Growth Looks Different When You’re Building a Business as a Mum

Originally published on LinkedIn, 6 March 2026.

I am seeing a lot of founders and coaches online lately, and if I’m honest, the messages can feel relentless.

Scale faster. Ten-X everything. Join the 5am club. Cold plunges before sunrise. Train harder. Work longer. Optimise every hour. Dominate your market.

You know the vibe!

There’s a very specific energy being pushed. Fast. Aggressive. Hyper-optimised. Highly masculine in its pace and intensity.

And here’s the bit that sits uncomfortably with me.

For many female founders with families, that model simply isn’t possible.

Not because we aren’t capable. Not because we aren’t ambitious. But because our capacity is structured differently.

School runs exist. Sick days happen. Dinner needs cooking. Someone has to be reachable when the school rings at 11.17am.

And let’s be honest — a lot of the loudest voices preaching this pace are men.

That’s not a criticism. It’s an observation.

Many of them have support structures that allow that single-minded focus. Some have partners holding everything together at home. Some are in different life stages. Some have simply chosen differently.

But when that pace is presented as the standard, it can start to feel like this is how we’re meant to be doing business in 2026.

All in. All the time. No excuses.

And even though I know, logically, that this energy wouldn’t work for me, it still catches me off guard sometimes.

It irritates me. It makes me question whether I’m behind. Whether I’m playing smaller than I should. Whether Mooeys could grow faster if I just pushed harder.

And that’s the tension. Because I’m not just a founder.

I’m a mum.

I often feel like I’m choosing. Between business and family. Between where my energy goes. Between which part of myself gets priority on any given day.

And the truth is, I can’t do both at 100 per cent all of the time.

I have an incredible partner. He’s supportive, hands-on and very much part of the team that keeps our world turning. This isn’t a “woe is me” story, because I don’t do this alone.

But he also runs his own business. If he doesn’t work, he doesn’t earn.

He’s a tradey, which is brilliant when something breaks in a salon, but it also means that on any given day, one of us has to be the parent. One of us has to be available in case the school rings, a child gets sick, or something has been forgotten.

We don’t have childcare. We don’t have family help. We don’t have a safety net.

So our weeks are planned with military precision. Who needs to be where, who can work late, who has to finish early, who’s on school run duty, who’s doing dinner, who’s walking the dog. It all has to be planned for everything to keep spinning. This is the reality for a lot of families and we certainly don't get this right all the time.

But, in a world that pretty much requires two working parents just to function, I often find myself asking how we scale a business and still take care of our family, each other, and ourselves.

Sometimes I wonder, quietly.

If my partner was at home full time with the kids, how far could my business go? How much quicker would things move?

That’s not criticism. It’s not resentment. It’s curiosity.

When I hear founders talk about pouring everything into their business, my mind always goes to the practical reality. Who’s doing the school runs, managing the home, and keeping everything else moving?

This isn’t about blame. It’s purely about capacity.

It takes real effort to turn down the noise of hustle culture. It's so bloody loud sometimes!

The noise that tells you to move faster, do more, scale harder, raise money, be everywhere and sacrifice everything to hit those huge figures.

It’s often very masculine, can be quite one-dimensional, and if I’m honest, it often makes me feel a bit uncomfortable.

Not because I don’t want success. I absolutely do. I’m ambitious, driven and I want Mooeys to be huge. But I don’t want to build it at the cost of my family, my health or my sense of self.

I want growth with longevity. Success with integrity. Scale with the right people around me.

Accepting that my path might look different has taken time. I won’t pretend it hasn’t.

Here’s the part I’ve really had to think about.

Even if my partner was at home full time with the kids, I’m not sure I’d want to give everything to the business anyway.

I sometimes ask myself a confronting question. When I’m on my death bed, will I be glad I hit a certain number in business, or glad I found moments of balance along the way and enjoy this game of business we are playing?

The answer isn’t simple, because the reality is I get a bit of both and that is a privilege.

I get to do the school runs. I get to be present. I get to finish at three on a Friday and hang out with my kids.

But I also got to be part of the Goldman Sachs programme, something I could only do because my partner completely held the fort for us. I choose to work some Saturdays. I choose to log back on in the evenings. I choose this version of life again and again.

That choice hasn’t always been easy.

There was a time when I felt genuinely envious of people building and scaling businesses while I was at home feeding children, knowing in my bones that I could do more if I had the time and space. I used to feel jealous of my husband going to work all day while I squeezed my workload into school hours and then picked it back up late in the evenings once dinner, housework and bedtime were done.

I remember longing for a cleaner, not because I didn’t want to clean, but because it felt like the one thing that could buy me back an extra couple of hours to build the business, bit by bit. I remember thinking that if I could afford one more day of childcare, I could grow slowly and steadily in a way that still felt aligned.

Now I find myself cramming work into school hours, juggling pick-ups, after-school clubs, dinner and then logging back on in the evenings. It’s relentless at times, but it’s also chosen.

And I don’t take any of it for granted.

This isn’t a complaint. It’s simply thoughts jotted down to help me make sense of a season of life that is full, complex and layered.

I have no doubt that being a founder is harder when you’re a parent, regardless of gender. But if I’m really honest, one of the biggest decisions a female founder makes is who she chooses as a partner.

If my partner was scaling a business in the same way I am, I wouldn’t be able to do this. If he was in a corporate role that required constant travel or being away from home, I wouldn’t be able to do this either, not if I wanted to see my children.

We are very much a partnership, and partnerships come with their own challenges.

Whose work takes priority and when? Who steps back this week? Who leans in next week? Who’s holding what?

In many households, the highest salary becomes the trump card in priorities. But when you’re building a business, especially in a growth phase, money can’t always be the deciding factor because it might not be there yet.

Instead it takes planning, organisation, communication, respect, selflessness and honesty. Constant recalibration. It’s a mammoth task!

And I still don’t have the answers.

I don’t think the playing field will ever be completely even, and I’m not sure that’s the real issue.

What I do think is that we need to stop measuring success with someone else’s ruler.

Some founders have time. Some have money. Some have support at home. Some have the capacity to go all in.

Others are building businesses in the margins of school runs, bedtime routines, partnerships and real life.

That doesn’t make the ambition smaller. It just makes the strategy different.

The real danger isn’t growing slower. It’s believing you’re failing because your growth doesn’t look like someone else’s highlight reel.

For me, success looks like building something meaningful, profitable and scalable without disappearing from my own life.

That’s the version I’m committed to, even if it takes longer, even if it’s quieter and even if it doesn’t fit the algorithm.

I’m interested in success not as a headline, but as a whole picture. The pace, the trade-offs, and the people quietly making it all work.

Maybe the truth is this. Success doesn’t come from choosing one life over another. It comes from consciously choosing your version of it and allowing it to evolve.

And right now, this is mine.

Messy. Full. Demanding. Privileged. Exhausting. Exciting.

And still, somehow, deeply worth it.

Love Amy x

If you’re running a business and raising a family, how do you make it all work? How do you scale while keeping everything ticking over at home? If any of this resonates, I’d genuinely love to hear your thoughts.