7 years ago I was unhappy working as a Recruitment Consultant and after being bought up in an entrepreneurial family I wanted to start my own business. I started my domestic cleaning company Cleaning Solutions in November 2002, no business plan, no bank loan just an advert in a local magazine offering our services. My first client called for a quote and off I went all I needed now was a cleaner to do the job. Another advert later and I had a client and a cleaner and from there we grew. The next 18 months were seriously hard work working full time in recruitment and then every evening and weekend working on my new business, often out cleaning myself! In January 2003 I quit my job and went full time into business which was very scary but exciting at the same time.

In July 2006 I asked myself “So how do you have a newborn baby and run a business that is very demanding?” That was the difficult part. By January 2007 I was really struggling coping with the demands of motherhood and 25 staff and toyed with the idea of closing the doors on my business as I felt I simply couldn’t cope and after waiting so long to get my daughter I just wanted to focus on her. Fortunately something in the back of my mind told me to keep going and I would get through it, don’t give up…so that’s what I did I threw myself back into work and started to build a routine around my baby and the business. In doing so I started to feel unprofessional as though my company had lost its edge as there was now a child involved. I knew myself that this wasn’t the case and I felt like the only person in the world to be working from home running a business and looking after a child.

I entered the world of ‘networking’  and after several attempts at various types of meetings yet again I still felt that I wasn’t being treated as a professional business woman. Over the next 12 months I started to explore my own ideas of networking and providing support to other mums who were in my situation. After all ‘mumpreneurs’ contribute £4.4billion to the economy every year so we must be doing something right?

In addition to this I launched the sister company to Cleaning Solutions, Opal Products, importing and distributing air fresheners for the home, office and car to the public via my website and to the wholesale industry. We’ve just passed our first birthday and I am proud to say we are doing really well and have established an excellent client base.

In August 2009 I launched Connection Events which is my very own networking group for Mums in Business which I absolutely love. The response has been amazing and we have started to build a sound group of Mums who are all in business.

With all that I have been through, it has given me the inspiration to support other Mums in what they are doing. I am so excited about my new business Connection Events as I can see it has great potential and has been accepted so well. The feedback from events has been amazing with other Mums congratulating me on the organisation, atmosphere and a general good feel to what we do which is exactly what I wanted.

Update April 2010

As Opal Products has started to rapidly grow over the last six months, and now with two children on my hands I made the difficult decision to sell my cleaning business ‘Cleaning Solutions’. My focus will be on growing Opal Products on a wholesale and retail basis which is really exciting along with running Connection Events which totally inspires me to be successful.