I absolutely adore this title.
I am a Founder Raising The Future.
This is a hashtag and campaign coined by the awesome Holly Tucker, and it has resonated so powerfully with me.
The juggle between Mum and Business Owner has not always been an easy one.
We launched Music Monsters in 2018, when our eldest son was 2 and our youngest daughter was just 4 months old. When we first began, we were running baby classes for babies in their first year. I had written the classes, bought all of the equipment we thought we needed, employed a class leader to deliver them, and launched our first sessions. It was a Thursday in September, and Luke had left for work early that morning. We only had one car back then, so we paid a friend £5 to pick up the equipment and deliver it to the venue. I popped the baby in a sling, the toddler in the pram, and naively strolled up to observe our first classes.
And, wow, did the shit hit the fan??!!!
20 minutes into the first session, the class leader walked out and never returned. Exhausted from general newborn mum fatigue, I jumped into action, delivering the rest of the classes with our two children clinging to me, before they ultimately both melted down just as our final new customer left. I was broken. Totally and completely broken. After months and months of hard work, I realised that we had the hugest uphill journey ahead of us.
Of course, life has changed an awful lot since then. But along the way, we’ve had:
- Dozens of all-nighters, feeding babies and comforting children with nightmares, while frantically preparing class content for the next day
- So many little ‘helpers’, working alongside us even though I could do it 10 times quicker on my own
- Events or meetings cancelled due to poorly little ones, or because something in their life is just more important
- And, perhaps my favourite - breastfeeding our littlest one, 30 seconds before going live on the news with Alastair Stewart 😀
Running a business and parenting young children is heartbreakingly hard. But there are SO many rewards!!!!
Over the years, we have put a lot of things in place to help our life run more smoothly. We have Penny, who does our laundry for us. We use HelloFresh to deliver our food. We use booking softwares that take automatic monthly payments from parents so that we don’t have to spend hours on invoicing and chasing payments. But, the one thing that we haven’t compromised on, is our family life. We run our business to support our family – and I adore that they get to come along for the ride too.
Are you happy with your work/family life? Can we help you achieve something a little more balanced? Speak with us about how a Music Monsters’ franchise could be just the thing you are looking for!
Lauren & Luke x
We would love to talk to you about the opportunities we have at Music Monsters, and to share with you all the ways that you can benefit from joining us. If you think that this may be of interest to you, let's arrange a zoom call - we would love to connect.
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