Children and careers aren’t easily combined but these small business owners say becoming parents helped their businesses to bloom. | The Guardian, June 2016. |
Far from compromising your commitment to your career, having a family can unearth the motivation to start a new business, or to grow an existing one.
While expanding your business might be the furthest thing from your mind in the bewildering days following childbirth, being a parent can actually be good for business. A recent survey of 1,500 small business owners, conducted by Yell Business, found that 79% of parents consider their business to be “very successful” and “quite successful” compared with 67% of non-parents.
The reasons for this are threefold, says Alexis Kingsbury, who founded the Parentpreneur Accelerator last year. He says that first off, your definition of success changes. “With parentpreneurs, it doesn’t need to become a billion dollar enterprise,” he explains, adding that goals can shift to “a good income, financial freedom and ability to spend time with family”.