Episode 61: The Podcast Turns One; Lessons, Downloads and a Glass of Wine in Brittany

NOTE: This is the transcript from the original recording, rather than the edited episode so timings may vary.

Hello and welcome to this solo episode of the Mom Means Business podcast. I am coming to you from the shoreline of a really beautiful part of Brittany and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to record this using all my traditional setup with my mic and my laptop and my headphones and personal hotspotting and campsite Wi-Fi from the campervan and my goodness, it has been hopeless. So I am now coming to you from a bench and if there are noises and cars passing by and kids having a beer down the way, then so be it. Because I wanted to record this today because the podcast is won.

Today I have celebrated the first birthday of the podcast, which is insane. And I thought it would be good to talk about the lessons that I have learned along the way. And I’ve made some notes, but you’ll have to bear with me because I am deep in holiday mode and we have had a day of full sun. The kids have been having the best time of their lives full sun, the kids are having the time of their lives and I have had a glass of wine at dinner. So here we go. Some French rap passing by. things that I have learned. Number one, when you feel stuck, take action. Motherhood had floored me in all the best and the most challenging ways.

It coincided with a natural end to the charity that I’ve been working within for 11 years. A natural pause in the wedding photography business I’ve been running in parallel, a major house renovation and the COVID pandemic. I had felt lost as to what to do with my wedding photography business and pivoted to family work, embracing all things analog in the digital age, but it still felt like there was something missing, something more.

I just had no idea what it was. I was frantic in my search and whilst I was elated to be a mum, I felt really stuck as a woman, not sure what the future held for me. Starting something completely new is scarier the older you get and doing it in public feels incredibly vulnerable. It’s far easier to stay where you feel competent and therefore confident and comfortable.

The idea of starting a podcast represented a big stretch out of my comfort zone. I’ve said this a thousand times, but this time last year I had no idea what I was doing. Tech overwhelm, the heaviest imposter phenomenon I have ever experienced.

I’ve said this a thousand times, but this time last year I had no idea what I was doing. Tech overwhelm, the heaviest imposter syndrome that I had ever experienced, all the stories around who are you to start a podcast, who the hell would want to listen to you ramble on, fear of failure and all of that. But also just the tiniest bit of excitement because I had a hunch that I would love podcasting.
and that glint of excitement.
And that glint of excitement coupled with a healthy fear of regret was just enough to make me really want to do the thing. The idea had been niggling at me for six months and it was my 40th birthday that galvanized me to finally take action. I bought Jenna Kutcher’s podcast lab because who else better to teach you how to podcast than Jenna Kutcher? And I started taking small steps to bring the idea to life.
And here we are 12 months later and that feeling of stuckness has all but evaporated because I pushed through the self doubt, the thoughts of people I went to school with listening to me and wondering whether I’d actually lost the plot thinking that anyone would be interested in listening into what I had to say. Those thoughts have grown quieter and quieter with each passing month and they’ve been replaced.
by voice notes from complete strangers telling me how much an episode landed with them and thanking me for holding this space to have such open and honest conversations. How could I feel stuck listening to such kind words talking about something that I had created from nothing? Number two, we were never supposed to do this alone.
I began this podcast selfishly because I wanted to talk with other women who were just starting.
because I wanted to talk with other women who were starting, scaling, or just muddling through a business whilst raising their kids. I had been lucky enough to match with an incredible bunch of mums through the NCT, and I’d really felt the importance of female friendships in early motherhood. But I didn’t have anyone in my real life who understood the challenges of trying to build a business with little people at your feet.
because it’s a very unique experience and if you’re listening to this, I’m guessing you might have people in your lives too who love you and mean the world to you, but perhaps don’t quite get what you’re trying to do. This podcast has helped me find and connect with women who absolutely get it and that has been a game changer for me. We’re not supposed to do this stuff alone. It’s too hard.
Yes, we can invest in mentors and coaches and I am a massive advocate for that, but sometimes we
But sometimes we just need to feel seen, don’t we? We just need to hear someone else’s story and think, yeah, me too. We need to know that we’re not in this alone and by hearing the stories of mums who are just starting out, mums who have been in business since their kids were babies and now have flown the nest.
Mums who have been in business since their kids were babies and now they’ve flown the nest and mums in the messy middle. We’re reminded that there are women just like us at every stage of the game and perhaps we are exactly where we are meant to be in this moment. Hearing the stories of women who now have established businesses not
talking not just about their success, but about the challenges they faced in the early days, the times when they messed up and what they did about it. It’s a necessary antidote.
is a necessary antidote to the curated and filtered version of entrepreneurship which has been sold to us, mostly by people who want to sell to us. Building a business isn’t easy, if it was, everyone would do it, but it’s a hell of a lot easier if you can find a community of people who are on the path alongside you, or perhaps a little bit ahead or a little bit behind, because there are few forces stronger than a community of women lifting as they climb.
This podcast has certainly been that for me and I hope you’ve been able to say me too along the way as well. Number three, things take time.
Number three, things take time. I started this podcast from nothing. I had no following, no audience, no downloads, no support, no financial backing, no nothing, literally. And now I’m a year in and it has a really engaged audience of moms who are showing up every day to make their big dreams come true and build a better life for themselves and their kids. When I look back at the exhausted 39 year old mom of two who nearly didn’t follow through on her mad idea, that is amazing. I thought I’d take the opportunity to share my stats because I don’t think people do this enough in the podcasting world.

I have spent this year wondering what is normal and where these numbers sit in the scheme of things and I feel anxious about sharing them because there is this game that we’re supposed to play, right? Where we pretend that we’re doing a lot better than we are perhaps and I’m conscious of that motivation to attract sponsors and that we might let
them overestimate our stats instead of be upfront with them about them. And so it might be that I’m doing myself a disservice by sharing these numbers, but I couldn’t find enough resources to reassure me that how I was doing was normal. And I would like to be that for somebody else. So if anybody is out there thinking of starting a podcast,
then this is my reality and I’m happy to share it with you. So the podcast was launched on the 19th of July, 2025. And I think that day will be etched in my brain forever. It took me four months to get to a thousand downloads. Seven months in, I hit 2000. Nine months in, I hit 3000. And at 12 months, I’m about to hit 5,000 downloads.
And it’s pretty wild to think that 5,000 times someone has decided to have this podcast keep them company on the school run or the dog walk or whatever it is they’re doing that day. And I’m so grateful to every single one of you who has believed in me and chosen to listen in. Thank you so much. It means the world really. Being a year in reminds me of that quote. You overestimate what you can do in a year.

but underestimate what you can do in a decade. And I think back to when my dad and I started the D-Day Revisited charity back in 2009. We had no idea, literally no idea what we were doing. We had no experience in events, travel, care for the elderly, or really any skills that would have been remotely applicable to the tasks that we were taking on. But we learned on the job, as mothers do.
We made so many mistakes and every year our veterans pilgrimages to Normandy got better and better until the whole thing was a well-oiled machine.
We made so many mistakes and every year our veterans pilgrimages to Normandy got better and better until the whole thing was a well-oiled machine. Those who joined us in the latter years couldn’t believe how smoothly everything seemed to run. When the sun came out, someone was there with sun cream ready for their forehead. And when it started raining, someone would hand them a waterproof poncho. We had St. John’s Ambulance medics, we had
translators, we had a GP who came with us every year. All needs were catered for. We had anticipated every eventuality. And after 11 years taking the largest group of World War II veterans back to France to commemorate the anniversary of the D-Day landings, we were experts and we had built up quite a reputation in the veteran community. We were so confident that in our final year we took on extracurricular activities.
My dad restored a one-of-a-kind coastal forces motor anti-summer marine boat and I put a modest team together to design, fundraise and deliver a commemorative garden at RHS Chelsea, which we then moved to the clipped
which we then move to the Cliftoffs.
which we then moved to the cliff tops of Aramange above Gold Beach. We couldn’t have done any of that in our first year or our third, sixth, or even ninth year. It took us a decade to bring the charity to a point where it had achieved all of its goals and objectives and then some. Things take time. This podcast will take time to build momentum and I’m okay with that. At least for now. I can’t imagine my life without it, so I’m sticking around.
So if you’re feeling stuck in your business or in life in general, I hope my sharing these learnings has been helpful to you. If you can take action and stretch your comfort zone, then clarity will surely follow. Remember we are not supposed to do this stuff alone. So seek out and connect with those who get it. They get what it is you’re trying to do and why you’re trying to do it. And remember, please, that things take time.
It’s so easy to fall into comparisonitis and hear these overnight success stories and feel like you are falling behind. And of course there are always anomalies. But for me, the experience of building something from nothing has been all the richer for focusing on the journey and not the destination. And I’ll end by saying thank you again for choosing to listen in to Mummy’s Business. I have celebrated with a slice of gatto.
I have celebrated with a big slice of chocolate gatto and I hope that I’ll be here in a year’s time celebrating the second birthday. But in the meantime, I will go and…
but for now it’s late, it’s way past my bedtime, so I will speak to you soon.