review along with the original Happy Feet

At the outset this looks like a very cute film about dancing penguins.  Your children will love them and any little singers or dancers in the family will find it hard to sit still.  This is one of the great advantages of seeing these films on DVD – if your children want to dance in your living room they can, whereas it is not so possible in the cinema. Read the rest of this entry »