
Shelley Ensor, 36, has two under-fives and runs two businesses: Little Signers Club (www.littlesignersclub.co.uk) and Little Learner Books (www.littlelearnerbooks.co.uk). She tells Motherswhowork.co.uk how she keeps things ticking.
What work did you do before you set up your businesses?
I’ve had a variety of roles in sales and marketing, mostly within the distribution and publishing industries. After moving back “home” from London, I temped for a while and at this point learned about baby signing. Having discovered I was pregnant with my first baby and after doing lots of research, I decided to become a self-employed Franchisee running baby signing classes. The company that I worked for had a management buyout in February 2010 and I decided, with a colleague, to create my own baby signing company. Little Signers Club started in March 2010.
How did you fund the businesses?
Little Signers Club cost £6.52 to set up – honestly! That was for the domain name. I skill swapped some marketing with a friend who created our first website, as well as other friends who are experts in other areas such as marketing, accountancy and my adviser at Business Link. As teachers joined us, their fees got ploughed back into the company to pay for everything else. As we are more of a service-based company than a product-based company, this wasn’t too difficult to manage.
Seeing a need for support materials for baby signing, we quickly realised that we needed a very good quality book about baby signing. The three main ones available at the time were either too simple with no practical guidance, too expensive if you were just trying to find out about it or not as child oriented as we liked.
Teaming up with a leading British Sign Language expert, Cath Smith, Signing Hands; Baby Signing Basics was published in September 2010 through Little Learner Books. My partner kindly funded this for me but as we self-published, the costs were minimal and this is treated as a business loan. The book was a finalist in October for the Most Innovative New Baby Product 2010 at The Baby Show for Trade. Delighted doesn’t quite cover it!
What was the motivating factor for staring your businesses?
Having spent many years running classes, I felt it was time to take things one step further and create our own company, with our own resources that filled a niche in the market. I am also hoping to home educate our daughters and this is a huge driving factor in what I do – by September 2011 I hope to be in a position that I have a thriving business that allows a great work-life balance so that we can continue our learning journey together.
What do you enjoy most about running your own businesses?
Freedom. And no back-stabbing. And if I get stuck, I head on out with the dog and clear my thoughts. I love that!
Running a business can be a mixed bag sometimes. What have been you highs and lows so far?
I have found it really hard not to have someone to bounce ideas around with. And as a very experienced, successful sales person in an incredibly hard industry previously, I have found it next to impossible to have the confidence to sell my own company. There are other factors surrounding that, but that’s been a hard one to deal with. Somedays, nothing seems to go right – the children squabble, there is nothing for supper, you are exhausted but you still have to keep things ticking over – picking yourself up can be hard. The highs? Setting up a successful business on £6.52, being a finalist with our brand new book at a major trade show, and knowing, without a shadow of doubt, that what I and my team of teachers do makes a huge, lasting difference to parents and babies who attend our classes.
How have you managed to stay on top of your career with the demands of motherhood while running your businesses?
By making sure that I work out what is worth my time and effort and what is better being handed over to an expert to run. As a small business owner, you wear many many hats – sales, marketing, accounts, networking, product placement, making the tea, filing etc – there are things that it is simply better to get rid of and concentrate on what you are good at.
I also have a rule that I work on my “work” days and my children, partner and home have my attention at every other time. Lots gets done in the evening! Being really organised – I love FLYlady – helps enormously, especially when you have lots of things to juggle. I don’t manage all the time by any stretch of the imagination but I do try. We have an At Home day on a Tuesday where the children and I spend the day doing whatever our hearts desire is, reconnecting at home. Lots of cuddles, baking, art and being outside tend to be the order of the day.
How has running your businesses impacted on your relationship with your partner and children?
For the most part, it’s been great. I try not to let one affect the other but my partner works long hours so sometimes it can be hard. Why is it that as soon as you pick up the phone to have THAT important networking / placement conversation that the children, who have been playing happily previously, decide that they cannot cope without you?!
Any tips for expectant mums, or mothers who feel that you can’t have a successful career and a happy family life at the same time?
If you have a passion, take baby steps every day to do something to make it happen. What inspires you? What are your skills? Where do you need help? Can you learn any of the skills you need or can you skill swap? People are so happy to help if you ask them. Tuck away a magazine article that inspires you, file away a marketing contact. Enlist the support of your friends who will be your staunchest allies and your worst critics. Let your ideas develop and change over time. Mostly, really, really enjoy that first precious year with your baby because those moments will never happen again and everything else really can wait.
Someone once said that being successful was not necessarily about having an original idea – but taking an existing idea and doing it better.