I think the decision to have children is utterly irrational.  On a purely logical level kids are a pain:  years of broken nights, sticky fingers on your favourite suede boots, carrot puree on your silk shirts and, most recently, blue pen on my cream sofa.  We know it’s going to be like this and yet the desire to have kids overwhelms even sensible women. 

 

Deciding to run your own business is rather similar:  no sane person would choose it as a career.  In place of career progression, great salary and the camaraderie of respected colleagues you let yourself in for a roller coaster of highs and lows.  Work becomes a miasma of hand-to-mouth multi tasking:  designing product, emptying the bins and learning to be your own IT expert.  (I have fallen from the glorious heights of asking my pa to call IT to the grubby lows of learning how to install modems and understanding the back-end of e-commerce platforms). For many years the income is variable at best and negligible at worst.  Most importantly, running your own business can be lonely.  The decisions are my own and so are the mistakes.

 

So you might think that deciding to have kids and run my own business makes me certifiable. But honestly there is method in this double madness.

 

Like my mother always said to me: (yikes! As if hitting 40 didn’t make me feel enough like I’m turning into my mother).  Having children is the best thing I ever did. It’s not rational but I love my twins, they have banished (almost) all the angst that I used to carry inside and they complete me.  It’s as simple as that.

 

It’s the same with Charlotte & Co.  I need to work. Work is what makes me tick.  I love the boring details, the challenges and the hard-earned successes.  I’m rubbish at not having a job.  I fret and fuss about life if I don’t have a business to focus my creative energy on.

 

No employer could give me as interesting a job as Charlotte & Co. and allow me the freedom to work around my kids.  So I’ll take the late nights and the broken nights along with the joys of creating products I love and getting sticky kisses.


Welcome to my blog.


For more of an insight into how Charlotte makes it work:

Charlotte's interview with Style Magazine