Explore every episode of the podcast Mum Means Business

Sonica Beckmann is a British Asian qualified solicitor, entrepreneur, UK 40 Under 40 winner and mum of two. Raised in a low income migrant household, she was the first in her family to attend university and went on to build a distinguished legal career across major multinational organisations.

By the age of 31 she had been appointed Head of Legal at a multi-billion dollar company. In 2023, Sonica made the decision to diversify from law and pursue a long held vision, founding the London based womenswear brand House of Kind. Blending affordable luxury tailoring with a values driven ethos, House of Kind is rooted in the belief that kindness is a powerful form of leadership.

In this episode, Sonica shares the harrowing story from her early days in law that shaped her entire mission and how that experience, alongside years spent navigating rigid, hierarchical corporate cultures across three countries, led her to build a brand grounded in something radically simple: kindness. It is a conversation about grief, resilience, corporate culture, motherhood and why putting humanity back into leadership should never have been considered unconventional in the first place.

💡 "We need a global marker of a good human being. A reminder to be kind and that we're of the same kind." - Sonica Beckmann

In this conversation, we explore:

✨ The devastating story of Sonica's first six weeks as a trainee solicitor, kept in the office until 2am the same week her father passed away, and the archived files that never needed to be touched

✨ How that experience, alongside her mother's stroke a month later, forged a determination to complete her training contract no matter the personal cost, because qualifying meant no one could ever take that from her

✨ Why clothing became such a powerful symbol for Sonica, from arriving at Chancery Lane in a hand-me-down suit that quietly signalled she did not fit in, to founding a brand built around a different kind of uniform altogether

✨ The founding vision behind House of Kind, clothing with subtle details that allow women to recognise an ally the moment they walk into a room

✨ Why the mismatch between the school day and the working day is so fundamentally broken, and why flexibility built on trust rather than suspicion consistently produces happier, more productive teams

✨ The honest reality of returning to the UK after a decade in Kuwait, Dubai and Singapore, and the shock of rediscovering how difficult everyday systems, from healthcare to childcare costs, had become

✨ How House of Kind launched through Sonica's own network in the fashion industry, and why she believes showing genuine kindness throughout her career, without ever expecting anything back, is what made people so willing to help when she finally asked

✨ The partnership with 50:50 Parliament and the Seat at the Table T-shirt, and Sonica's belief that getting more women into rooms where decisions are made is one of the most powerful levers for lasting change

✨ Why Sonica believes fear and competition, whether between women in a boardroom or across wider society, all stem from the same root, and why community and solidarity offer a genuinely different way forward

✨ Turning 40 and the full circle realisation that after decades spent desperately trying to fit in, she has finally reached a place of not caring whether her message of kindness is considered conventional at all

About the Guest:

Sonica Beckmann is a qualified solicitor, entrepreneur and founder of House of Kind, a London based womenswear brand blending affordable luxury tailoring with a values driven ethos rooted in kindness. A UK 40 Under 40 winner with a distinguished legal career spanning multiple countries and major multinational organisations, she now channels that experience into building a brand and a movement that champions female solidarity, inclusivity and representation. House of Kind partners with Dress for Success Greater London, UN Women, Women for Women International, Stonewall UK and 50:50 Parliament. Sonica is also a mum of two.

You can find House of Kind at houseofkind.london, on Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin where you can also connect with Sonica directly. House of Kind is also stocked in a number of Surrey based boutiques and on Wolf and Badger.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

This week's solo episode is a natural follow on from episode 77, where I dug into resilience and shared some of my favourite business fails.

This time I want to talk about something I hadn't quite clocked before: that resilience is not linear and that as cyclical women our hormones shift how we experience our businesses from week to week, sometimes from hour to hour, no matter how well practised our resilience muscles are.

Shout out to Nicky Denson-Elliott and Morin Glimmer who both get a mention.

I share the wobble I had about the podcast around ten days before recording this, the flat feeling of pouring hours into a reel that reaches 231 people and what it actually felt like to sit with the very real question of whether this passion project is worth the time and energy it demands. And then I share the unexpected piece of news that arrived just when I needed it most.

In this episode, I reflect on:

✨ Why Q3 can feel like such a challenging stretch, as the optimism of January meets the reality of fourteen weeks left in the calendar year

✨ A replay from Maureen Glimmer's session inside The Wilder Collective and the reminder that as cyclical women, our hormones genuinely shift how we feel about our businesses day to day, regardless of how resilient we are

✨ The honest wobble around download stats dipping over the summer holidays, even though it was fully expected, and why being prepared for a knock does not always soften it

✨ Admitting to the flat feeling of a reel taking two hours to make and reaching only 231 people, and questioning whether that quiet inner voice claiming not to care about metrics is entirely true

✨ The unique loneliness of being a solopreneur who has to be your own operations, marketing, accounting, therapist and cheerleader all at once, especially when carrying the mental load of motherhood at the same time

✨ The moment the news arrived that the podcast had been shortlisted in the Business and Culture category of the Independent Podcast Awards, and what a relief that felt like after a genuinely tough stretch

✨ Why entering the awards back in a more optimistic Q2, inspired by Pippa Gordon's PR advice from episode 17, is a reminder that the work we do in good moods can carry us through the harder ones

✨ Reflecting on the journey from zero to over 6000 downloads and a national award shortlisting in just fourteen months, and why that is worth celebrating regardless of the outcome on the night

✨ The Wilson Phillips inspired takeaway that holding on for one more day, even through a bad mood or a flat metric, can be exactly what it takes for good news to land

Takeaway for Mums in Business:

"We all have days when we feel like putting our business, our side hustle or our passion project in the bin. That is normal. But if you can hold on for one more day, you never know what might land in your inbox and change your mind."

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

Amanda Reidy is a PE teacher, women's fitness, lifestyle and wellbeing coach, founder of Radiate Fitness, host of the Perimenopause & Motherhood podcast (formerly Happy Thriving Mums) and a passionate advocate for helping women thrive through midlife. A mum of two, she understands firsthand the realities of juggling family, work, wellbeing and the ever-evolving demands of modern life.

Combining movement, mindset and nourishment, Amanda specialises in supporting working mums over 40 through what she calls the years when hormones collide, a unique stage of life where perimenopause often intersects with the demands of parenting, careers, caring responsibilities and shifting identities.

In this episode, Amanda unpacks the huge and often confusing overlap between matrescence and perimenopause, why the menopause is actually just one single day rather than the years-long experience so many of us assume, and the practical, sustainable changes that can genuinely help. It is a conversation that will leave you feeling far more informed and perhaps even a little bit angry about how much of this we were never told.

💡 "This will happen to one hundred percent of the women that you know. It's not a case of maybe. Women need to be informed about it and so do the men who love them." - Amanda Reidy

In this conversation, we explore:

✨ Amanda's journey from twenty years as a PE teacher to founding Radiate Fitness, and why her underlying philosophy has always been about helping people find joy in movement rather than performance

✨ The reality of trying to build a flexible business around school term times, after-school clubs and the childcare gaps that come with being a teacher herself

✨ Why Amanda's early business focus on postnatal fitness and pelvic floor health shifted towards perimenopause, and the personal experiences, including a premature baby during lockdown, that shaped that pivot

✨ The genuinely surprising clarification that menopause is a single moment in time, twelve months after your last period, and that everything before it is perimenopause, which can last for a decade or more

✨ The huge and confusing overlap between matrescence and perimenopause for women having children later in life, and why symptoms like brain fog, anxiety and exhaustion can so easily be misattributed to one or the other

✨ Why up to seven years can pass before women seek help for pelvic floor issues, and the shame and stigma that keeps so many suffering in silence

✨ The three pillars Amanda works with her clients on - nourishment, movement and mindset - and how small, sustainable changes compound into meaningful results

✨ Why sleep and stress reduction matter more than almost anything else during perimenopause, and the reframe of treating rest itself as something productive rather than something to feel guilty about

✨ The importance of strength training and regular movement for bone density and muscle mass as women move through midlife, and why it does not need to mean joining a gym

✨ Why identity work and permission to dream matter just as much as the physical symptoms, and what it means to model a joyful, thriving midlife for the next generation of daughters

About the Guest:

Amanda Reidy is a PE teacher, women's fitness, lifestyle and wellbeing coach and founder of Radiate Fitness. She hosts the Perimenopause & Motherhood podcast and specialises in supporting working mothers over 40 through perimenopause, combining movement, mindset and nourishment to help women feel informed, supported and genuinely excited about this next chapter of life. A mum of two, Amanda is currently developing a new programme launching in September to help more women navigate the years when hormones collide.

You can connect with Amanda at radiatefitness.co.uk, on Instagram or on LinkedIn.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

This week's solo episode follows a heart to heart with the ladies inside my Print Over Pixels community about what it really takes to face disappointment in business and the resilience muscle every solo trader, freelancer and founder has to build along the way.

So I decided to share my own catalogue of business fails. The Etsy shop that sold precisely two travel prints in two years. The maternity photography charity fundraiser that raised £199 for WWACA, which was far less than I'd hoped for. The free weekend of toddler party photography that grew my email list but didn't bring in a single booking. The Facebook group that never quite got time poor parents to pick up their camera. The 500 hand delivered booklets that didn't bring in any new clients.

This episode is about all of it, the sink of disappointment when something you had real hope for falls flat and the advice from my mum that led me to treat every one of these moments like a contraction. These fails are painful in the moment, but just like contractions, once you come out the other side you never have to go through it again and you are one step closer to your goal.

In this episode, I reflect on:

✨ The Big Wide World Prints Etsy shop, born out of a craving for creative outlet during the fog of matrescence and the two orders it generated across two years despite two hundred hours of YouTube tutorials

✨ The maternity photography fundraiser for a local women's charity that raised far less than hoped, and the honest disappointment of pitching to magazines that never took the story up

✨ The countless nos faced whilst fundraising for the D-Day 75 garden and why that story, covered fully in episode 65, remains one of the biggest lessons in perseverance

✨ The free weekend spent photographing toddler and preschool parties in exchange for email addresses, and the sobering reality of thirty unsubscribes and zero bookings from the whole exercise

✨ The Facebook group built around weekly photo recipes and why fourteen weeks and twenty members later it quietly came to an end

✨ The 500 hand delivered booklets showcasing family portraits and the deflating silence that followed a full week of door to door delivery

✨ Why the real danger is not the disappointment itself but the fixed stories we tell ourselves afterwards, that the market is too saturated, that nobody wants what we are offering, that we simply do not have what it takes

✨ The importance of separating a setback from your own self-worth and why turning disappointment inward is often the thing that actually stops people from trying again

✨ Why patience with yourself matters just as much as resilience, particularly in the early, hustling years of motherhood when it is tempting to push yourself into the ground

✨ The idea that every business fail can be treated like a labour contraction, painful in the moment, but each one brings you closer to your goal and one you will never have to face in quite that same way again

Takeaway for Mums in Business:

"If you can feel the disappointment, sit in it for a while and then detach yourself from the stories your mind wants to tell you, you can pick yourself up and go again. Treat every fail like a contraction. It's painful in the moment, but each one brings you closer to your goal."

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

Shann Jones is a wife, a mother and a grandmother who brings together entrepreneurship, family life and her deep love of nature to challenge conventional thinking about leadership, resilience and what it really means to build something that lasts.

Originally from the States, this former journalist and radio talk show host fell for a Welsh farmer and settled their beautiful blended family on his hillside farm overlooking the Irish Sea. A series of health issues close to home led her to discover the healing power of kefir, made from their excess goat's milk. And the rest is history.

Shann became the founder and CEO of Chuckling Goat, building the business from her kitchen table into an international award-winning natural health brand serving more than 300,000 customers.

In this episode, Shann shares the extraordinary story of building a business from nothing while raising a large blended family and the crisis that changed everything: when her husband Rich developed a life threatening MRSA infection and doctors told her there was nothing more they could do. What followed was a desperate, instinctive experiment rooted in nature rather than medicine, and a philosophy about leadership, business and living systems that she has carried ever since.

💡 "You don't need to know the whole path. You just need to take the next step. If you can take that next step, then you will learn and adapt and improvise and survive. That's the way living systems move, one tiny step at a time." - Shann Jones MBE

In this conversation, we explore:

✨ How a goat, bought on a whim to help their son's chronic illness, led to an overproduction of milk and, eventually, the accidental discovery of kefir through a chance radio programme

✨ The reality of building a business from absolute poverty, selling soap and kefir at farmers markets for cash to buy pony carrots because they could not afford the good ones

✨ The devastating moment Rich developed a life threatening MRSA infection following major surgery, and the surgeon's verdict that there was nothing more medicine could do

✨ Why Shann rejected the language of war and battle used throughout medical literature on antibiotic resistant infections, and the radical reframe that led her to think in terms of allies rather than enemies

✨ The concept of living systems, nodes, edges and emergent behaviour, and how covering Rich in kefir instead of more antibiotics became the desperate, instinctive experiment that ultimately saved his life

✨ Why Shann believes women in business need to start before they feel ready, and why no business plan could ever teach what the journey itself teaches

✨ Bringing her children and their partners into the business as it grew, building them houses on the farm, and why she considers this the single best decision they have ever made

✨ The difference between controlling a business from the top down and creating the conditions under which a team, like any living system, can become more intelligent and function without her at the centre

✨ The concept of the map gap, the widening distance between the map we make of reality and reality itself, and why we so often defend our maps rather than updating them

✨ Why living systems, whether a coral reef, the internet, a family or a business, never argue with a slug, and what that teaches us about working with reality rather than against it

About the Guest:

Shann Jones MBE is the founder and CEO of Chuckling Goat, an international award-winning natural health brand serving over 300,000 customers worldwide. Combining cutting-edge microbiome science with practical, compassionate leadership, she has built her business from a kitchen table into a thriving family enterprise run alongside her husband, children and their partners on their farm overlooking the Irish Sea. She is the author of several books on health and wellbeing and is currently writing The CEO in the Garden. Shann is a wife, mother and grandmother whose life, by her own account, truly began after forty.

You can connect with Shann on LinkedIn and find out everything you need to know about kefir and gut health on the Chuckling Goat website.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

This week's solo episode comes to you from the launch lull... that strange, uneasy stretch between opening the cart on a launch and closing it, when everything is scheduled, there is nothing left to do but wait and the doubts creep in. Have I done enough? Should I have pushed out more content? Is there something else I should be doing right now?

This is only my fourth launch, so I am treating every attempt as a test, collecting data on what has and hasn't worked rather than expecting overnight results. But sitting in this particular lull prompted me to reflect back to where it all began: the two years it took me to settle on what I wanted to teach, the seven months it took to launch this podcast and the very first webinar I ever delivered to two photographers in a Zoom room, after which I genuinely needed a shower to wash the anxiety away!

This monologue is about the stories we tell ourselves that keep us feeling like imposters, the battle with a brain that is only trying to keep us safe and why ready is a decision rather than a feeling.

Shout out to Teresa Heath-Wareing for her encouragement and support without which I wouldn't be launching anything! You can listen in to my conversation with Teresa in episode 28.

In this episode, I reflect on:

✨ The uneasy reality of the launch lull and why treating each launch as a test rather than a verdict has made the process easier to sit with

✨ Why launching this podcast felt more possible than launching a photography course, and the realisation that being unquestionably a mum with a business was enough qualification to begin

✨ The brutal, deeply rooted stories that delayed the launch of Print Over Pixels for nearly two years, including the belief that the market was too saturated and everyone else was cleverer, more experienced and more confident

✨ The relief of finally landing on a subject that felt genuinely aligned, partly because nobody else in the UK seemed to be talking about it

✨ The first ever live webinar, delivered to just two photographers, and why it triggered a level of anxiety that ended in a much needed shower afterwards

✨ Why the brain treats new, vulnerable action like genuine danger, and what it means to override that instinct and do the thing anyway

✨ The realisation four launches later that the same webinar no longer feels dangerous, and what that reveals about how quickly we can expand our own comfort zone if we are willing to push against it

✨ Why motherhood, entrepreneurship and personal growth are so tightly intertwined, and how nurturing a business alongside a family often means confronting parts of yourself you would rather not look at

✨ The decision that no one else's permission is required to take up space, and why that belief might be the most important thing to carry into any new, frightening endeavour

Takeaway for Mums in Business:

"Ready is not a feeling, it's a decision. You don't need permission from anybody else to take up space. The only person who needs to give you their approval is you."

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

Leila Ainge is a British Psychological Society accredited psychologist, doctoral researcher and podcast host whose work sits at the intersection of identity, trust and working life. Her research explores how online communities shape the experience of freelancers and independent workers, with a particular focus on belonging, psychological safety and the systems that influence confidence and participation.

In this episode, Leila shares the anxiety-fuelled exit from a corporate career that led her into business, why she believes imposter phenomenon is a far more accurate term than imposter syndrome and what her doctoral research into online communities is revealing about belonging, internalised misogyny and the deeply unglamorous truth about why women hesitate to talk about profit. It is a conversation that will leave you questioning how many of the stories you tell about your own limitations were ever really yours to begin with.

💡 "It's not your mindset, it's a conditioned mindset that has been handed down to you by people who've told you to be quiet and not expect too much." — Leila Ainge

In this conversation, we explore:

✨ The anxiety that built and built in a male-dominated corporate role until it came to a head over something as simple, and as telling, as needing permission to use the toilet

✨ Why Leila's entrepreneurial journey began with no grand plan, no product idea and no business model, just a decision that she could not stay where she was

✨ The moment a single role model on a Women in Leadership course, a mature student with a child who completed her doctorate, changed what Leila believed was possible for herself

✨ Why the corporate world so often makes midlife women feel invisible, and how stepping outside of it can feel disorientating even when it is exactly the right decision

✨ The difference between imposter syndrome and imposter phenomenon, and why naming something a phenomenon rather than a syndrome shifts the responsibility from the individual to the system

✨ The origins of imposter phenomenon research in 1979 and why it was never really about something being wrong with the women in question

✨ What Leila's doctoral research into online communities is uncovering about belonging, psychological safety and the surprising ways in which women reproduce the very systems they left corporate life to escape

✨ The research into internalised misogyny in women business owners, including the discomfort many feel around discussing profit, self-promotion and pricing even in spaces designed to support them

✨ Why identity does not need to be fixed, niched or consistent, and how the concept of scaffolding liminality offers a much healthier way to think about who we are as we move through different seasons of motherhood and business

✨ The advice Leila would give her eight year old self about the confidence she would lose and eventually rebuild, and what that reveals about the shrinking so many women experience on the way to adulthood

About the Guest:

Leila Ainge is a British Psychological Society accredited psychologist, doctoral researcher and host of the podcast Psychologically Speaking. Her research explores belonging, psychological safety and identity within online freelance and business communities, and she is known for reframing imposter syndrome as imposter phenomenon, a shift shaped by context, culture and power rather than individual failing. Alongside her academic work, Leila consults with authors, creatives and small businesses on psychology-led research and communication. She is a mum navigating her own ongoing journey through identity, entrepreneurship and midlife.

You can connect with Leila at leilaainge.co.uk, on Instagram and LinkedIn and listen to her podcast Psychologically Speaking wherever you get your podcasts.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

This week's solo episode goes behind the scenes of the fourth launch of Print Over Pixels, my signature course helping family photographers lead with print in the digital age.

Launches are full on at the best of times, and this one has arrived just as the kids went back to school and the pace of life picked up dramatically. But before diving into the launch itself, I wanted to take you back to where this all began. To the podcasts that kept me company through a lonely maternity leave, the moment I first heard the word launch used in the context of online business and the years I spent running my photography business exactly like everyone else in the industry, chasing the going rate, comparing myself to the photographer up the road and wondering why I was so busy and yet so broke.

This episode is about the pivot that changed everything. Moving from selling digital files to leading with print, discovering in-person sales and finally feeling like my seventeen years of experience actually mattered.

In this episode, I reflect on:

✨ Discovering the world of online business through podcasts during a lonely, isolating maternity leave, and the moment Jenna Kutcher's story of a $35,000 course launch first introduced me to the word launch

✨ How the online course boom of the pandemic years created a bubble of both genuine transformation and low quality courses, and why the honeymoon period ending did not mean the industry itself was going anywhere

✨ Why so many self-taught photographers, myself included, flooded into wedding and family photography during the digital revolution with huge creativity but very little business experience, and the race to the bottom that followed

✨ The reality of running a shoot and burn business model for most of my seventeen year career, delivering hundreds of digital files for a few hundred pounds and constantly having to find new clients because there was no lasting loyalty built into the model

✨ The moment everything changed when I discovered in-person sales, inviting clients to experience their photographs together rather than sending a gallery link into the void

✨ Why leading a reveal appointment became my favourite part of the process and how it transformed my relationship with my own work, my pricing and my confidence

✨ The neuroscience behind why printed photographs matter, how looking at a meaningful photograph reactivates the same neural pathways as living the moment itself, and why that memory deepens every time we look at it

✨ Why I no longer want to hand my clients more digital files to add to the trillions already sitting unloved in storage, and why print became the more meaningful, more valuable thing to offer instead

✨ What it has taken to build the confidence to launch Print Over Pixels four times, and why I am still very much a beginner at this online business world even as I teach others how to transform their own

Takeaway for Mums in Business:

"I feel more fulfilled by my business than I have in seventeen years. I feel confident in my ability and secure in my pricing. Once you stop comparing yourself to the person up the road and start delivering something that genuinely matters, everything changes."

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

Jane Bilham is the founder of Vireo Tuition, an international tuition business that began with one tutor working in a local library and has grown into an oversubscribed global business with a team of over 60 tutors supporting families worldwide.

A former Assistant Vice Principal in an outstanding UK secondary school, Jane worked nationally as a Specialist Leader in Education before the birth of her son in 2013 prompted her to step away from senior leadership in search of a more flexible way of working. Over the last decade, her business has grown and evolved alongside her family life in a way that was never planned but always responsive.

In this episode, Jane shares the honest, organic and often accidental story of how a bit of pocket money tutoring in a local library became a global business, the identity crisis that came with stepping away from a career she loved and the pivotal moment her sister-in-law shone a light on what was possible.

💡 "For a long time I didn't feel like business was something that somebody like me did. Nobody in my family runs a business. But I just want to help people. And I suppose that's what any business owner wants to do." - Jane Bilham

In this conversation, we explore:

✨ How Jane's tutoring began with no plan and no vision board, simply as a way to reclaim a small piece of her identity after becoming a mother and stepping away from a senior leadership role she loved

✨ The stark identity shift from silencing a challenging classroom with the raise of an eyebrow to struggling to get a toddler to put their shoes on, and what that revealed about the real cost of the transition into motherhood

✨ Why the business grew entirely through word of mouth, from one student to £100 a week, without Jane ever consciously framing what she was building as a business

✨ The pivotal family conversation when her sister-in-law pointed out that she was, in fact, running a business, and the sleepless night that followed as Jane began to see what it could become

✨ How a single phone call from a contact in China transformed the business by opening up daytime tutoring hours, solving the problem of evenings and weekends that had never quite fit around her children

✨ The confidence work behind pricing a service-based business, from charging £25 an hour in a local library to understanding that clients are paying for expertise, experience and transformation, not just time

✨ What it took to hire her first tutor and delegate for the first time, and the anxiety of checking her phone through those early sessions to make sure everything was going well

✨ The rapid growth from one or two tutors to a team of over 60 in just twelve months, and what that pace of expansion demanded of Jane both practically and emotionally

✨ The honest reality of bringing her children along for the ride, including the moment she overheard her daughter proudly describe her as a businesswoman to a friend, and the harder moments when the balance has tipped too far towards work

✨ Why Jane founded Vireo Academy to help other tutors and parents access the same daytime flexibility that transformed her own family life, and what it means to her to accelerate that journey for someone else

About the Guest:

Jane Bilham is the founder of Vireo Tuition, an international tuition business supporting families worldwide with a team of over 60 tutors and Vireo Academy, through which she has supported over 1000 British tutors to access daytime international tuition opportunities.

A former Assistant Vice Principal and Specialist Leader in Education, she has represented UK education on international trade missions on behalf of the Department for Business and Trade. Jane is a mum of two who believes ambition and motherhood can be firm friends, given the right environment in which to flourish.

Visit the Vireo Tuition website for more information or can connect with Jane directly on Linkedin.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

Back in episode 59, I shared my plan for surviving the summer holidays as a self-employed parent... what I would keep going, what I would let go of and where I hoped to find some balance.

Now, in the final week of the holidays, it felt like the right time to check in and be honest about how that plan actually held up against six weeks of real life.

This episode is an audibly fatigued debrief. What I stuck to, which boundaries I broke almost immediately, the surprising wins and the ongoing tension between wanting to be fully present with my kids during the day and finding myself back on my laptop once they are asleep. It is also a question I am still sitting with myself: when you run your own business around your children, when is enough actually enough?

I reflect on:

✨ An honest recap of the summer holiday plan from episode 59 and how it played out, including the interview-free zone that lasted all of about five minutes before four interviews happened anyway

✨ What it was like recording solo episodes from a dark beach after bedtime or in a sweltering van, and why stripping everything back to just a microphone and a phone was more liberating than expected

✨ The re-recording of the Print Over Pixels course modules that did not happen this summer, and why some jobs genuinely need two uninterrupted days that simply do not exist in the school holidays

✨ The unexpected win of Meta ads performing brilliantly all summer, bringing a consistent stream of photographers into the world of the course without much active attention

✨ The last minute maternity shoot that broke the no bookings rule and why it was completely worth bending it for

✨ The psychological rollercoaster of trying to post from energy rather than obligation on social media, including the guilt that creeps in after a few quiet days and the temptation to post just to prove you are still there

✨ Three consecutive nights of eight to nine hours sleep in the van in Pembrokeshire and what that unexpected win revealed about how much rest her body actually needs

✨ Why burning the midnight oil is sometimes necessary and even welcome, especially when work feels like the first moment of the day that nobody needs anything from you, but why the hope is not to still be doing this in five or ten years

✨ The honest, open question for listeners: is working late at night a regular part of your routine, or is sleep something you protect fiercely, and where is your own line between enough and too much.

Takeaway for Mums in Business:

"As women, as mothers and as business owners, we cannot do everything, nor should we expect ourselves to. Some seasons call for burning the midnight oil, but it is always worth asking yourself - again and again - where your own line between enough and too much actually sits."

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

Helen Bullen is a business mentor, speaker and award-winning author who works with solo business owners who want to make a living doing what they love.

In 2020 she retired from clinical practice as an osteopath, having single-handedly built Fine Fettle Multi-Healthcare, a large, multi-award-winning clinic with over 20 practitioners and a full reception and admin team. In June 2021, following a routine mammogram, Helen was diagnosed with stage three triple negative breast cancer. After nine months of intense chemotherapy and surgery, she was given the all clear, completing treatment and reconstruction in 2023. She kept a diary throughout, which informed two deeply personal books about her experience.

In this episode, Helen shares the full story of building two clinics whilst raising her children through divorce, the moment she decided to close her practice just before her cancer diagnosis and how humour, resilience and a refusal to dwell for too long in the hard moments have carried her through every chapter. It is a wise, funny and genuinely moving conversation about doing business and life, entirely your own way.

💡 "You have to think of your business like a shop on a high street. If the blinds are down and there's no open sign, why are you expecting somebody to buy from you? You have to put yourself out there." — Helen Bullen

In this conversation, we explore:

✨ How Helen built her first osteopathy clinic from nothing, learned to embrace marketing despite hating it, and went on to found Fine Fettle Multi-Healthcare, a business she remains deeply proud of to this day

✨ The reality of building a business through divorce as a single mother with no financial support, including the honest and moving story of air beds, a bucket for a fridge and the moment her daughter's too-small shoes became the motivation to find two or three more clients

✨ Why necessity became one of the most powerful drivers of her success and how she looks back on that period with pride rather than regret

✨ The old-school marketing that built her business before social media existed, from community involvement to genuine relationship building, and why those principles still matter today

✨ Why authenticity beats perfection every time and Helen's refusal to pretend to be anything other than exactly who she is, on stage or on camera

✨ The decision to close her clinic just before lockdown, the negotiation that got her out of her lease with no penalty, and why the timing turned out to be extraordinarily fortunate given what came next

✨ The full story of her cancer diagnosis, the humour she found even in the hardest moments, and why she named her chemotherapy line Percy and her reconstructed body parts Agnes and Bea

✨ Her philosophy on emotional resilience, giving herself permission to have a proper meltdown before deliberately choosing to move forward, and why this is not about suppressing emotion but about not staying there too long

✨ How motherhood evolves through every chapter, from nappies to sports days to becoming a granny, and why ring-fencing what matters first and building your business around it is the only sustainable way to do this

✨ Her current mission to get on more stages as a midlife woman in business, the frustration that sparked it, and why she believes we should all lean into the things we are naturally good at rather than hiding them

About the Guest:

Helen Bullen is a business mentor, speaker and award-winning author who helps solo business owners build sustainable, profitable businesses around the lives they actually want to live. Having built and closed two successful osteopathy clinics and navigated a stage three cancer diagnosis with characteristic humour and resilience, she now focuses entirely on mentoring through her membership community, mastermind and retreat programme.

Known for her trademarked Kindly Blunt approach, she is also the author of four books and host of the podcast Exactly That. Helen is a mum of two grown-up children and a stepdaughter, and a proud new granny.

You can connect with Helen on Instagram and LinkedIn or via helenbullen.com.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

After I finished recording episode 68 with Human Design practitioner Emily Armitage, I was so fascinated by what came up during our conversation that I booked my own 'Alignment Hour' with her.

It actually turned out to be an 'Alignment 90 Minutes', during which time Emily gave me an unnervingly accurate breakdown of my personality, my patterns and shone a light on the very thing that could be hindering my marketing efforts for my business.

This week's solo episode takes you inside that session. I walk through what I learned about my Human Design, from my overall energy type to the specific chart elements that explain why I have spent years feeling multi-passionate, scattered and afraid to say what I really think.

It is an honest and personal account about what happens when you finally get permission to be exactly who you are.

In this episode, I reflect on:

✨ The specific block I identified before the session — leads and money — and why after 17 years in photography the issue was never the offer but always the marketing

✨ What it means to be a manifesting generator and why being told I am here to follow my passions and desires felt so validating after years of guilt about jumping between projects

✨ How sacral authority reframed a lifetime of being called impulsive or stubborn into something Emily called healthy self-trust

✨ The five one profile, the heretic and the researcher, and how it explained everything from a habit of chasing qualifications to being labelled a fixer in couples therapy

✨ Why ready is a decision, not a feeling, and how that realisation could have saved years of delay before launching the Print Over Pixels course

✨ The North node insight that my ideal audience wants to disrupt the status quo, and the realisation that I have been playing it too palatable and too safe in my own marketing as a result

✨ What it means to have an open head, an undefined solar plexus and an undefined root, and why these frictions explained a tendency towards people pleasing, overthinking and absorbing pressure that was never mine to carry

✨ The superpowers side of the chart, including a defined throat and G Center, and what it revealed about being designed for communication, direction and helping others find their way back to joy

✨ Why the whole experience has shifted how I want to show up in my marketing going forward, and my decision to stop being meek and apologetic about my own opinions

*Go back and listen to my conversation with Emily Armitage in episode 68 for the full picture on human design.

Takeaway for Mums in Business:

"If you knew what you were designed to do, what you were here to do, wouldn't you feel validated to just go and do it? Knowing your human design might help you unlock a path forward. On this occasion, it did for me."

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

Emily Armitage is a business and identity strategist for financially ambitious women building service-based businesses. Having become a fully fledged business owner and a mum at exactly the same time, she understands firsthand the particular chaos of building a business and a family simultaneously. She uses human design to co-create legacy businesses that work with her clients' energy and in their season of life, believing that misalignment in business has a measurable cost to our impact, our energy and our income.

In this episode, we explore what human design actually is and why Emily describes it as astrology with knobs on, how it differs from Myers-Briggs or Disc, why visibility is the block she encounters in almost every client and how her own journey through motherhood, neurodiversity, OCD and financial abuse shaped the work she now does in the world. It is a rich, honest and genuinely fascinating conversation about self-discovery, self-trust and building a business that actually fits who you are.

💡 "You're allowed to be how you are. That's not a bad thing. That's not a wrong thing. You're allowed." — Emily Armitage

In this conversation, we explore:

✨ Emily's entrepreneurial origin story - from contracting out household chores at age five with full terms and conditions to accidentally stopping a production line at a pump factory and realising quite quickly that admin was not her zone of genius

✨ How she discovered human design through a client in 2020 and why it was the first framework she had ever encountered that captured the depth, nuance and duality of who she truly is

✨ What human design actually is, why Emily describes it as astrology with knobs on and how combining astrology, the I Ching, Kabbalah, the chakra system and quantum physics creates a genuinely useful business tool rather than a vague personality label

✨ Why misalignment in business has a real and measurable cost and how understanding your energetic blueprint can help you cut through the shoulds, the industry norms and the advice that was never meant for someone in your season of life

✨ How Emily uses human design to help clients reframe their relationship with visibility — because visibility does not have to mean a spotlight on a stage and there are so many other ways to show up that might suit your design far better

✨ The connection between self-discovery, motherhood and business building and why navigating both at the same time is one of the fastest routes to rediscovering who you actually are beneath all the conditioning

✨ Emily's own experience of being diagnosed as autistic with OCD after becoming a mother and how losing her coping mechanisms overnight forced a level of self-awareness she had never had to develop before

✨ The deeply personal reason financial independence sits at the heart of everything she does and why she believes shifting money towards women who have done the work will shift the balance of power in society

✨ Why money is largely emotional and has almost nothing to do with maths and how our stories, relationships and experiences shape our relationship with it far more than any spreadsheet ever could

✨ What she would say to her eight year old self and why the permission to simply be who you are is something so many of us are only discovering in our thirties, forties and beyond

About the Guest:

Emily Armitage is a business and identity strategist who uses human design to help financially ambitious women build legacy businesses that work with their energy and in their season of life. A mum of one, she brings her own experience of neurodiversity, OCD, financial abuse and early motherhood to her work with enormous honesty and depth. Her mission is rooted in economic feminism and the belief that when women have more money and are doing the work, the world gets better for everyone.

You can find Emily at emilyarmitage.co.uk and connect with her on Instagram and LinkedIn.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

This week's solo episode started with a last minute photography enquiry that came through a Google search the day before we hit the road in the van. It led to a beautiful golden hour maternity shoot that evening and a very welcome reminder that people still use Google to find local service-based businesses.

It also sent me down a rabbit hole I have been meaning to explore for a while. My website, it turns out, was essentially invisible on Google.

In this episode I share what I found when I finally went in and looked properly, what I learned about the difference between SEO and the newer concept of GEO and why I ended up exporting all my data and having a very long conversation with Claude about what to do next. This is not a technical deep dive. It is the honest account of a time-poor, business-building mum trying to understand a fast-moving topic and take the next right steps without spending a fortune or losing her mind.

In this episode, I reflect on:

✨ The last minute photography inquiry that came through Google Maps and reminded me that organic search still matters, especially for local service-based businesses

✨ A trip down memory lane to the early days of my photography business, when blogging and SEO felt effortless and a single post about a whiskey pilgrimage to Islay led to two Scottish weddings

✨ How switching from WordPress to Squarespace during maternity leave and starting from scratch cost me years of backlinks and blog history, and why baby brain and big business decisions are not always a great combination

✨ What happened when I finally checked my Google Analytics in spring 2025 and discovered my website was not ranking in the first ten pages for anything

✨ The six hour SEO audit I invested in and what it taught me, including the revelation that H tags are not just decorative and that pages on your website can quietly compete against each other

✨ What GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization, actually is and how it differs from traditional SEO in a world where AI tools are increasingly answering search queries directly without sending anyone to your website

✨ Why I took all my analytics data and shared it with Claude, what that process looked like and the surprisingly useful list of prioritised next steps it gave me

✨ Why AI explaining AI felt like the most time-efficient solution for a solopreneur in the summer holidays who does not have hours to spend on YouTube upskilling herself in things that are not her zone of genius

✨ What is actually on my to-do list now and why I will be reporting back in six months to let you know whether any of it moved the needle

Takeaway for Mums in Business:

"If your website isn't working as hard for you as you'd like and SEO/GEO are not your zones of genius, you do have another tool at your disposal... and yes, that's AI."

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

Leila Green was raised in a family of entrepreneurs, started her first business at 26 and grew it to six figures without any outside investment. Then came the curveball that changed everything.  After two heartbreaking unexplained miscarriages, she became pregnant with triplets. Fast forward and Leila is now a mum to three threenagers, the founder of the F*** Mum Guilt movement, one of the UK's Top 100 Female Entrepreneurs and a co-author of Stacey Dooley's book on motherhood, Dear Minnie.

In her TedX talk, she identifies the epidemic of mum guilt simmering beneath the surface of modern motherhood, reporting that 95% of mothers feel it and one in four admit they avoid leaving the house with their children for fear of being judged.

In this episode, we explore why mum guilt is far more than something to joke about over coffee and what it truly takes to break up with it for good.

💡 "I call it the should show. You should baby-wean, you should breastfeed, you should co-sleep, you shouldn't co-sleep. It's a people pleaser's nightmare!" - Leila Green

In this conversation, we explore:

✨ Leila's journey from starting her first business at 26 to growing it to six figures, navigating the pandemic and then facing the life-changing experience of two miscarriages followed by a triplet pregnancy

✨ What it felt like to go from being a footloose and fancy-free entrepreneur to building a business with three babies at her feet and how her whole relationship with ambition and time was forced to evolve

✨ How the F*** Mum Guilt movement was born and why Leila felt so strongly that the casual way we talk about mum guilt was masking a genuinely serious problem for maternal mental health

✨ The statistic that should stop all of us: 95% of mothers feel mum guilt and one in four avoid leaving the house with their children for fear of being judged

✨ Why societal pressures, throwaway comments from strangers and the rise of the parenting guru have created an environment in which mothers are set up to feel like they are never enough

✨ The myth of the perfect baby and why so much of the advice mothers receive ignores the reality that every baby and every family is completely different

✨ How social media amplifies the pressure on mothers and what Leila believes we can do to protect our mental health and reclaim our own instincts

✨ Why compassion over comparison is the antidote and what it actually looks like to put that into practice in the messiness of real motherhood

✨ How Leila balances her own significant ambitions with the reality of raising three children at the same pace and what self-belief has to do with making it work

✨ Her future aspirations for the F*** Mum Guilt movement and why she believes the conversation is only just getting started

About the Guest:

Leila Green is the founder of the F*** Mum Guilt movement, one of the UK's Top 100 Female Entrepreneurs and a co-author of Stacey Dooley's book on motherhood Dear Minnie. A serial entrepreneur who built her first business to six figures without investment, she is now a mother of triplet threenagers and one of the most important voices in the conversation about maternal mental health and mum guilt. Her TedX talk How to Break Up with Mum Guilt for Good has reached thousands of mothers and her work has been featured across Sky News, BBC Radio, Stylist, Metro and OK! magazine.

You can find Leila on Substack and on Instagram at @tripped_up_mama.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

This week's solo episode is a little different. It is the story of a project that pretty much took over my life in 2018 and 2019.  A project I have been thinking about sharing ever since a recent visit stirred up a lot of mixed feelings.

It is the story of the D-Day 75 Garden, a commemorative show garden at RHS Chelsea in 2019, conceived to celebrate the Normandy veterans of the Second World War on home soil during what would be the final milestone anniversary with any significant number of veterans still here to tell their story. It is the story of how "we" (I go into who we is in the episode) with no fundraising experience, no budget and a very big idea found the right people, asked for what they needed and somehow made it happen. And I hope it is a story that gives you permission to pursue the mad idea that will not leave you alone.

In this episode, I reflect on:

✨ The backstory of D-Day Revisited, the charity my dad and I co-founded, and why the 75th anniversary felt like the moment to do something extraordinary on home soil to celebrate the veterans who had given so much

✨ How the idea for a commemorative show garden at RHS Chelsea came to me during the 74th anniversary trip to France in 2018 and why I almost talked myself out of pursuing it

✨ The moment I discovered the entry deadline was just weeks away and sent that email to the RHS anyway, which set everything in motion

✨ How garden designer John Everiss and fundraiser Peter Deaman came into the project and why neither of them should have said yes to two people with no money and no experience, but did

✨ The 75 Reasons campaign - one of the ideas I am most proud of - and the moment in conversation when it all clicked into place in a way that still gives me the chills

✨ What it actually felt like to be in front of a camera for the first time with no training or experience, because the promotional video had to be made and someone had to do it

✨ The relentless reality of fundraising - seeking 75 sponsors at five thousand pounds each with no guarantee and no one big cheque to save the day and what that process taught me about courage and asking

✨ The story of Bill Pendell and Joe Cattini, the two veterans at the heart of the garden, and why losing Bill in December 2018 only made us more determined to see it through

✨ The moment during the Chelsea Flower Show when I looked around and realised we had actually done it and what that felt like after nine months of not knowing if we ever would

✨ How the garden was moved to Arromanches in Normandy overlooking Gold Beach and what it was like to visit it seven years on, still there, still sparking conversations

✨ Why the greatest lesson from this whole experience is simply this: the trick is to ask

Takeaway for Mums in Business:

You can have mad ideas that nobody expects to come to fruition and you can make them happen. You can look at what seems to be an impossible sum of money and you can find it. You can be brave and ask for what you need to make your dream a reality.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

Ella McKay is a self-proclaimed food obsessive, a marketing professional turned entrepreneur and the co-founder of FATSO, a premium dark chocolate brand on a mission to prove that dark chocolate can be every bit as fun, flavourful and full of personality as its milkier counterpart.

The idea was born in lockdown from a conversation about how boring and overly serious dark chocolate had become. What started as a side hustle to shake up the category quickly revealed Ella's entrepreneurial instincts and she soon left the world of big corporate brands behind to drive momentum behind FATSO full time.

In this episode, Ella shares the story of how it all came together, what the leap from corporate to founder actually felt like and how positive psychology, maternal instinct and a willingness to trust herself have shaped both her business and her approach to motherhood.

💡 "Instinct is your most powerful tool when becoming a mother. Don't be afraid of marching to the beat of your own drum. Don't be afraid of being different." - Ella McKay

In this conversation, we explore:

✨ How a lockdown conversation about the sorry state of dark chocolate became the seed of a global brand and what those early side hustle days looked like before Ella took the leap full time

✨ The decision to leave a successful corporate marketing career behind to back herself and FATSO and what gave her the confidence to make that call

✨ Why partnering with Luker Chocolate in Colombia was about more than supply chain - it was about finding a partner whose values and purpose aligned with the kind of business Ella wanted to build

✨ The reality of navigating early motherhood and entrepreneurship simultaneously and how she found her footing across both

✨ How Ella approaches the balancing act of work and family life and why rigid rules have never been her style

✨ The role of instinct in both parenting and business and why millennial mothers in particular need to reconnect with their intuition after a lifetime of being told what they should do

✨ How positive psychology shapes the way Ella leads her business and her family and why that philosophy feels like a natural fit for both

✨ Why embracing individuality in motherhood matters and what she would say to any mum who feels like she is doing it wrong

✨ The advice she would give her younger self and what it reveals about confidence, identity and trusting the path that lights you up

About the Guest:

Ella McKay is the co-founder of FATSO, a premium dark chocolate brand built on the belief that dark chocolate should be as fun, flavourful and full of personality as any other kind. With a background in marketing for some of the world's biggest brands, she brought both commercial expertise and genuine passion to building FATSO from a lockdown side hustle into a globally stocked product. Ella is a mum who leads with positive psychology, trusts her instincts and believes that doing so is one of the most powerful things you can model to your children.

You can find FATSO chocolate at sofatso.com and connect with Ella on LinkedIn.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

This solo episode is coming to you from a converted VW Crafter in Tours, France - heavily loaded with me, my partner and two small children with all their associated paraphernalia, snacks galore, an expanding laundry bag and a portable penguin potty!

Van life has this idyllic reputation, doesn't it? The footloose digital nomad, laptop open, bikini on, six figure launches via personal hotspot as the sun sets behind the screen.

This is not that. It is the reality of van life as a mum of two on her way to being middle aged, who has not yet figured out how to do a four figure launch from her own home, let alone from a converted campervan in a French heatwave.

In this episode I share the backstory of how our van came to be, what life on the road actually looks like with little people in tow and why, despite all of it, I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.

I reflect on:

✨ The backstory of the van - from secondhand shell bought on a loan in September 2024 to a 95% finished camper that has cost significantly more than anticipated and means we must now holiday in it forever to justify the expenditure

✨ Why the reality of van life with small children looks nothing like the digital nomad fantasy, from a swollen knee on day two and abandoned makeup by day three to a routine that shifted three hours in either direction because of the heat

✨ Why working on the road as a solopreneur is considerably harder than imagined, with campsite wi-fi that is reliably hopeless, personal hotspot that drops at the worst moments and an audience of two in the back seats with a constant stream of demands

✨ The unglamorous reality of being primary caregiver, chief navigator, planner, referee and cook whilst also trying to keep a business ticking over, and the moments when you realise none of your own basic needs have been met since you got in the van that morning

✨ Why the chaos is absolutely worth it - the memories being made, the rituals slowly bedding in and the joy of seeing it all through the eyes of two small girls who are simply happy that everyone is together

✨ How the van creates a unique opportunity for genuine reconnection as a family and why Hold On To Your Kids by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté has shaped the thinking behind it

✨ Why curiosity, adventure and showing your children that different people live in different ways is one of the most powerful things you can give them, even if right now it mostly means fresh baguettes from the boulangerie every morning

Takeaway for Mums in Business:

When you run your own business, if you stop, the business stops. But sometimes stopping is exactly what you and your family need. The content can fall off a cliff for a week. The emails can wait. The memories you are making right now cannot be recreated.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

Emma Bardwell is the founder and managing director of BardWood Support Services, a fast-growing recruitment business specialising in security and facilities management. Driven by a desire to create flexibility for her young family, she left her career in recruitment in 2015 and began building her business from the ground up with two daughters aged two and five and no guarantee of where it would lead. What began as a way to be at the school gates has grown into a well-oiled, multi-location business with operations across the UK and an international support centre in India.

In this episode, Emma shares the honest story of building BardWood from nothing, navigating a traditionally male-dominated industry as a woman with two small children and the guilt that came with those early years of phone-in-hand, always-on entrepreneurship. She also reflects on what her daughters actually remember and what it has meant for who they are becoming.

💡 "My girls don't remember me being absent, they just remember me being busy." - Emma Bardwell

In this conversation, we explore:

✨ How Emma spotted a gap in the security recruitment market through a chance Facebook conversation and went from zero to her first major client in a matter of weeks

✨ Why she made the bold decision to leave her first business relationship behind to pursue an industry accreditation that would open much bigger doors, with no client waiting on the other side

✨ The reality of those early years of growth - from managing three phones and spreadsheets at her grandfather's hospice bedside to filling shifts on Christmas Day while her daughters opened their presents

✨ Why being a woman in a male-dominated industry turned out to be a breath of fresh air rather than a barrier and how her honesty, hunger and can-do energy set her apart from the egos in the room

✨ The moment she realised she needed to bring in a business partner and how handing over control to someone she trusted transformed both the business and her capacity to be present for her family

✨ Setting up a 24-hour operations centre in India and why trusting her partner Nilesh to make it happen was one of the best decisions she ever made for the business

✨ The identity shift from founder and micromanager to strategic leader and ideas generator and why that transition was as hard as it was necessary

✨ Her honest reflection on mum guilt, being physically present but mentally elsewhere and why the early years looked very different to the flexibility she had imagined when she started

✨ What her daughters, now 17 and 19, actually remember about their mother's years of building and why it turns out they don't remember her being absent - they remember her being busy

✨ How watching their mother build a business in a man's world has shaped both daughters' belief in what is possible for them as women

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

This solo episode is coming to you from a bench on the shoreline of Brittany, recorded after a day of full sun, a generous glass of wine at dinner and several failed attempts to get the usual tech setup working from a campervan.

It was a perfectly imperfect way to mark the first birthday of the Mum Means Business podcast. A year ago I was a 39 year old mum of two with tech overwhelm, raging imposter syndrome and a glint of excitement pressing publish on the very first episode. I had no audience, no downloads, no financial backing and no real idea what I was doing. All I had was a healthy fear of regret and a hunch that I would love it.

In this episode I reflect on the three biggest lessons the past year of podcasting has taught me, share my download stats because I wish someone had done this transparently for me when I was starting out and say a very heartfelt thank you to everyone who has chosen to listen in.

In this episode, I reflect on:

✨ Why starting the podcast felt like the scariest and most necessary thing I could have done at 40 and how the decision to take action when I felt stuck changed everything

✨ The moment I bought Jenna Kutcher's podcast lab, took my first small steps and how those thoughts of who are you to start a podcast have grown quieter with every passing month

✨ Why we were never supposed to do this alone and how this podcast has helped me find and connect with women who truly get what it means to build a business whilst raising small humans

✨ The antidote that honest, unfiltered conversations about the messy reality of entrepreneurship provide to the curated and filtered version we are sold everywhere else

✨ The download stats I am sharing because I could not find enough of this kind of transparency when I was starting out - from 1000 downloads at four months to nearly 5000 at the one year mark

✨ Why the quote about overestimating what you can do in a year but underestimating what you can do in a decade has never felt more relevant and what building the D-Day Revisited charity over 11 years taught me about the long game

✨ Why things take time, why that is okay and why focusing on the journey rather than the destination has made this whole experience all the richer

Takeaway for Mums in Business:

You overestimate what you can do in a year but underestimate what you can do in a decade. Things take time. If you can take action, stretch your comfort zone and find the people who truly get what you are trying to do, the rest will follow.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

Beth Heyer is a single mum who launched Babysitting Connection from her kitchen table in Texas in January 2020, six weeks before the world shut down. By 2022 she had scaled to over 700 families across six locations and been named Austin Businesswoman Employer of the Year.

She has since expanded her vision with Petsitting Connection and now dedicates a significant part of her time to empowering other women to step into entrepreneurship with the same audacity and commitment she brought to her own business from day one.

In this episode, Beth shares the full story of how Babysitting Connection was born, how COVID transformed it within weeks of launch and what it has taken to build a well-oiled, data-driven business that supports her life as a single mother rather than competing with it. It is a conversation about delegation, abundance, going all in and why no man has ever called his business a side hustle.

💡 "No man has ever called his business a side hustle. Women don't give themselves the courage to say, this is it. This is going to be what pays my bills. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but in five years, this is it." - Beth Heyer

In this conversation, we explore:

✨ How Beth launched Babysitting Connection six weeks before COVID hit and why the pandemic, rather than derailing her, accelerated the business in ways she could never have planned for

✨ Why she hired a social media manager and a sitter onboarding specialist before she ever paid herself, and what that decision reveals about investing in your zone of genius from the very beginning

✨ The power of delegating the tasks you hate or are not good at and why thinking carefully about what your time is worth changes everything

✨ Why Beth went all in on Babysitting Connection from day one with no other eggs in any other baskets and why she believes women in particular struggle to give themselves the audacity to do the same

✨ The word she hates almost as much as mum boss and mamapreneur — side hustle — and why no man has ever used it to describe his business

✨ How the membership model creates predictable recurring revenue that takes the anxiety out of the ebbs and flows of running a service-based business and allows you to plan, staff and scale with confidence

✨ Why you should validate your business idea with real customers first before perfecting your brand, building an app or fine-tuning your business plan

✨ How five years of data has allowed Beth's team to predict seasonal trends, staff accordingly and run a business that fills 99.9% of its sits every month

✨ The abundance mindset that has defined Beth's approach to her industry — sharing openly with competitors because when the waters rise all the ships rise

✨ Why Beth is building a business she intends to keep until her kids tell her they don't want it and what that vision reveals about a more feminine, purposeful approach to entrepreneurship

About the Guest:

Beth Heyer is the founder of Babysitting Connection and Petsitting Connection, membership-based childcare and pet care agencies operating across six locations in Texas. A single mum of two, she built her business from a kitchen table investment and grew it to serve over 700 families while maintaining clear boundaries for her children and herself.

She now works with other women in the childcare industry to help them launch, streamline and scale their own agencies. Beth is a passionate advocate for the membership business model, the abundance mindset and women backing themselves with the same boldness they would encourage in everyone else.

You can find Beth at bethheyer.com, babysittingconnection.com and petsittingconnection.com.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

This solo episode lands on the first day of the summer holidays for most children across England and it feels like exactly the right moment to talk honestly about what this season actually looks like when you are a mother with a business to run.

As you'll hear there are no perfectly scheduled content calendars, completed to-do lists or clean skirting boards here! Just the reality of sliding into six or seven weeks of summer with work still very much on the agenda, a van packed for France and a promise made to a five year old that this summer will count. If you are heading into the summer holidays feeling anything less than prepared, this one is for you.

In this episode, I reflect on:

✨ Why the build-up to the summer holidays can feel as pressured and frantic as Christmas and how the stories we tell ourselves about having to be ready can make it worse

✨ An honest breakdown of what I will still be doing over the summer — from publishing episodes and nurturing my email list to checking in on Meta ads, doing my day job and re-recording the entire Print Over Pixels course for a September launch

✨ Why I have already broken my one summer boundary of no podcast recordings and what that reveals about the ongoing work of actually holding the limits we set for ourselves

✨ The Meta ads lesson learned last month about what happens when you stop paying attention to something you are spending money on and why checking in weekly is now non-negotiable

✨ Why I am pressing pause on the photography business for the whole of August and why choosing what not to do is just as important as deciding what to do

✨ The thing I will not be doing this summer - giving myself a hard time and why that is the most important promise on the list

✨ The Instagram versus reality piece and why the golden hour summer holiday content you are scrolling through is not the full picture for most of us

✨ My slightly embarrassing but genuinely effective tool for shifting comparison energy involving a silent disco and Celine Dion

✨ The one promise I am making to my daughter for August and why four full days just the two of us feels like the win worth working towards

Takeaway for Mums in Business:

If you're working more than you'd like this summer, you're not alone. If you wish you could press pause and be entirely present with your kids but can't quite get there yet, you're not alone. We are all at different stages of this game and that is okay.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

Claire Hill is not your usual business coach. She identifies as the 'Queen of Unstoppable Self-Belief' and works specifically with the "I thought I'd be making more money by now" crew - teaching women in business how to stop leaking money, energy and power so their income can finally match how epic they are at what they do.

A mum of one, Claire understands the real, messy, powerful reality of building a business alongside motherhood, and her deep knowledge around money mindset means she quickly identifies the beliefs that keep brilliant women playing small - including the idea that wanting more money somehow makes them selfish, less present or worst of all, a bad mum!

In this episode, we explore Claire's remarkable journey from a childhood shaped by loss and financial hardship through six business ventures to the coaching practice she was always meant to build. It is a conversation about money as energy, warrior energy, honey money and the radical act of creating space in your life so that abundance has somewhere to land.

💡 "There is no space in a busy life for money energy to come in. If you want more money, you have to create room for it." - Claire Hill

In this conversation, we explore:

✨ Claire's journey from a childhood marked by the loss of her father at eight, young caring responsibilities and financial hardship to becoming a multi-business founder and the Queen of Self-Belief

✨ Why money is simply one form of energy and how reframing it as pasta — yes, really — can dissolve some of the shame and fear that keeps women from wanting it openly

✨ The stories handed down through generations, religion and patriarchy that make women feel that wanting money is greedy, selfish or incompatible with being a good mother and why those stories are worth dismantling

✨ How our upbringing shapes our money mindset in ways we often don't recognise until we start building a business and the blocks show up in real time

✨ What warrior energy actually means, why every mother in business needs a full pot of it and how to transfer worry energy into the kind of drive and resilience that sustains you

✨ Why the hardest work in business is not doing more but getting clear on what you actually want to be known for and giving yourself permission to do only that

✨ The concept of honey money and why becoming your most vivid, authentic self is the thing that makes money want to stick to you

✨ Why doing less, saying no more and creating genuine space in your life is not laziness but the strategic move that allows money energy to actually get in

✨ The business leaks test and how identifying the patterns that are quietly draining your energy, confidence and income is the fastest way to start making more

✨ Why self-worth is the foundation of everything and the unexpected moment that shifted Claire's relationship with her own

About the Guest:

Claire Hill is the Queen of Self-Belief and founder of the Bank programme, a money mindset and business coaching experience for women who know they should be making more money and are ready to find out exactly what is getting in the way. With a background spanning social care, education and six business ventures, she brings both lived experience and deep intuitive insight to her work. A mum of one, Claire is on a mission to help women stop leaking money, energy and power and start building businesses that feel as powerful as they are.

You can find Claire on Instagram at @iamclairehill, via her website clairehill.uk or binge her content on the No Rest for the Vivid podcast.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

This week's solo episode takes you behind the scenes of one of the most fun projects I have worked on this year - the rebrand of the Mum Means Business podcast and my photography business, Victoria Phipps Photography.

I share why I decided the time was right to invest in a professional graphic designer, what the process actually looked like and how working with the brilliant Liz Mosley of Building Your Brand helped me to see the threads running through everything I do for the very first time.

But this episode is about more than design. It is also about confidence, perfectionism and what it means to launch something before it is perfect because you finally trust yourself enough to know that the work itself is what matters most.

In this episode, I reflect on:

✨ Why the visual identity of both my photography business and the podcast had started to feel like a different version of me and what finally prompted me to invest in a professional rebrand

✨ How I found Liz Mosley and why the trust built through years of listening to her podcast made choosing her as a designer feel completely natural — the chocolate in the post helped too

✨ The concept Liz came back with that stopped me in my tracks — threads — and how that single idea helped me see that motherhood, business, family, freedom, flexibility, community, connection and impact were running through everything I do

✨ Why the squiggles and colours of the new brand feel like a child's drawing in the best possible way - playful, positive and genuinely cheering to work with every single day

✨ How the eight week design process unfolded, from initial concepts through font hierarchies and logo variations to a brand that could stretch across multiple businesses and platforms

✨ The decision to launch the brand on the 50th episode even though the websites were not fully updated yet and why letting go of that perfectionism felt like a genuine milestone

✨ How my relationship with perfectionism has shifted over ten months of podcasting and what that reveals about confidence, competence and the slow but real work of rebuilding yourself after early motherhood

✨ The connection between this rebrand story and Yinka Ewuola's episode on legitimacy, websites and trusting your offer

Takeaway for Mums in Business:

Confidence can drop off a cliff in early motherhood and for a lot of women it can feel like a struggle to get it back. I've learned that confidence builds when you take action. Starting this podcast has led to healing conversations with other women which have helped to rebuild my confidence piece by piece. Previously I'd have killed myself to get this brand fully rolled out for launch day. But even as a self-confessed control enthusiast, I promise it's possible to let go of perfectionism and trust that the quality of your work is what matters most.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

Michelle Newman is a business transformation specialist, founder of Flow Business Support and an award-winning advocate for women in business. Combining years of corporate expertise with a passion for entrepreneurship and self-care, she helps founders to streamline operations, reduce overwhelm and scale sustainably without the stress.

A mum of one and stepmum of seven, Michelle's own journey into entrepreneurship was born not from a carefully laid plan but from a significant life change. What followed was years of building, reacting, pivoting and slowly, intentionally finding her way to a business she genuinely belongs in.

In this episode, we explore that journey in full - divorce, sepsis, breathwork, personal branding and the moment Michelle realised she had been working for her business rather than the other way around. It is a deeply honest conversation about survival mode, self-care, celebrating small wins and what it truly takes to scale with ease when life is happening all around you.

💡 "Give yourself the grace to recognise that things are not going to happen overnight. Those shifts are going to happen, but they might be micro movements towards your goals." — Michelle Newman

In this conversation, we explore:

✨ How Michelle's entrepreneurial journey began not by choice but by necessity following the breakdown of her marriage and a shared business, and what it took to keep going as a single mum with a young son to provide for

✨ The physical and emotional cost of holding everything together in crisis mode, including a hospitalisation with sepsis that became a turning point she could no longer ignore

✨ How she discovered breathwork through one of her first clients and why that single session was the moment something shifted on a level she hadn't anticipated and couldn't have planned for

✨ Why finding your one restorative ritual and protecting space for it regularly is not a luxury but an act of care for everyone around you, not just yourself

✨ The evolution of Flow from a virtual assistance service into a full digital operations consultancy, including the moment she realised she had accidentally built a business she didn't enjoy

✨ Why scaling too fast without intention can leave you feeling like an employee of your own business and what Michelle did to strip it back and rebuild it on her own terms

✨ The decision to step into personal branding after years of hiding behind a business name and why that shift finally made her feel like she belonged inside her own business

✨ The ta-da list — a simple but genuinely powerful practice of recording what you actually achieved each week rather than what you didn't, and why Michelle has turned it into a notebook you can download and use yourself

✨ Why celebrating small wins is not indulgent but essential, particularly for mothers in business who are operating under entirely different constraints to everyone else

✨ The three things Michelle tells her son to strive for every day and why they are just as relevant to women in business as they are to children finding their way in the world

🎁 Download Michelle's printable Ta-Da Lists using discount code MUMLOVE, or find her Ta-Da Notebook on Amazon.

About the Guest:

Michelle Newman is the founder of Flow, a digital operations consultancy offering wraparound business support to entrepreneurs who are ready to scale with ease.

With a background in corporate project management and process improvement, she brings both technical expertise and deep personal understanding to her work with founders. An award-winning advocate for women in business, speaker and community champion, Michelle is a mum of one and stepmum of seven who has built her business through some of life's most challenging seasons and come out the other side with a business she truly belongs in.

You can connect with Michelle via Instagram at @michellenewmanflow or visit flowbusinesssupport.com.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

This is an honest reflection on one of the most repeated pieces of advice in the online business world: be consistent. Show up every day, post without fail, feed the algorithm!

For a long time, I did exactly that. I posted on Instagram every single day for 14 months while navigating two babies under two, a new home, financial pressure and a new version of my photography business I was desperately trying to make work. At the end of it, I had 600 followers and a lot of cringe-worthy content to look back on.

In this episode I share what that experience taught me, why I took the same consistency mindset into the podcast and what I've realised now I'm on the other side of 50 episodes. This episode is about energy, capacity, messaging and the quiet but radical decision to stop doing something that is not working just because you have always been told it should.

I reflect on:

✨ Why consistency in marketing matters and the arguments for it, from algorithm benefits to building trust and failing faster through testing, but why consistency alone is not the whole story

✨ The honest account of posting every day for 14 months with frantic energy, unclear messaging and a following that barely grew, and what that reveals about the difference between showing up and showing up well

✨ Why my energy was the missing piece during those early years of relaunching my business, and how that frantic, unfocused output was visible to anyone landing on my account

✨ The realisation after 50 podcast episodes that doing the same thing and expecting different results is worth questioning, and why a milestone can be the perfect moment to change course

✨ Why the power has been in the pause, in the conversations, in the connections and in the moments of genuine reflection rather than in relentless daily output

✨ The shift from consistency at all costs to marketing that feels aligned with my energy and honest about my capacity as a mother running multiple strands of work

✨ Where I am choosing to be consistent going forward - the podcast, the photography education email list and the family business marketing - and where I am giving myself permission to let go

✨ The key takeaway from *Atomicon that landed hard: doing something is not always better than doing nothing, and why that reframe changes everything

✨ Why quality in content does not mean beautiful or polished but means connection, clarity of message and the human to human moment that makes someone think yes, me too

*Listen to my Atomicon 2026 debrief in full

Takeaway for Mums in Business:

Consistency and discipline have their place. But if you are pouring all of your spare energy into content that is not moving the needle, that is not necessarily better than doing nothing.

Give yourself permission to pause, reflect and come back with the energy that is actually going to land.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

Kendall Marie Platt is a horticultural therapist, writer, speaker and founder of Adventures with Flowers. She brings together horticultural therapy and sensory-led garden design to create spaces that don't just look beautiful but actively quieten the mind, restore the nervous system and support the body and brain in a way that no amount of productivity hacking ever could.

As a mother of two who has navigated burnout herself, she brings both professional expertise and deeply personal understanding to her work supporting women to create their own garden sanctuary and step off the hamster wheel before it's too late.

In this episode, we explore Kendall's path from burnout to a business built around restoration and joy, and why getting your hands in the soil might be one of the most radical acts of self-care a mother in business can choose.

💡 "I want my kids to see me taking care of myself, because I want them to take care of themselves. I have to show them because it's not enough to tell them." — Kendall Marie Platt

In this conversation, we explore:

✨ Kendall's personal journey from burnout to building a business rooted in horticultural therapy and why that experience is at the heart of everything she now offers

✨ How she combines horticultural therapy and sensory-led garden design to create spaces that restore rather than just impress and what that looks and feels like in practice

✨ The link between mindfulness, nature and mental health and why the garden offers something that traditional wellness practices often cannot

✨ Why so many women tie their self-worth to their productivity and how breaking that cycle is one of the most powerful things the garden can teach us

✨ The role of self-trust and intuition in both gardening and in life and why we so often wait for permission that was never ours to give away in the first place

✨ Finding flow in nature and what the rhythms of the garden can teach us about pacing ourselves in business and in motherhood

✨ Why accessible gardening is not about having a large space, a green thumb or a formal qualification but simply about showing up and starting

✨ The importance of daily joy as a genuine act of self-preservation rather than a luxury to be earned once everything else is done

✨ How reconnecting with nature can shift our relationship with our own nervous system and begin to interrupt the patterns that lead to burnout

✨ The generational patterns that Kendall has worked to break and what she hopes to model for her children through her relationship with the garden and with herself

About the Guest:

Kendall Marie Platt is a horticultural therapist, writer, speaker and founder of Adventures with Flowers. She works with women to create garden sanctuaries that support their mental health, lower their stress levels and provide a daily rhythm of restoration. Through her one to one programme, garden-along sessions and membership the Seed, she offers a practical, accessible and deeply therapeutic alternative to the burnout culture that so many mothers are navigating. A mother of two, Kendall is a passionate disrupter of the story that we need permission or accreditation before we can begin to tend to ourselves.

You can connect with Kendall via Instagram and the Adventures with Flowers website.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

Atomicon is the largest sales and marketing conference in the UK for small businesses and this year I finally went for the first time. It was not a smooth run up.

Between taking the hit on a non-refundable train ticket and a last-minute rebooking to make it home for my daughter's first ever sports day, a soft brand launch timed for the exact same day and a train journey spent trying to learn Adobe Express for the first time, it felt less like a treat and more like something I was squeezing into the cracks of a very full life. But I'm so glad I made the effort!

In this solo episode I share what the day actually looked like, the talks that challenged and inspired me and the moment I had to choose between walking away or being brave enough to ask for what I wanted.

In this episode, I reflect on:

✨ The tension between mum life and business life that played out even before Atomicon began - from sports day versus conference tickets to late night brand launches and early morning trains

✨ How Erin Thomas Wong's fringe event the evening before set the perfect tone - a smaller, more intimate space full of like-minded women that eased me gently into the bigger experience ahead

✨ Andrew and Pete's 90-10 rule and why their challenge to go all in on one clear focus landed uncomfortably for someone currently spreading energy across multiple businesses and projects

✨ The talks that stopped me in my tracks, particularly Amelia Sordell on the founder brand and why craving attention for your business is not the same as craving it for yourself

✨ The moment outside the talk where I waited 45 minutes, nearly talked myself out of it and plucked up the courage to ask Amelia Sordell if she would come on this podcast

✨ Ann Handley closing the day with a brilliant talk about the importance of knowing when to slow down in a world that is constantly telling us to hurry up

✨ Why the energy, the generosity and the sheer friendliness of 1500 small business owners in one room is something every person building a business in isolation needs to experience at least once

GET YOUR 2027 TICKET HERE!

Takeaway for Mums in Business:

There will always be a reason not to go... the logistics, the guilt, the sense that you are squeezing it in rather than savouring it. But showing up for the connections, the inspiration and the moments where you surprise yourself with your own bravery, is almost always worth it.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

Caroline Britton is an intuitive coach, author and agent of change for leaders, entrepreneurs and public figures who are ready to transform their lives. For over 14 years she worked in global consultancy, during which time she became a mother of two. Four years ago she made the decision to lean into her intuitive gifts, bet on herself and use her abilities to help people connect to who they truly are beyond the conditioning, the labels, the ego, the pain and the limiting beliefs that keep so many of us small.

In this episode, we explore Caroline's journey from feeling stuck to living with purpose and fulfilment, and what it truly takes to navigate change without self-abandonment. It is a conversation about stillness, intuition, emotional intelligence and the quiet but radical act of coming home to yourself.

💡 "When you truly meet yourself, you can truly meet others and you can truly meet life." - Caroline Britton

In this conversation, we explore:

✨ Caroline's journey from 14 years in global consultancy to becoming an intuitive coach and what the decision to bet on herself actually looked and felt like from the inside

✨ How she navigated the identity shift of leaving a successful corporate career to build something entirely new and the belief barriers she had to overcome along the way

✨ The evolution of her coaching practice and why the most powerful work she does with clients begins not with strategy but with stillness and self-connection

✨ Why authenticity in business is not just a nice-to-have but the foundation everything sustainable is built on, and what gets in the way of it for so many women

✨ The identity and belief barriers that keep people feeling stuck and the process Caroline uses to help clients move through them towards clarity and purpose

✨ What it means to dream big and how to begin reconnecting with your own desires when busyness, conditioning and self-doubt have made them hard to hear

✨ The ripple effect of personal growth and why the work we do on ourselves quietly changes everything around us, including how we show up for our children

✨ The value of connection and asking for help, and why so many high-achieving women resist both far longer than they should

✨ Parenting with awareness and how developing emotional intelligence in ourselves shapes the way we nurture it in our children

✨ The simple but powerful exercises Caroline uses to help clients reconnect with their dreams, including writing a letter from fear and a letter from love

About the Guest:

Caroline Britton is an intuitive coach, author and magic maker who helps leaders, entrepreneurs and public figures wake up to a life of freedom, purpose and joy. With a background in global consultancy and over four years of full-time coaching, she has transformed thousands of lives through her work, her writing and her ability to help people connect to who they really are beneath the noise. She is the author of Coming Home to You and has been featured in Forbes, The Telegraph, GQ and Red Magazine. A mother of two, Caroline is passionate about helping people navigate change without self-abandonment.

You can connect with Caroline via her website, Instagram or LinkedIn.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

This is the first solo episode of Mum Means Business. No guest, no carefully crafted bio to introduce, no one else to bounce off. Just me, unfiltered, taking up space in my own podcast for the first time.

This episode marks the start of a new weekly format. Each Friday, I'll share a short and honest reflection on whatever is on my mind that week across my photography business, my work teaching photographers to lead with print in the digital age, the podcast itself and my role in the family business my father established over twenty years ago. Layered on top of all of that, as always, is family life with its highs, lows and everything in between.

In this first ramble, I open up about why it has taken me so long to talk about my own work on a podcast built to celebrate other mothers in business and what finally shifted to bring about this new chapter.

In this episode, I reflect on:

✨ Why building a podcast to celebrate other women's businesses made it feel almost impossible to talk about my own

✨ The internalised story that to be accepted, women should dim themselves rather than take up space, and how deeply that belief can sit beneath the surface

✨ Why authenticity is hard precisely because it asks us to override a lifetime of conditioning that we are too much

✨ How the conversations on this podcast have become a genuine source of comfort and solidarity while navigating my own identity shifts in early motherhood

✨ The decision to start these solo episodes as a way of practising what I preach, and giving myself permission to take up the same space I encourage other mothers to claim

Takeaway for Mums in Business:

The more we normalise the mess that's going on behind the scenes, the better and that's why this podcast exists. The fact is that business-building takes time and when you're a Mum, it can take even longer. It's a rollercoaster, but we're all riding it together!

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

For 49 episodes, I've been the one asking the questions. For episode 50, the tables are turned!

Putting me in the hot seat is Sarah Garrod.  Sarah is a qualified journalist, founder of copywriting practice Put In A Good Word and one of my oldest friends. We met on our first day of secondary school at the age of eleven and have navigated teenage years, university, adventures in business and the complexities of modern motherhood side by side ever since.

In this milestone episode, Sarah puts her journalism skills to work and interviews me about my own story - from co-founding the D-Day Revisited charity to building a photography business across the analogue and digital ages, dipping my toes into the online business space and the messy, honest reality of navigating entrepreneurship alongside early motherhood... this is a conversation I admits felt self-indulgent and uncomfortable in equal measure. Which is, of course, exactly why it needed to happen.

💡 "Business-building mothers need to get more comfortable taking up space. I have a responsibility to practise what I preach." — Victoria Phipps

In this conversation, we explore:

✨ The story of co-founding D-Day Revisited, a charity that became one of the most significant commemorations of its generation and what that experience taught me about leadership, community and showing up for something bigger than yourself

✨ The transferable skills that charity work gave me and how those skills shaped the way I approach motherhood and business

✨ The transition into photography and the journey of building a business through the seismic shift of the digital age

✨ Why film photography holds a particular and irreplaceable magic and what the analogue process teaches us about patience, trust and the art of letting go

✨ How I think about creating lasting memories through photography and why the stories we preserve matter as much as the images themselves

✨ The messy middle of navigating motherhood and entrepreneurship honestly and what it has taken to keep showing up through the uncertainty and self-doubt

✨ Why I started this podcast, what I hoped it would become and what 50 episodes have taught me about community, connection and the power of shared experience

✨ The importance of finding your tribe as a mother in business and why building community is not a nice-to-have but a genuine lifeline

✨ My vision for the next chapter, including a new weekly solo episode sharing the honest highs and lows of building a business alongside family life

About the Guest and Host:

This episode turns the microphone around. I'm the host of Mum Means Business, a mum of two, portrait photographer, photography business educator, marketing lead in the family business and the woman behind 50 episodes of honest, warm conversations about motherhood and entrepreneurship.

Interviewing me is Sarah Garrod - qualified journalist, founder of Put In A Good Word and one of my oldest and most trusted friends. You can find Sarah at putinagoodword.co.uk or on Instagram at @put_in_a_good_word.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

Christina Townsend is a mum of three, a former early years teacher and the founder of Spout - an award-winning bath play system that gives children a defined space for bath time play before converting into a calm, grown-up bath setup for worn-out parents in need of rest and restoration.

The idea grew directly from her own evenings at home, navigating dinner, bath and bed on repeat when everyone is tired and the house already feels full enough. Unable to find a solution that made that moment feel easier without adding more clutter, she decided to build one herself.

Christina shares the early stage journey of turning an idea into a real product and a real business and what it has taken in terms of courage, tenacity and self-belief to keep going before the world has even seen what she is building.

In this conversation, we explore:

✨ The story behind Spout, how a recognisable parenting pain point became the seed of a product idea and what the early design process actually looked like

✨ How Christina's background as an early years teacher shaped both the concept and the philosophy behind Spout and why that expertise has been one of her greatest assets

✨ Navigating significant life events and personal challenges alongside the demands of launching a start up and what that has revealed about resilience and priorities

✨ The emotional rollercoaster of early stage entrepreneurship and why the start up phase, though challenging, is often where the most profound personal growth happens

✨ Overcoming self-doubt and imposter syndrome when you are surrounded by very few people who are modelling the entrepreneurial way of life

✨ What it means to position yourself in your own mind as an entrepreneur when that word still feels big, unfamiliar or even intimidating

✨ The role of family support in sustaining the energy and tenacity that start up life demands and who has championed Christina most along the way

✨ Learning the language of business from scratch, navigating investment conversations and taking financial risks when the stakes are deeply personal

✨ The challenges of marketing and social media as a solo founder with limited time and resource and how she is finding her way through

✨ What creating a lasting impact means to Christina and the vision she holds for Spout beyond the product itself

About the Guest:

Christina Townsend is the founder of Spout, an award-winning bath play system designed to make bath time easier for children and more restorative for parents. A former early years teacher and mother of three, she is navigating the start up journey whilst working full time and solo parenting, learning as she goes what it truly takes to turn an idea into a product and a product into a business. Her story is one of tenacity, courage and the quiet but powerful decision to back yourself before anyone else does.

You can find Christina on Instagram or LinkedIn and learn more about Spout at the Spout Bath Toys website.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

Sam Chetwood is the founder of CeCe & Me, a mobile children's shoe fitting service transforming the way parents shop for their little ones' feet.

Her journey began not in business but in frustration - as a mum who struggled to feel confident buying shoes for her toddlers and couldn't find a service that truly put foot health first.

What began as a personal mission has since grown into a franchise network, supporting other mothers to build flexible, rewarding businesses around family life.

In this episode, we explore the story behind CeCe & Me, the surprising science of children's foot health and what it really takes to build a franchise from scratch — a conversation about solving a problem you know intimately and why the shoes on your child's feet matter far more than most of us realise.

"Shoes aren't just a necessity of life there to keep the rain off. They have a vital role to play in our wider physical and neurological health and wellbeing." — Sam Chetwood

In this conversation, we explore:

✨ How Sam's experience as a frustrated mum navigating busy chain shoe stores became the catalyst for building an entirely new kind of children's shoe fitting service

✨ The challenges of getting children's shoes right and why the standard high street experience so often leaves parents feeling uncertain and overwhelmed

✨ How the CeCe & Me mobile model works and why bringing the fitting service directly to families changes the experience for both parents and children entirely

✨ The importance of building genuine relationships with families over time and why that continuity of care sets CeCe & Me apart from a transactional shoe shop visit

✨ The journey into franchising, how Sam developed her CPD-accredited training programme and what she looks for in the mothers who join the network

✨ The science behind shoe fitting and why getting it right in early childhood has significant implications for long term physical and neurological development

✨ How feet act as sensory organs and the surprising role they play in a child's wider health and wellbeing beyond simply keeping the rain out

✨ The tension between fashion and function in children's footwear and the practical guidance Sam gives parents who are trying to navigate both

✨ Why creating positive, memorable experiences around shoe fitting in childhood can shape a child's relationship with their own foot health for life

✨ The vision for CeCe & Me and where Sam hopes to take the business and its mission next

About the Guest:

Sam Chetwood is the founder of CeCe & Me, a mobile children's shoe fitting service and growing franchise network dedicated to promoting long term foot health in children.

Having identified a genuine gap in the market as a frustrated mum, she built a business that combines expert fitting, parent education and a warm, unhurried experience that puts families first. Her CPD-accredited training programme supports franchisees across the country to deliver that same standard of care in their own communities. Sam is a mother on a mission to change the way we think about children's shoes, one fitting at a time.

You can connect with Sam via Instagram, LinkedIn or the CeCe & Me website.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

Charlotte Vincent is a branding designer and founder of Rose Studio, a creative studio based in Auckland, New Zealand that helps female-led businesses create premium, strategy-backed brands that attract their dream clients.

What began as early morning design sessions stolen between the demands of family life has grown into a full-scale creative business, built intentionally around motherhood rather than in spite of it.

A mother of three navigating the particular joys and challenges of raising a child with a disability, Charlotte brings both creative expertise and hard-won personal insight to everything she builds. In this episode, we explore her journey from those first quiet hours at the desk to founding Rose Studio, and what it truly means to design a business that supports your life rather than consuming it.

💡 "Once I designed my business to support my life, everything became more sustainable. Motherhood sharpened my decision-making, boundaries and focus. I waste less time and trust myself more." - Charlotte Vincent

In this conversation, we explore:

✨ How Charlotte's business began with early morning design sessions as a busy mother and the slow, intentional journey from those first hours to founding Rose Studio

✨ The decision to start a business and what motherhood clarified about the kind of work she wanted to do and the life she wanted to build around it

✨ Life as a family in Thailand and how that chapter shaped her perspective on flexibility, identity and what it means to build a life outside the familiar

✨ The impact of the pandemic on family dynamics and how navigating that period of upheaval accelerated her transition into entrepreneurship

✨ The honest challenges of returning to work after maternity leave and adjusting to shifting roles between partners as life and business evolve

✨ Why investing in a business coach was a turning point and what that outside perspective unlocked for her clarity, confidence and direction

✨ How caring for a child with a disability has sharpened her decision-making, deepened her boundaries and reshaped her understanding of what really matters in business and in life

✨ The shift from measuring success by external markers to redefining it in her own terms, season by season, as a mother and as a founder

✨ Why giving herself permission to build slowly and sustainably was not a compromise but the foundation everything else was built on

✨ What she would say to any mother at the beginning of her entrepreneurial journey who is wondering whether the timing will ever feel right

About the Guest:

Charlotte Vincent is a branding designer and the founder of Rose Studio, a creative studio based in Auckland, New Zealand. She works with female-led businesses to create premium, strategy-backed brands that are built to attract dream clients and support long term growth.

A mother of three, Charlotte has built her business slowly and intentionally around family life, including the particular joys and challenges of raising a child with a disability. Her story is one of patience, clarity and the quiet power of building something sustainable.

You can connect with Charlotte via Instagram or the Rose Studio website.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

Fiorenza Rossini is a coach, founder of INNOW and host of The Belonging Project podcast.

Having begun building her coaching practice in 2016 alongside a career in investment banking, the birth of her first child brought the clarity she needed to make a change. Today she supports driven professional women who find themselves at a similar pivot point in early motherhood — helping them navigate change, redefine ambition and make sense of a season of life in which their capacity looks genuinely different.

In this episode, we explore the identity shift that motherhood brings, the quiet but powerful feeling of no longer belonging in the world you once inhabited and what it takes to find your place again. It is a conversation about coaching, community and the transformative power of putting yourself in rooms with people who truly understand.

💡 "There is no shame in asking for help. Put yourself in rooms with other people who have travelled or are travelling the same path as you." - Fiorenza Rossini

In this conversation, we explore:

✨ Fiorenza's journey from investment banking to coaching and the moment the birth of her first child made the path forward undeniable

✨ The identity shift of early motherhood and the disorienting sense that the world is carrying on without you while you nest at home with your baby

✨ How belonging — or the absence of it — shapes the experience of new motherhood and why so many women feel lost at this particular pivot point

✨ The pandemic as a catalyst for change and how it accelerated Fiorenza's clarity about the work she was meant to do and the women she was meant to support

✨ Finding her niche in coaching parents through the transition between early parenthood and returning to work and why that specific season matters so much

✨ What coaching actually is, why it is so often misunderstood and the very real value it can add when you are trying to get clear on what you want and what comes next

✨ The challenges faced by new mothers returning to work and how systems that were not designed with them in mind make an already complex transition even harder

✨ The Belonging Project podcast and why Fiorenza felt called to explore identity and belonging in life and work through long form conversation

✨ Why asking for help and putting yourself in rooms with people who truly understand your experience is one of the most powerful things you can do in this season

✨ Reflections on childhood, curiosity and what revisiting our earliest selves can reveal about who we are and what we are here to do

About the Guest:

Fiorenza Rossini is the founder of INNOW and a coach for driven professional women navigating the identity shifts and ambition recalibration that come with early motherhood. With a background in investment banking and almost a decade of coaching experience, she brings both personal insight and professional expertise to her work supporting parents as they find their place between the worlds of family and work.

She is also the host of The Belonging Project podcast, which explores identity and what it means to belong in life and work. Fiorenza is a mother of two, raising her children in a cross-cultural family.

You can connect with Fiorenza via the INNOW website, on Instagram or Linkedin.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

Kristin Longacre is a Meta Ads Expert and Facebook Blueprint Certified strategist with over 15 years of experience in digital marketing, the last decade of which has been laser-focused on Facebook and Instagram advertising.

Having managed six figure ad budgets for everyone from Fortune 500 companies to small business owners running their very first campaigns, she knows just about everything there is to know inside Ads Manager. But it was the small business owners getting lost in the shuffle that ultimately changed the direction of her work.

In this episode, Kristin shares her journey from corporate digital marketing to small business coaching and makes a compelling case for why Meta ads are far more accessible than most people think and why growing your email list while you are on the school run is not just possible, it is entirely within reach.

💡 "We can always make more money, but we cannot make more time with our kids!" - Kristin Longacre

Sign up for Kristin's next Facebook Ad Basics: The Beginner Bootcamp!

In this conversation, we explore:

✨ How Kristin made the shift from managing large corporate ad budgets to working with female small business owners and what that transition revealed about where the real need lay

✨ Why Meta ads are far more accessible and cost effective for small businesses than most people realise and what holds so many owners back from giving them a try

✨ The tech overwhelm that stops small business owners in their tracks and how Kristin's Power Hour approach demystifies the process step by step

✨ How automation through Meta ads supports busy mothers in business by generating leads and growing email lists without requiring constant hands-on time and energy

✨ Using the data from paid ads to inform and sharpen your organic content strategy and why the two work better together than most people think

✨ The importance of consistent ad spend for giving Meta's algorithm enough information to learn, optimise and deliver better results over time

✨ Why testing different creatives and hooks matters and the surprising discovery that simple, unpolished ads often outperform highly produced ones

✨ The pivoting point of running a gluten-free business and what that unexpected chapter taught Kristin about trusting her gut and knowing when to change direction

✨ How pausing and reflecting in business - rather than constantly pushing forward - can be the most clarifying and productive move you make

✨ Kristin's practical advice for small business owners who are curious about Meta ads but have no idea where to begin

About the Guest:

Kristin Longacre is a Meta Ads Expert and Facebook Blueprint Certified strategist with over 15 years of experience in digital marketing.

Through her Meta Ads Power Hour programme, she works with female small business owners in the UK to help them run simple, effective ad campaigns without needing a large budget or a technical background. A mum of two, Kristin is passionate about helping women grow their businesses in a way that works around their lives rather than consuming them.

You can connect with Kristin via the No Fuss Ads website or on Instagram.

Sign up for Kristin's next Facebook Ad Basics: The Beginner Bootcamp!

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

Rebecca Taylor is the co-founder of Mums Who Build, a growing community on a mission to close the gender wealth gap that widens even further in motherhood.

Known affectionately as the MOB, the community helps ambitious mothers take charge of their finances, grow their wealth and design a life that allows them to mother exactly as they choose.

Together with her co-founder Georgie, Bex brings her own story to the movement they are building - one shaped by the moments that made clear just how important financial independence is for women and for mothers in particular.

In this episode, we explore what motivated Bex to co-found the MOB, the reality of navigating identity, ambition and money anxiety in motherhood and why getting in the arena - even with just £5 a week - might be the most powerful move a mother in business can make.

💡 "Motherhood is the time to own your ambition, invest in your growth, thrive in your business and design a life that means you can parent as you want to."

In this conversation, we explore:

✨ The story behind Mums Who Build, what motivated Bex and Georgie to create the MOB and the gap in the market they were determined to fill

✨ How motherhood reshapes identity, ambition and relationship with work, and why navigating those shifts in isolation makes them so much harder

✨ Why community and peer support are not nice-to-haves but genuine accelerators for mothers figuring out their next move in business and in life

✨ The gender wealth gap and why it widens specifically in motherhood, and what women can do to start closing it for themselves

✨ Moving from a time for money model to building sustainable income and the mindset shifts required to make that transition

✨ The gender investment gap, the barriers that keep women on the sidelines of investing and why starting small — even just £5 a week — is enough to begin building financial confidence

✨ How societal expectations and the politics of parenting quietly shape the financial decisions mothers make and the ambitions they allow themselves to hold

✨ Why financial independence matters more than ever when you are a mother and what it makes possible beyond the bank balance

✨ Rediscovering self-worth after the identity upheaval of motherhood and how the MOB creates space for that process to unfold in community

✨ The advice Bex would give her younger self and what it reveals about money, ambition and the importance of getting in the arena sooner

About the Guest:

Rebecca Taylor is the co-founder of Mums Who Build, a community and movement dedicated to closing the gender wealth gap in motherhood.

Known as the MOB, the community connects ambitious mothers with the tools, resources and peer support they need to take charge of their finances and grow their wealth. Alongside her co-founder Georgie, Bex is building a space where mothers can align their work, their wellbeing and their money in a way that truly supports the life they want to live. The MOB App launched earlier this year, bringing that mission directly to the women who need it most.

You can find Bex and the Mums Who Build community via their website and Instagram or connect with her on Linkedin.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

Kasia Bromley is the co-founder and brand director of ACAI Outdoorwear, a performance-led, style-driven brand redefining the outdoor experience for women.

Her path to building a multi-million pound global brand began in the rarefied world of high fashion, where she hand-crafted the iconic Butterfly Dress at Alexander McQueen. But it was designing for real women, not runways, that truly captured her imagination.

Frustrated by the outdoor industry's habit of simply shrinking and pinking women's gear, she and her husband Joe invested their house deposit to co-found ACAI in 2016 — five months pregnant and facing financial uncertainty.

In this episode, Kasia shares the story behind that leap, what it has taken to scale a business while raising three children and why finding a purpose that fuels you is the most important foundation any business can be built on.

💡 "Find a purpose that fuels you and build a business that you love living in. If you love it you'll never struggle with motivation." — Kasia Bromley

In this conversation, we explore:

✨ Kasia's journey from hand-crafting couture at Alexander McQueen to co-founding a brand built by women, for women, and the realisation that ignited the shift

✨ The frustration with the outdoor industry's approach to women's clothing and how that frustration became the creative and commercial foundation of ACAI

✨ How Kasia and her husband Joe launched the brand five months into her pregnancy, investing their house deposit and backing themselves when the stakes could not have been higher

✨ The story of the Skinny Outdoor Trouser, why it resonated so deeply with women and what its success revealed about a gap the industry had long ignored

✨ The reality of navigating early motherhood alongside the demands of a rapidly scaling business and the honest cost that places on sleep, rest and the nervous system

✨ Why Kasia chose to view entrepreneurship not as a sacrifice but as a necessity, and how that reframe sustained her through the hardest seasons of growth

✨ The impact of building a business on her children and why modelling purpose, passion and resilience is one of the most valuable gifts a mother can give

✨ How she approaches building confidence in her children through the same values that have shaped her business: curiosity, persistence and a willingness to learn from mistakes

✨ The question she returns to again and again when the hours are long and progress feels slow: am I enjoying this, is this still fun?

About the Guest:

Kasia Bromley is the co-founder and brand director of ACAI Outdoorwear, a multi-million pound global brand making the outdoors more inclusive, representative and boldly female.

With a background in high fashion and a career that began at Alexander McQueen, she brings a rare combination of creative vision and commercial drive to everything she builds.

A mother of three, Kasia is as passionate about reshaping outdoor culture as she is about raising children who are curious, confident and unafraid to take up space.

You can find Kasia at @kasiabromley on Instagram or explore the full collection at acaioutdoorwear.com.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

Barbara Nixon is a success coach, award-winning speaker, author and leadership consultant with over 30 years of experience in people development.

As the founder of Smash Your Own Ceiling, she works with ambitious business owners to help them remove the internal blocks holding them back - self-doubt, fear of failure, imposter syndrome and the habit of saying yes when every instinct is telling them to say no.

In this episode, we explore Barbara's own journey from employee to entrepreneur, the unlearning that came with it and the powerful practice of pausing and playing your way through uncertainty. It is a conversation about intuition, self-leadership and what it truly means to create space for yourself as a leader, a mother and a woman in business.

In this conversation, we explore:

✨ Barbara's journey into entrepreneurship and the pivotal moments that shaped her understanding of what it means to lead with authenticity and purpose

✨ The transition from employee to business owner and the professional norms she had to unlearn before she could truly find her way

✨ How she navigated the tension between building a business and being present as a parent and what she discovered along the way

✨ Why pausing is not a sign of weakness but one of the most powerful and strategic things a business owner can do

✨ The year of yes - how saying yes to joy, exploration and curiosity became the unexpected path back to clarity and direction

✨ How trusting your intuition and following what lights you up can quietly realign you with your purpose when logic alone cannot

✨ The concept of creating a pocket of air and why carving out genuine space for yourself is not a luxury but a leadership essential

✨ Why putting yourself at the top of the list as a leader is not selfish but sensible, strategic and deeply necessary

✨ How play and experimentation can dissolve the paralysis of not knowing what comes next and open unexpected doors

✨ What redefining leadership looks like for women and why the most powerful version of it is rooted in compassion, presence and self-knowledge

About the Guest:

Barbara Nixon is a success coach, award-winning speaker, author and leadership consultant with over 30 years of experience in people development.

She works with ambitious business owners to help them remove the internal blocks holding them back and step into the leaders they are meant to be. She is also host of the 'Smash Your Own Ceiling' podcast, co-owner of a Yorkshire coffee roastery, a wife, a mum and stepmum to four grown up children and proud owner of a dog called Nellie.

You can connect with Barbara via her website, LinkedIn or Instagram.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

Yinka Ewuola is a multi-award winning business strategist, mindset coach, TEDx speaker and founder of Calla Success Systems. A mother of three who exited the corporate world at the start of her motherhood journey, she helps ambitious women create wealth both within and through their businesses by concentrating on what matters most: cashflow and strategy for the business, and mindset and habits for the business owner.

In this episode, we explore the true nature of money, the layers of patriarchal and societal conditioning that keep women financially small and why making an audacious amount of money is not just a personal ambition but a powerful act of service. It is a conversation about identity, pricing, permission and the decision that changes everything.

💡 "My business is successful because I am a mother, not in spite of motherhood." — Yinka Ewuola

In this conversation, we explore:

✨ Yinka's annus horribilis — the year that brought grief, redundancy, her mother's cancer diagnosis and the birth of her first child — and how that season of challenge forged the foundations of everything she has built since

✨ Why money is only 5% financial and 95% story, belief, energy, emotion, identity and relationship, and what that means for women who have been told they are not good with numbers

✨ The layers of patriarchal, religious and societal conditioning that have deliberately shrouded the true nature of money from women and why dismantling those layers is an act of personal and collective power

✨ Why women are whole-brained and collaborative by nature and how that positions them to be extraordinary with money once they understand what money actually is

✨ The problem with charging your worth and why anchoring your prices to the transformation your offer creates — rather than your fluctuating sense of self — is the shift that changes everything

✨ How Yinka built a seven figure business without a website and what that reveals about the difference between creating genuine cashflow and performing legitimacy

✨ Why underpricing is not humility but a decision to ask your children to pay instead of your clients, and the moment that reframing changed everything

✨ The three pillars of sustainable change in business and in life: mindset, skillset and habits, and why you cannot out-mindset a lack of skillset

✨ What her eight year old self taught her about stubbornness, perfectionism and the superpowers hidden inside the traits we were told off for as children

About the Guest:

Yinka Ewuola is a multi-award winning business strategist, mindset coach and TEDx speaker and the founder of Calla Success Systems. With a background in investment banking and economics, she spent years unlearning what finance had taught her and rebuilding her relationship with money from the ground up. She now works with ambitious women to help them create wealth through a combination of cashflow strategy, identity work and habit design. A mother of three, Yinka is on a mission to put more money into the hands of more women - because when women have more money, the world gets better for everyone.

Connect with Yinka via LinkedIn or Instagram and be sure to watch her TEDx talk: Power, Lies & The Truth About Love.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

Sarah Collins is a media trainer and communication coach with two decades of experience in television production, including roles at ITV Daytime and ITN. Having spent her career shaping stories and crafting interviews that connected with millions, she retrained as a coach and discovered a striking gap on the other side of the fence - thought leaders and business owners with brilliant ideas and fascinating stories were shrinking in the spotlight, held back by mindset blocks, perfectionist tendencies and a fear of being seen.

In this episode, we explore why clarity comes before confidence, how to overcome the visibility fears that keep so many women from sharing their message and what it truly takes to find your voice as a business owner and mother. Sarah has offered Mum Means Business listeners a Free 5-Minute Camera Confidence Audio to listen to next time you're about to speak about who you are and what you do.

In this conversation, we explore:

✨ Sarah's two decades in television production and what working at ITV Daytime and ITN taught her about the power of story and authentic communication

✨ The missing piece she discovered when she retrained as a coach and why so many brilliant business owners struggle to translate their expertise into confident, clear moments in the spotlight

✨ Why clarity comes before confidence and how getting clear on your story and your value is the essential first step to speaking with impact

✨ The mindset blocks, perfectionist tendencies and visibility fears that hold women back from sharing their message and how to begin dismantling them

✨ How to answer the question "what do you do?" with confidence and why this seemingly simple moment is where so many business owners stumble

✨ The role of practice in building communication confidence and why stumbling is not failure but an essential part of the process

✨ What media training actually involves and how it translates beyond television interviews into everyday visibility as an entrepreneur

✨ Sarah's own journey from profound shyness to media trainer and the self-belief it took to claim that transformation as part of her story

About the Guest:

Sarah Collins is a media trainer and communication coach who helps ambitious female business owners overcome visibility fears and speak with confidence and impact. Drawing on twenty years of experience in television production at ITV Daytime and ITN, she brings a rare blend of media insight and coaching expertise to her work. Sarah is a mother of two and a living example that shyness is not a fixed identity but a starting point from which extraordinary things can grow.

You can connect with Sarah via her website or Instagram.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

Katie Elliott, known professionally as HR Katie, is a human resources expert supporting startups and scale-ups with the people side of running a business.

With over 15 years of HR experience and 11 years of motherhood behind her, she has come to understand that leading a team and raising small humans have more in common than most people expect.

In this episode, we explore the human side of HR, the surprising parallels between parenting and people management and what it really means to show up as a whole person in business, even when life feels hard. It's a conversation about instinct, resilience, financial independence and the quiet strength it takes to keep going when professional and personal worlds collide.

In this conversation, we explore:

✨ How Katie took the leap from employment to entrepreneurship without a business plan and built a thriving practice by trusting her instincts and listening to her clients

✨ The specific HR challenges that small businesses and one-woman bands face when they begin to grow and why specialist support can make all the difference

✨ Why personal connection is at the heart of effective HR and how that sets small business support apart from the corporate model

✨ Navigating conflict resolution in small teams and the delicate balance between professional boundaries and human understanding

✨ The striking overlaps between parenting and managing employees and what each teaches us about the other

✨ What to consider before hiring your first employee and why onboarding is one of the most important investments a growing business can make

✨ The relationship between financial independence, financial literacy and the confidence to keep going when life gets hard

✨ Why life and business are not separate entities for mothers and how drawing strength from both can carry us through our most challenging seasons

About the Guest:

Katie Elliott is an HR specialist and founder of HR Katie, supporting startups and scale-ups with practical, honest people management advice. With over 15 years of experience in human resources, she helps business owners navigate team growth, conflict resolution, onboarding and the everyday complexity of leading people well. A mother of two, Katie brings both professional expertise and genuine warmth to her work and is a passionate advocate for showing up as a whole person in business.

You can connect with Katie via her website, Instagram or LinkedIn.

About The Host:

I’m Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, analogue family photographer, personal brand photographer, educator, charity co-founder, marketer and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

Emma Zangs is a choreographer, movement and communication coach whose work spans public speaking training, fashion show direction, dance workshops and entrepreneurship education.

Born in France and trained at Trinity Laban in London, she now lives in Norwich with her husband and two young children, coaching entrepreneurs, lecturing at Cass Business School and UCL's Entrepreneurship MSc and training founders to pitch on Dragon's Den.

In 2019, she delivered her TEDx talk We Are All Dancers as part of TEDxWomen, sharing her belief that dance has a unique power to repair and reshape our lives beyond the physical.

In this episode, we explore the profound connection between movement, creativity and mental health and what happens when we stop dancing and what it takes to find our way back.

In this conversation, we explore:

✨ Emma's own journey with dance and movement and how it has shaped her identity, her work and her sense of self

✨ How cultural attitudes towards dance and communication differ and what we lose when we disconnect from physical expression

✨ The role of movement in building genuine connection and community beyond the studio or stage

✨ Navigating rejection and resilience while building a creative business and why persistence looks different in the arts

✨ How motherhood prompted a creative reckoning and led Emma to explore new forms of expression including clowning

✨ The unexpected way that clowning helped Emma move through postnatal depression and shift her relationship with societal expectations of motherhood

✨ Why play is not a luxury for parents but a genuine tool for wellbeing and family connection

✨ The story behind The Playtime Project and how it creates space for parents navigating the emotional complexity of early parenthood

✨ The mind body connection and why making time for movement can be a powerful trigger for mental and emotional uplift

✨ The advice Emma would give her younger self and what it reveals about creative courage and self-belief

About the Guest:

Emma Zangs is a choreographer, movement and communication coach based in Norwich. She works with entrepreneurs and organisations to help people move and communicate with greater confidence, and lectures on entrepreneurship programmes at Cass Business School and UCL.

Her TEDx talk "We Are All Dancers" has reached audiences far beyond the stage, and her community project The Playtime Project supports parents of young children through creativity and shared experience. Emma is a mother of two and a passionate advocate for the transformative power of movement in everyday life.

You can connect with Emma via her website, Instagram or LinkedIn.

About The Host: I'm Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, family photographer, charity co-founder, marketing person and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

Rebecca Cracknell is a coach, mentor and mother of three whose work sits at the intersection of ambition, identity and transformation.

Through her podcast 'A Woman's Guide to Starting Fires', her 1:1 mentoring and intimate group programmes, she invites female entrepreneurs to break free from the shoulds that society has imposed upon them and unlock the most unapologetic visions they have for their lives. In this episode, we explore Rebecca's journey from teacher to entrepreneur, the internal work required to untangle the conditioning that keeps so many women playing small, and what it truly means to go all in on a life and business rooted in purpose.

In this conversation, we explore:

✨ How Rebecca transitioned from teaching into coaching and what that journey taught her about reinvention and resilience

✨ Why moving from content creation to coaching required a fundamental shift in how she showed up online and in her work

✨ Reframing social media as a tool for genuine connection rather than performance and what that shift unlocks for entrepreneurs

✨ The slow burn reality of building a business through social media and why consistency and process matter more than overnight results

✨ How internalised stories and shame quietly shape our ambitions and what it takes to bring them into the light

✨ The relationship between women, money and ambition and why challenging the narratives around all three is essential for business growth

✨ What it means to live in your highest purpose and how small, intentional tasks can connect us back to that sense of meaning

✨ The advice Rebecca would give her younger self and why it speaks directly to every woman who has ever felt held back

About the Guest:

Rebecca Cracknell is a coach, mentor and mother of three who works with women ready to build businesses that genuinely change their lives. Through her podcast A Woman's Guide to Starting Fires, her group programmes and deeply personal coaching experiences, she helps women dismantle internalised shame, unlock their ambition and step into their fullest potential. Her approach is honest, direct and rooted in the belief that every woman has a unique purpose she is meant to bring into the world.

You can connect with Rebecca via Instagram and LinkedIn.

About The Host: I'm Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, family photographer, charity co-founder, marketing person and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

Nicky Denson-Elliott is a professional feminist, community builder, writer, podcaster and mother of two whose work sits at the intersection of feminism, creativity and business.

Through The Wilder Collective, her Wilder:LIVE events and her award-winning podcast Women's Business, she supports female founders, creatives and leaders to own their value, unlearn patriarchal conditioning and build businesses that don't just look good on paper but feel good day to day.

In this episode, we explore the messy middle of entrepreneurship, the transformative power of community and the courage it takes to build something that truly aligns with who you are becoming - a conversation that will resonate deeply with any woman navigating motherhood, ambition and identity.

In this conversation, we explore:

✨ The leap from corporate life to entrepreneurship and navigating the uncertainty that comes with it

✨ How motherhood, guilt and mental health intersect with the pressure to succeed in business

✨ The journey of building and eventually stepping away from Wilder Ones clothing brand

✨ Transitioning into podcasting and the freedom that comes from following a new direction

✨ Why embracing failure is essential to business growth and personal evolution

✨ Breaking the silence around money, gender and the conditioning that keeps women small

✨ Reparenting yourself and developing emotional intelligence as an adult

✨ The impact of societal expectations on women's ambition and sense of self-worth

✨ How aging brings wisdom, clarity and permission to prioritise what truly matters

✨ The power of community in moving from floundering to momentum

✨ Aligning past experiences with current goals to create a sense of purpose and direction

About the Guest:

Nicky Denson-Elliott is a community builder, podcaster, founder of The Wilder Collective and all round champion of women.

Through her work, she helps women unlearn the patriarchy's tricks, communicate with purpose and build businesses rooted in fulfilment rather than external validation. Her podcast Women's Business has won awards for its honest, insightful conversations with female founders and creatives. Nicky is a mother of two and believes that happiness and alignment are worthy ambitions in business and in life.

You can follow Nicky and connect with her work on Instagram, Substack and LinkedIn.

About The Host: I'm Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, family photographer, charity co-founder, marketing person and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

This week on Mum Means Business, I’m joined by actor, voice artist and founder Kate Okello Tarrant, also known as Mrs. OT.

A millennial mum of three boys, Kate has appeared on countless stages across the UK and worked with household names including the BBC and Audible. But when the performance industry paused during lockdown, she began documenting her experience of motherhood online and something powerful happened.

Within weeks, her honest reflections reached tens of thousands of women. The conversations that followed led her to train as a breastfeeding consultant, become a pre and postnatal advocate and create The Mum Retreat - a series of nurturing events centred on maternal mental health and wellbeing.

From intimate candlelit evenings to expert-led workshops, Kate now curates powerful spaces where women can gather, speak honestly and feel seen. Her work is rooted in vulnerability, connection and a belief that there is joy to be found in failing publicly.

💡 “We need to dismantle the societal conditioning that other women are a threat.”

In this energising and deeply honest conversation, we explore: ✨ Kate’s journey from actor to founder of The Mum Retreat ✨ The myth of overnight success and what really happens behind the scenes ✨ Navigating imposter syndrome when stepping into leadership ✨ The social conditioning that teaches women to compete rather than connect ✨ Transforming envy into empowerment ✨ The burden of stoicism in motherhood ✨ Embracing vulnerability online and in real life ✨ Why failure can be a powerful catalyst for growth

We also talk about the scarcity mindset that keeps women playing small and what becomes possible when we actively choose connection over competition - in motherhood, in business and in life.

About Kate Okello Tarrant: Kate Okello Tarrant, also known as Mrs. OT, is an actor, voice artist and founder of The Mum Retreat, a series of maternal wellbeing events designed to create safe, supportive spaces for mothers.

After building an engaged online community during lockdown, Kate expanded her work into breastfeeding consultancy, advocacy and in-person gatherings focused on maternal mental health. She was recently recognised as 'Best Maternal Mental Health & Wellbeing Events UK' at the GHP Women’s Health Awards.

Through her retreats, social media presence and public work, Kate is passionate about helping women feel less alone and more connected.

Visit her website or follow her on Instagram @_mrsot to learn more.

About The Host: I'm Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, family photographer, charity co-founder, marketing person and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

This week on Mum Means Business, I’m joined by Maria Rush - leadership mentor, speaker and host of the Women Don’t Rush podcast.

For the past 15 years Maria has dedicated her time not only to raising her two children, now teenagers, but to promoting self-leadership, emotional intelligence and solution-based communication in entrepreneurial spaces, state organisations and private businesses.

Maria is fascinated by people. Her work explores how we can communicate and connect more deeply with ourselves and others by becoming more authentic and self-aware. She supports capable, high-achieving women and mothers who, despite outward success, often feel tired, overwhelmed and quietly unfulfilled.

Through her calm and thoughtful framework, Maria helps women uncover the missing link between outer achievement and inner fulfilment.

In this reflective and practical conversation, we explore: ✨ Maria’s transition into motherhood and the identity shifts that followed ✨ Why communication begins with self-reflection ✨ Solution-based communication in parenting and partnerships ✨ Why many high-achieving women feel unfulfilled despite external success ✨ The burden of always being the problem-solver ✨ Emotional intelligence and empathy as foundational leadership skills ✨ Connecting with your inner child to better understand present-day reactions

We also talk honestly about early motherhood, uncomfortable self-awareness and the courage it takes to recognise when our own behaviours may be contributing to the challenges we’re facing.

🎁 Exclusive for Mum Means Business listeners: Use code MMB20 to receive 20% off Maria’s April 2026 cohort of The Connected Leadership Programme.

The programme offers a practical introduction to emotional intelligence and compassionate communication in a small group setting - equipping parents, partners and professionals with tools to strengthen their relationship with themselves and enjoy greater calm and connection.

About Maria Rush: Maria Rush is a leadership mentor, speaker and host of the Women Don’t Rush podcast. She specialises in self-leadership, emotional intelligence and solution-based communication, supporting women who want to experience greater calm, clarity and fulfilment in both their professional and personal lives.

Drawing on her experience as a mother, mentor and entrepreneur, Maria guides high-achieving women to bridge the gap between external success and inner alignment. Her work empowers women to communicate more effectively, articulate their needs with confidence and cultivate deeper connections with themselves and others.

You can connect with Maria via her website, on Instagram, LinkedIn or through her podcast.

About The Host: I'm Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, family photographer, charity co-founder, marketing person and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

My guest this week is Isabelle Pearcey, founder of Izz Whizz VA, where she helps founders, small teams and legal professionals bring structure, calm and confidence to the way they run their business.

With a background in law, executive support and charity governance, Isabelle has spent years as the unflappable right hand to high-level leaders; quietly building effective systems, leading with empathy and keeping operations running smoothly behind the scenes.

After navigating long COVID alongside early motherhood, Isabelle made the courageous transition into entrepreneurship. She built a virtual assistant business rooted in her values of kindness, trust and flexibility - and is now growing a small, trusted team of VAs who want meaningful, family-friendly work.

Her approach to business feels like a breath of fresh air: calm rather than chaos, collaboration rather than control and support instead of silent struggle.

In this honest and reassuring conversation, we explore: ✨ Isabelle’s journey from law and charity governance into entrepreneurship ✨ The impact of long COVID and motherhood on career decisions ✨ Breaking free from the super mum complex ✨ What a virtual assistant actually does and how they support business growth ✨ Building trust and strong working relationships in remote teams ✨ How to prepare your business for outsourcing ✨ Empowering women through flexible, values-led work ✨ Supporting maternal mental health alongside business ambitions

We also talk about resilience, identity shifts and what it really means to invite someone into your world to help carry the load.

About Isabelle Pearcey: Isabelle Pearcey is the founder of Izz Whizz VA, supporting founders, legal professionals and small teams with structure, systems and trusted executive support.

With a background in law, executive assistance and charity governance, Isabelle combines professionalism with empathy — helping business owners feel calm and confident as they grow. She is building a team of skilled virtual assistants who want meaningful, flexible work that aligns with family life.

Through her work and charitable involvement, Isabelle is passionate about empowering women at every stage of motherhood and business.

Connect with Isabelle on LinkedIn and Instagram to find out more about how her team could support you.

About The Host: I'm Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, family photographer, charity co-founder, marketing person and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

This week on Mum Means Business, I’m joined by Ekaterina Ward - mindset coach and founder of Vivacity, a community supporting female founders aged 40 and over to build vibrant, soul-aligned businesses that support the lives they want to lead.

Ekaterina began her career in teaching before moving into corporate financial services. Eleven years ago, she retrained as a coach and has since worked extensively in corporate and executive coaching. Today, her focus is on supporting mothers in business - helping them grow their income, energy and impact without sacrificing themselves in the process.

A mum to an eleven-year-old daughter, Ekaterina is deeply passionate about challenging the societal expectation that women should shrink as they move through midlife. Instead, she invites women to see this season as one of expansion, power and becoming.

Her work explores the patterns that often guide our behaviour. As she recently shared, some of us are led by the heart, others by fire - but many of us are unconsciously addicted to suffering through overworking, people pleasing, control and self-neglect. Ekaterina’s message is clear: we do not need to suffer in order to grow.

💡 “We do not need to suffer to grow.”

In this deep, reflective and quietly powerful conversation, we explore: ✨ Ekaterina’s transition from corporate life into coaching ✨ Why asking for help is a skill many women struggle to practise ✨ Breaking cycles of suffering and self-sabotage ✨ Fear of success and how it shows up for women in business ✨ Creating ease rather than glorifying struggle ✨ Self-regulation, emotional awareness and the window of tolerance ✨ Reframing midlife as the wise woman’s journey ✨ Navigating perimenopause with honesty, compassion and self-advocacy

We also talk about self-enquiry, identity shifts and what it means to truly come home to yourself - as a woman, a mother and a business owner.

About Ekaterina Ward: Ekaterina Ward is a mindset coach and founder of Vivacity, a community supporting female founders aged 40 and over to build soul-aligned businesses and lives. With a background in teaching, corporate financial services and executive coaching, she brings depth, compassion and strategic clarity to her work.

Ekaterina specialises in supporting mothers in business to grow sustainably, without burnout. Her work challenges outdated narratives around midlife and menopause, reframing them as powerful seasons of self-leadership, honesty and renewal.

You can find Ekaterina on Instagram or LinkedIn, and learn more about her work through Vivacity via her website. You can also download her FREE Midlife Mayhem and Magic Workbook!

About The Host: I'm Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, family photographer, charity co-founder, marketing person and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!

This week on Mum Means Business, I’m joined by Liz Mosley - graphic designer, Adobe Ambassador, podcast host and public speaker on a mission to help small business owners feel more confident about their branding and marketing.

Liz believes that when branding is not only beautiful but also strategic, it can completely transform how business owners show up. Through her design work, she creates bespoke branding and websites that leave her clients feeling excited, empowered and ready to share what they do with the world.

Alongside client work, Liz has recorded over 200 episodes of her podcast Building Your Brand - all within the constraints of the school day. She’s a mum of two and a passionate champion for small businesses navigating visibility, content creation and sustainable growth.

Liz is also well known for her rejection challenge. In 2023, after recognising how much fear of rejection might be limiting her own business growth, she set herself the goal of collecting 100 professional rejections in six months.

Since then, she’s been openly sharing what she’s learned - helping creatives and business owners see that rejection is a normal, unavoidable and often far less scary part of putting yourself out there.

💡 “Rejection is a normal part of being a creative and a business owner.”

In this honest and encouraging conversation, we explore: ✨ Liz’s journey into entrepreneurship and finding her place in the small business world ✨ Why rejection feels so personal and how to reduce its emotional impact ✨ The origins of the 100 rejections challenge and what Liz has learned so far ✨ Navigating identity shifts through motherhood and business growth ✨ The realities of content creation and how it has evolved over time ✨ What happens when your work goes viral and how to manage the aftermath ✨ Why vulnerability and human connection matter more than perfection

We also talk about trusting your instincts, doing work you genuinely enjoy and why consistency becomes far more sustainable when you stop trying to perform and start being yourself. In this episode Liz mentions a Ted Talk by Jia Jiang entitled "What I learned from 100 days of rejection" which you can watch here.

About Liz Mosley: Liz Mosley is a graphic designer, Adobe Ambassador and host of the podcast Building Your Brand. She specialises in creating strategic branding and websites for small business owners who want to feel confident sharing their work and growing their businesses.

Liz is passionate about helping creatives overcome fear of rejection and build resilience through visibility, experimentation and self-trust. She shares practical marketing advice alongside honest reflections on running a business and navigating motherhood.

You can find Liz on Instagram, via her website or by listening to Building Your Brand 🎧

About The Host: I'm Victoria Phipps – a Mum of two, family photographer, charity co-founder, marketing person and now podcaster! 🎙️

I was raised by a nurturing Mother and an entrepreneurial Father and have inherited traits from both, so the tension between ambition and motherhood is one I grapple with on a daily basis!

I’m fascinated to hear the stories of other women on a similar path, who are striving to build thriving businesses whilst being present for their children. It's a tough juggle, but I hope the conversations shared on this podcast help Mums in business feel less alone and inspired to keep going in pursuit of their dreams.

Head to the Mum Means Business Podcast website for full show notes.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in this conversation, so please do let me know on Instagram where I'm @victoriaphippsmbe or @mummeansbusinesspodcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a 5* rating and review!