What is Mum's The Boss?
Mum's The Boss was founded to celebrate the twin achievements of motherhood and business, with the express purpose of providing support through a network of like-minded people, inspirational and informative speakers and a warm and welcoming environment.
5 Key Principles
Child-friendly
Babies and pre-school children are welcome and a crèche facility is provided (for an additional charge) at some of our meetings. We strive to use easy to find locations with ample parking and clean toilet facilities for all our events. Meetings are always scheduled within traditional 'school hours' and do not involve any meal times.Low cost
Costs are kept to a minimum so as not to exclude people in the early stages of their business. We also do not have meetings over meal times which can account for costly meetings, and we use speakers who are willing to give their time for free. Meetings can be attended without the need for membership.Informal
There is no need to book to attend a meeting; you can just turn up, unless you require a crèche place. There are no limits (maximum or minimum) on attendance or regularity at meetings and no 'one per profession' rule. There are no '1 minute' speeches or dress codes. Our aim is to remove all unnecessary barriers to our eventsSupportive
The majority of people who attend are mums and so understand the unique set of challenges that starting and running a business whilst being a mum can bring. Not having a 'one per profession' rule means that people in the same area of business can support each other more easily.Informative
At each meeting we have speakers who offer advice and inspiration. We run regular 'drop-in events' with a variety of professionals on hand to give advice on a more 1:1 basis. We also provide a business book library for members who can borrow books free of charge. We also provide as much relevant local and national information as possible to both visitors to the meetings and to our website.
Equal opportunities policy
Mum's The Boss will welcome anybody to their meetings irrespective of their gender, race, religion, nationality, sexual orientation,
disability or age.
Meet Sam & Helen
We are Sam and Helen, both of us mums of young children who have set up and run a small business from home. We are not experts – we are just mums who didn't want to go back to work after our children were born so looked around for work at home opportunities. We are still learning ourselves, and have made our share of mistakes along the way – but we believe there is strength in numbers, and that by having the right information and supporting each other we can all learn and grow.
About Sam
Hi, my name is Sam, and I am one of the co-founders of Mum's The Boss. Having struggled to have my children I was in no rush to return to the rat race so I decided to seek out an opportunity where I could work from home, really testing my powers of organisation, patience and multi-tasking to the limits!
Previously I had worked in Marketing but, having no experience of self-employment, I decided to go down the 'safe' route and bought into a franchise. Whilst trying to market my business I discovered that, with 2 very small children, it was very difficult to attend traditional networking groups, both because the membership and meeting costs were expensive for a 'start-up' business and the meetings took place at breakfast, lunch or teatime - all the busiest times in any mums' day!
So, rather than pretend my children didn't exist I started an informal, supportive and most importantly child-friendly networking group with several like-minded work at home mums - and after 6 months Mum's The Boss was born!
I have now realised that I know a lot more about business than I had given myself credit for and part of my passion for Mum's The Boss is to provide mums with as much information as possible, allowing them to make an informed choice about their working options. If I had known how much good, free advice is available and how relatively simple and cost effective it can be to set up in business I would have saved my money and gone it alone right from the start.
Mum's The Boss has grown enormously in its first year, capturing the imagination of people in a really positive way, and we are so excited about where this journey will take us!
About Helen
Hi – I'm Helen and the other half of Mum's The Boss. In my life BC (before children) I was a teacher, but once I was expecting my first child I knew that I wanted to be at home with him full time. I was never quite sure how I would enjoy the early stages of motherhood as I really enjoyed being with children aged 5+, but had never been a 'baby' person. However I found it was the best thing in the world and son number one was very quickly followed by son number two 16 months later!
Once the children got to pre-school age I started to look at 'work at home' and flexible options, so that once they started school properly I could still do the school run - something that returning to teaching I wouldn't be able to do. I bought into a franchise, which unfortunately turned out to not be what it seemed, and am just grateful that I stopped as quickly as I did.
However, one fantastic thing that came from the whole experience was meeting Sam and developing the concept that has become Mum's The Boss. Like her, if I had realised how much help, support and information was out there, as well as recognising that I had some basic business skills I would never have spent good money for what appeared to be 'the safe option'.
Sam & I have a great partnership where the workload is easily shared along the lines of our natural strengths, many common interests that bind us together (children, wine & books to name a few!) and the same belief and vision for what we have created – Mum's The Boss.
