What I Learned Running Two Businesses While Raising Kids
My daughter Tegan recently joined the podcast club at school, and I am taking full credit.
Never mind that she chose it herself or that she may simply enjoy recording things with her friends. After years of hearing me talk about microphones, guests, edits and podcast shoots, I have decided this is proof that my work has influenced her in some meaningful way.
It was a small moment, but it made me think about what my children see when they look at me.
I genuinely believed motherhood would put my career into permanent slow mode. I did not plan to stop working, but I assumed I would stay somewhere comfortable within the media industry, without much room to grow. I could not imagine having the time, energy or headspace to build anything while raising children.
Instead, I now have two media businesses alongside my broadcasting work, and I am still not entirely sure how that happened.
From the outside, running businesses can look exciting. From inside my house, it looks like responding to clients while checking homework, preparing for a meeting during the school run and discovering that somebody needs a costume for World Book Day by tomorrow morning.
I sometimes schedule an important meeting at the exact time I am supposed to collect the children from school. I forget things. I get distracted. I tell the kids I will be with them in one minute and realise much later that I am still staring at my phone.
There is no perfect balance here, but I have become very good at adjusting.
Having children has made me far more protective of my time. Before motherhood, I could spend hours overthinking an email or putting off a difficult task. Now, I know that an uninterrupted hour may be all I get, so I make decisions faster and waste less time worrying about whether everything is perfect.
The biggest lesson has been that support matters. Like many expat families in Dubai, we do not have grandparents or relatives around the corner. Our village is made up of friends, childcare, colleagues, other parents and the people who step in when plans fall apart.
I could not do any of this alone, and I don’t pretend to do so.
There are days when my children get the distracted version of me because work is demanding too much. There are also days when work has to wait because one of them needs me. I have dropped balls in both areas, and I am sure I will continue to do so.
But I hope Tegan and Clyde are growing up knowing their mother is learning, trying to be better and always aiming to make them proud.
Running two businesses while raising children has not taught me how to do everything. It has taught me to decide what matters today, deal with the rest tomorrow and forgive myself when the whole thing becomes a mess.
And if Tegan ever launches a chart-topping podcast, I’ll know where it began: with microphones and scripts scattered across the dining table, right beside her homework and half-finished costume.
