Entrepreneurship is sometimes seen as an all-encompassing choice, a path in life that makes any other pursuit impossible — including starting a family.
Many female entrepreneurs still feel the need to delay announcing pregnancies and face awkward questions about starting a family while growing their businesses.
I am living proof that it is possible to do both. And it’s time this short-sighted attitude was ditched for good.
I was already a mother when I founded my first business, and my current company, Kinhub, was born out of my struggles to meet my basic maternity rights.
I actually think that this is where the idea that you cannot be both a parent and an entrepreneur has come from — a woeful lack of support.
Becoming a parent has been the best thing that could have happened to me, professionally speaking.
They say that to be an entrepreneur, you must have a vision for a better world. This is mine: a happy and healthy family should not be mutually exclusive to a successful career.
I’m a serial entrepreneur and a serial mother with five beautiful children. Both aspects of my life have coexisted from the start, and I have always been able to make time for both.
But it is largely down to my own status as an entrepreneur that I have been able to do that.
As a founder, I can ensure that the parental policies in my company have been enshrined and protected from day one.
Employees are still not always so lucky.
As a victim of workplace discrimination and unfair treatment, I’ve witnessed firsthand the lengths to which some employers are willing to go to gain an advantage.
My experience has made it crystal clear to me that employers sometimes view employee rights as obstacles rather than competitive advantages. Consequently, they consistently strive to find loopholes and workarounds.
This experience was a pivotal moment for me in founding Kinhub. I know so many other parents who have had similar encounters at their workplaces and quite frankly, in this day and age, it’s not something that anyone should ever have to go through.
Businesses are only as successful as the people who make them.
Becoming a parent has, quite honestly, been the best thing that could have happened to me, professionally speaking — and I know I’m not alone in this.
Being a mum has made me more empathetic, a better multitasker, more able to succinctly handle conflict and a better manager.
Parents make great employees — and founders. And yet we’re consistently pushed to the wayside and penalised for daring to have a family.
The guilt that we place on ourselves as working parents can be debilitating. We are constantly berating ourselves for the time not spent with our children, as well as for time not spent working when we are spending time with family.
‘Today lists’
Personally, I counteract this by creating ‘today lists’, where I actively dedicate time in my calendar to each of my work tasks and time spent with my children, creating wholesome moments and little rewards and celebrations to ensure that I acknowledge what I have achieved through the working day.
It was actually in one of those moments recently, while sitting in a cafe with my children laughing about foamy milk moustaches, that it struck me just how far I have come not just as an entrepreneur, and a mum, but as Erika.
Where once there was a quite anxious and worrisome person who stressed about balancing work and life and children and dreams — now there is a mother, with a career. Nothing more, nothing less.
It’s the power of directly taking care of your wellbeing — something every founder and employee deserves access to.
Because businesses are only as successful as the people who make them. And those people are only as productive and successful as they are happy and fulfilled.
The sooner employers and investors embrace that as a whole — the better the world will be for all.
