Episode 56: From Survival Mode to Scaling Your Business with Ease with Michelle Newman

Hello and welcome to the Mum Means Business podcast, where we shine a light on inspiring women who have one thing in common. When they’re not managing tantrums, homework, P.E. kits and play dates, they are busting their gut to create something from nothing, to turn their passion into a thriving business and build a better life for themselves and their families. We dig into what motivates devoted mothers to pursue entrepreneurship and how they integrate their work and family life.

I’m Victoria Phipps, your host, and if you’re an ambitious mum in need of some solidarity whilst navigating the messy middle of making your big dream a reality, then stick around. This is for you.

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

Victoria (00:01)
My guest today is a business transformation specialist who helps entrepreneurs to scale with ease. 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. Mum of one and step-mum of seven, Michelle Newman is the founder of Flow.

A digital operations consultancy that offers operational management and wraparound business support to ensure your growth plan is executed seamlessly, whether it’s scaling your business, launching a project or optimizing creative platforms like Kajabi. An award-winning advocate for women in business, speaker and community champion, Michelle is committed to helping business owners work with more ease so they can focus on what they do best and feel the love for their business once again.

We have had plenty of conversations around starting a business on this podcast, but I’m not sure we’ve ever taken a deep dive into scaling. So I’m really looking forward to diving into this with you, Michelle. Welcome to the MUMmeans Business Podcast.

Michelle (01:09)
Thank you for having me. God, listening back to that is so bizarre, isn’t it? It’s just having someone say things back to you in a way that makes it very reflective. It’s like, yeah, that’s wild. Thank you so much for letting me come here. Honestly, it’s a pleasure. Absolute pleasure.

Victoria (01:29)
You’ve done lots of great stuff. It’s a great bio. I love it.

Michelle (01:34)
Yeah, but it doesn’t feel like that when you’re in it, does it? That’s the truth of it. Like when you’re in it, it’s not quite so easy, A, to identify what you’re doing and B, to know that you’re doing it well. So I think it’s important that we take those moments to absorb when we hear things back or we get a moment of…

sort of feedback, you know, like that kind of like positive reinforcement, because I was listening to one of your other podcasts with somebody, I can’t recall her name right now, which is terrible of me. But I thought that’s so true of the…

Victoria (02:04)
Yeah.

Michelle (02:16)
the differences when you work on your own is that you, and when you work for an organization in corporate or something like that, is that you get that kind of reinforcement, that feedback, that kind of positive benchmark, either that you’re working towards or a pat on the back or whatever it is, and you don’t necessarily get that, so you have to find that for yourself, don’t you?

Victoria (02:26)
Hmm.

Yeah, and that becomes a skill. again, I think as mums, we’re not very good at like pausing ever, but just to celebrate the winning of the milestone. Like really what we should be doing is like taking ourselves out for dinner, but we’re just like, yay, that happened. I achieved it. It’s only like five years worth of effort to get to this point. So what are we doing tomorrow? Next thing. And it’s just like, you just go past it.

Michelle (02:55)
Thank

Yeah.

Victoria (03:06)
And the pat on the back could literally last half a second. And we were speaking before we hit record. So much of what we’re doing in business is not necessarily relatable to the people that we share our lives in close proximity with, whether that’s our kids, our partners, our parents, extended family, friends, unless you’re in it, it’s quite hard to relate and to connect.

And so actually it’s not like if it were your boss and they were following you on a project and saw you reach that milestone, they’re in it with you and they reward you, they acknowledge it, they give you that pat on the back. But actually we kind of work a lot in isolation, but also kind of in silence because other people we appreciate are not perhaps that interested in the minutiae of what it is we’re trying to achieve at the moment. And so then actually the reward is kind of silent as well.

And so I really love starting these conversations with these intros because I’m like, right, let’s set it. Let’s set the foundation of the conversation with like everything that you’ve done and how brilliant you are. So yeah, let it land.

Michelle (04:14)
Thanks.

and I’ll have that and I’ll say thank you. I’m trying to get better because that’s the other thing is when

we do get them we’re not very good at accepting that kind of feedback or like going oh thank you you know like it’s a very weird world that we exist in where we are many of us in I think in the online space are serving people and actually getting the moment for reflection and actually accepting that reflection becomes really really difficult and I think you know we were just talking about somebody else that’s in our world that’s about mindset and those kind of things and whether it’s

Victoria (04:33)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Michelle (04:46)
money or self-care or whether it’s focusing on your growth plan and your evolution, it’s really hard to take those opportunities, I think.

Victoria (04:59)
Yeah,

yeah. And it’s a lot of hard work just to navigate your path for yourself. So much is in isolation. So you navigate it for yourself, you execute it, you achieve it. And all of that is kind of done very quietly. And you’ve got your beautiful little office that you go to, your little happy sanctuary, and it’s all just happening in that space. So I think it’s really important because as women, we’re you know, millennial mums.

we’re not necessarily that comfortable with accepting compliment, even if someone says like, I really like your hair today. We’re like, don’t be daft, it’s just bed head and whatever, and I need to get it colored, I need to get it cut, and you know, it’s terrible at it. So I think that’s all part of our development.

Michelle (05:29)
Three more.

Thank you.

All

of these pieces, the things that you never really anticipate either when you’re thinking about starting a business, you don’t realize how much they tie into who you are as a person. And then as a mom as well, like that’s crazy because actually, and I’m sure everyone who is listening to this podcast feels this way, you are constantly trying to set a good example for your children. And so you want that for them, but actually we’re not actually doing it for ourselves in a lot of cases, you know? So trying to reprogram how we are.

Victoria (05:51)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Michelle (06:10)
or address some of the shifts that need to happen in our mindset is really tough. Like it’s not just business we’re learning, we’re learning a whole lot of load of shiz.

Victoria (06:21)
Yeah,

well, we’re like trying to unlearn at the same time, like unlearn all these stories that we kind of grew up believing about how we should be and how we should present and how we should like tick all these boxes and follow the ingredients and the recipe for life to get to where we need to get to. And then trying to raise our kids to not be burdened with those stories and also having to like reparent ourselves with them at the same time. It’s really, it’s a lot of work.

Michelle (06:25)
Mmm.

Yes.

Mm.

Yeah,

yeah.

Victoria (06:51)
It’s a lot of work,

but we will, we will no doubt get into it and how all of that kind of plays into this idea of scaling. But I want to go back to the beginning of your story in business. So what made you take the leap and decide to bet on yourself and start your own business?

Michelle (07:15)
It wasn’t necessarily, sort of a few things happened, I think. I had wanted to be an entrepreneur, to have my own business for a very long time. And when I think back to how I was as a child, I loved playing offices. You know, I loved kind of that kind of, like, having my own.

Victoria (07:33)
I’ve never heard anyone say

that.

Michelle (07:34)
Honestly, I used to play offices

and in my bedroom I had like a desk that my dad had built for me. He was brilliant, my dad blessed him. And I would play libraries. Do you remember? I don’t know if you remember this or this, I’m showing my age. We used to scan the barcode with a pen and then it had like the date stamp on the top. I fashioned one of those out of a pen and a rubber. I literally like this stuff.

Victoria (07:51)
Yeah.

Hahaha!

Michelle (07:58)
together. So even like the administrative element of going to the library was like

Victoria (08:04)
Yeah,

you’re like celebrating the most boring bits of business.

Michelle (08:08)
I realised I was playing at being a librarian. I just loved the fact that they had this pen and this paper, there was

this pile when they were processing. So actually when I think back on it, there were signs there from a very early age that I wanted to do this kind of work. And then as I got older, I wanted to, I was very,

work driven. wasn’t particularly in, you know, I wasn’t great at education, I wasn’t keen to learn, but I wanted to work. I had a really great work ethic. So the natural progression for me was into corporate and I went down that path. But I always had this thing in the back of my head about having my own office and having my own office set up. And here I am, do you know what I mean? And it’s been a bit of a shaky path to get to that point. But I remembered that recently and I was thinking that must, that’s actually really important part of who I was as a child and my development.

to come into this point as well. yeah, but Flow itself, my business as it, the entity that it is now, started coming up for seven years ago and actually came out of a complete change of circumstances. It wasn’t planned and as most businesses are not, I suppose, in many ways, it wasn’t really a…

choice it was kind of a necessity. Unfortunately I found myself in a position where I had a big big life change, my marriage came to an end, we had had a business together, a digital marketing business together but unfortunately that.

fell apart as well as the marriage and I needed to work. I needed to find an income and I was single mum, had a young boy who was still at school who I needed to be available for and I didn’t want to go back to corporate and so I decided to found Flow and that’s where it all kind of started really. But crikey it’s been a rollercoaster ever since.

Yeah.

Victoria (10:15)
Okay, so the first business you started then you started with your ex-husband. Did you set that up together? How did that work?

Michelle (10:21)
No, I actually

had a business before that as well. And again, I was thinking about this, I haven’t spoken about this either before. So it was like a small events and cake company. So we were doing like wedding favors and cupcakes and those kinds of things way before cupcakes were really trendy, by the way. So we actually found it really hard. And I was working in corporate at the time and was doing it as a bit of a sideline because I’d already identified that I wanted to try something different. And I think that’s the first part of the

Victoria (10:24)
Okay.

Okay.

Michelle (10:51)
creative element showing its side in me when I decided that I wanted to try that but it was tough and I didn’t know what I was doing and I wasn’t making enough money from it so I ended up going back to a job and then I met my husband and so on and so forth and life just took its own path and I was then in an educational role.

but still very much in the IT and project management side of things. So still pulling on all of the skills and experience that I had until such time that we decided to take the plunge and set up a business together. And it was successful, it was good. You know, we had some great projects, we worked really well together. But you know, unfortunately there were other issues there and we weren’t able to salvage.

either the marriage or the business. it was really tough.

Victoria (11:46)
Yeah, yeah, it

sounds like a really challenging time because it’s your whole world wrapped up in this relationship really, you know, and that’s just obviously there’s a massive emotional weight to that. But it’s also your livelihood. And that’s a lot to carry when that when you’re kind of navigating both of those things, changing dramatically, and you’re also

Michelle (11:54)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Victoria (12:16)
single mum and you’re kind of trying to manage that for your son as well and navigate that on his behalf. What did that look like in terms of your sense of identity, your sense of your own? Because a divorce is so, I mean, I haven’t had one, but I’ve had breakups and whatever else. But when you’ve got a kid in the mix as well.

Michelle (12:19)
Yeah.

Victoria (12:45)
So challenging to your own mental health as well to kind of carry that whilst also feeling the day to day pressure of earning money. You know, that doesn’t go away. You have to still continue and you’ve got this child to feed. So what did that look like?

Michelle (12:53)
Yeah.

Yeah, and there was a point

where I was like, I will go, you know, got, I hold my hands up to anybody, any kind of job. So I was like, I will go and work in Tesco’s or I will, you know, do whatever it takes. But as it stood, this is the path I took. And at the time, I was very much, I’m quite a pragmatic person anyway. I kind of will deal with what’s in front of me. And then afterwards I deal with the emotion. I’m kind of like that kind of…

Victoria (13:24)
Yeah, yeah.

Michelle (13:26)
Okay, let’s deal with what’s happening. Let’s put a sensible head on, figure something out, and then we’ll deal with everything afterward. And that’s definitely what happened for me in that period of time. I very much existed day to day in just trying to get through the day and find a pathway forwards. It was incredibly challenging. There was a lot of unexpected

the word I’m looking for unexpected angles coming at me in terms of the things that were breaking down around me so trying to navigate that hold my son in some kind of

I was trying to protect him obviously, but like obviously like trying to contain it for him so that he wasn’t, he was still quite young at the time and trying to make sure that, cause he was my number one focus in all of it. And I was like, as long as he has somewhere safe to exist and I can provide for him, that is my only motivation. But it’s really easy to lose sight of who you are and what you’re thinking and what you’re feeling in that process. So like you said, you it becomes, you can very much lose

Victoria (14:13)
Like a bubble. Yeah.

Yeah.

Michelle (14:41)
who you are as a person in that process and I was trying to figure out there was a lot of different unexpected curveballs that came my way in terms of the people around me as well and that was really hard because then I didn’t know who I could trust or where I could turn to and it was very difficult. you know and

Victoria (15:00)
Yeah.

Michelle (15:07)
There was mental health issues around the situation as well, not for me personally, but I was very aware of those. So I was trying to hold space for that as well and be very mindful of those things. It was very much a juggling act. It was very messy, very chaotic. And when I look back to it now, the fact that I actually got through it, I’m just really proud of myself for getting through it. But afterwards, that’s when the, that’s when the shit hit the fan. That’s when I broke a little bit and actually

Victoria (15:27)
Hmm, yeah.

Michelle (15:37)
we were talking about how much we have to figure out our mindset as part of our business and you know we have to work on ourselves I was doing that for my business but also for me as a person so this is actually very much intertwined with me as a person now it’s become incredibly personal and so yeah that’s always a really interesting

Victoria (15:51)
Yeah.

Michelle (16:04)
thread to pull on, think, really, because I remember about a year after I’d, the split sort of settled and I was in a new house and I’d started the business and I found breathwork. And actually that breathwork really, really helped me to process some of what I was going through. But it was transformational in a way that I didn’t anticipate. It wasn’t something that I’d really…

Understood before and that was one of the things that I think actually saved me. I think it really did I really think it helped me process things in a way that I didn’t anticipate so it’s

Victoria (16:44)
Yeah, yeah. Well,

I think so many women will relate to this experience of kind of propping everything up. You’re propping everything up. You are emotionally regulating your son. You are probably emotionally regulating your ex husband from a distance. I’m drawing inferences, but you you are navigating this massive shift.

And you are also keeping all the balls rolling. You your kids still need their clothes to go to school on a Monday. You know, you still need to make sure there’s food on the table. You’re wondering whether you’re going to get a job in Tesco, but those little thoughts about what’s next for you are kind of just squeezed in amongst all the kind of emotional chaos that’s going on in that moment. And this idea of like practical head on resolution, like what do we do?

in order to like meet all of these necessities, these basic needs that we have to meet as a family in order to survive practically. And all of that emotional stuff just gets pushed, you know, down and down and down and down because there’s no space for it. And you’re like, I’ll sort myself out later. I’ll myself out later. And then once it feels like there’s the tiniest bit of stability and you kind of move out of adrenaline, which is essentially what you’re functioning on,

Michelle (17:59)
Yeah.

Victoria (18:09)
and cortisol and everything starts to sort of settle, then your own body is like, well, hang on, when are we gonna deal with like my emotions? And that’s when I imagine it all comes out. you do like tools like breath work, I’ve not ever really deeply explored it, but I’ve done all like the basic things, like, you know, let’s do a few box breaths and do a bit of this and do a bit of that. And it is just that like physical settling that needs to happen as well, because all of this is like carried around in our body that like,

relentless cortisol pumping through our system just to kind of get through each day, like you said. And this is, think, the important thing to always acknowledge. And I suppose, especially for mothers, like you cannot separate the business journey and the personal journey. They are intertwined.

Michelle (18:52)
You can’t. And

they are, and to be honest, for the longest time.

I started Flow in 2019 and then, but the world had kind of imploded for me the year before, but 2019 was the point that I was like, right, I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna go for it. And in amongst all those life things happening, then we had the pandemic as well, which was another freaking curve ball that nobody knew how to deal with. But I think the…

Victoria (19:17)
Yeah, exactly. Timing.

Michelle (19:25)
The way that your body copes with stress is endlessly fascinating to me. I think the impact and the knock-on effects.

of regulating your nervous system and figuring out your, your, signs that you’re not coping very well or this, you know, what you need for you as an individual. Cause that looks so different from one person to the next, one woman to the next, month to the next, you know, what works for one person doesn’t work for another. And I will be endlessly grateful to one of my first clients because she was a breathwork specialist and she was the one that introduced me to this. And I remember her saying, I’ll come along to the session.

Victoria (20:00)
amazing. Yeah.

Michelle (20:05)
and it was like a, it was a rebirth in breath work but it was about cutting ties, it was about letting go and I cannot tell you, it makes me emotional just thinking about what happened in that session. It was like an out of body experience for me and I was able to actually reset myself on a deeper level that I didn’t even know that I needed and I’m very much open about, I think, finding the right support that you might need, whether that’s talking therapy.

and I’ve had talking therapy as well. I’ve had it all, tried it all, and I think that that’s great in the right circumstance as well, but that was my moment, that was my turning point, that was when I was like, okay, I need to dive into this a little bit more, and that’s actually become part of how I manage and regulate my nervous system on the regular. So I remember that really clearly, I remember that session, and I remember afterwards just thinking.

Wow, I feel so much lighter than I had done in such a long time. It was incredible. But that was just me, know, and everyone’s got to find their thing, haven’t they? And it’s really hard as a mum to find time to find your thing as well.

Victoria (21:18)
Mm

Yeah. Yeah, but that’s it. Like you carved out a moment to do this thing. And you know, practically speaking, you’ve got to find someone to look after your son, whether that’s your ex husband, you’ve got to arrange that you’ve got to like make space for it, go to the session. And your body obviously really needed that.

Michelle (21:39)
Yeah, yeah. And I hadn’t realised how much I was holding up until that point. I’d, but I’d been actually been hospitalised.

Victoria (21:41)
and

Yeah.

Michelle (21:51)
got an infection as we all do from time to time, got a UTI, I put it all down to stress and everything else, but it spread to my kidneys and I ended up with sepsis. I drove myself to the hospital because I was like, you know, like it was just, I just remember driving, parking, going into like A &E, shaking like just an accident and they just looked at me and scooped me up and somebody took me into a room and before I knew it had an IV attached to me because I must have looked awful.

Victoria (22:03)
my God.

Yeah. Yeah.

Michelle (22:21)
just everything else was prioritized above it until it was the point where I was like no this this has to happen now and and so I’d hit that kind of physical rock bottom and then found my way out of the physical rock bottom but the the the mental elements of it and the overall nervous system plateau I had yet to find and it wasn’t until I found breath work that I really found that.

Victoria (22:28)
Yeah.

Michelle (22:51)
that kind of place of calm that could always send to me and always bring me back to what was important because at the end of it I knew what was important. My son, my way forward, my pathway, you know, is always him. So yeah, it’s been interesting to say the least.

Victoria (23:09)
Yeah,

but I’m so glad that you, I mean, that you went to that session because you might just something might have come up and you just didn’t go. And this is the importance of carving out a bit of time on the regular, even now and then just to, mean, you’ve gone through something extraordinary and probably very traumatic and opted to go to this particular thing that happened to be the tool that was going to fit for you that you could take forward and perhaps use the rest of your life.

Michelle (23:36)
Absolutely.

Victoria (23:38)
But if we don’t carve out that time, you wouldn’t have known. And I think a lot of women carry this stuff and just keep going and just keep carrying. And that experience that you had where you’re, and again, just driving yourself to the hospital. And we do this stuff to ourselves. We’re so rubbish at asking for help.

Michelle (23:40)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Victoria (23:55)
you you put it off like, oh, I don’t feel great. But anyway, my son needs XYZ. So we’ll crack on and you crack on and you crack on. Suddenly you’ve got sepsis and you’re like quivering your way into A &E. Like, I think there’s something wrong with me maybe, but I don’t want to be any bother. What do you reckon? They’re like quizzing you off.

Michelle (24:09)
I’m like,

can you give me some tablets and I get on my way? Am I alright? I remember ringing my brother and saying to my brother, my car’s here, can you come and get it out the car park? And he was like, what are you doing there? And I was like, well, you know, even then I didn’t want to admit what was happening because I didn’t want to be a burden to anybody. And I think that as women, we are really reluctant sometimes to speak how we…

Victoria (24:13)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Michelle (24:38)
how we genuinely think and feel because we don’t want to put that onto anybody else. We’re holding it in for ourselves all the time and that’s not helpful either. That’s part of using your voice and being able to vocalize and I’ve said this before and I love this, it’s true. I love going into a field and just shouting, screaming, really.

Victoria (24:48)
Hmm.

Yeah

Michelle (25:01)
loud. It’s so therapeutic to actually expel what you’re feeling and to release that kind of energy that sits here that we hold where we don’t say what we genuinely want to at many points because we’re fearful of upsetting someone or burdening someone. We need to get that stuff out. I love a good old scream. In the car, if it’s not like really loud music, yeah, you might find me having a scream on the way home.

Victoria (25:17)
Hmm.

Yeah, and I’ve spoken to lots of I remember there was just a brief tangent when I ran a charity with my dad and there was this couple, this gorgeous couple, he was a World War Two vet and they had been married for like 70 odd years and they’re sort of in their late 80s, early 90s and she was a hoot, like so funny this lady and they were gorgeous together but they also would have their spats even at that ripe old age and she’d be like

Michelle (25:59)
Yeah.

Victoria (26:01)
she was very scowl she’s like god you know sometimes you’ve just got to go in you’ve just got to go and scream into a cupboard she’s like you know her husband would be doing something just really just irritated her and it was just too many things and she literally just walk yeah just walk calmly into the kitchen

Michelle (26:07)
Next time.

Yeah, I think it’s massively underrated.

Victoria (26:19)
scream as loud as she got into a cupboard. Like I don’t know what the difference of opening the cupboard, it just felt more contained for her and then just carried on. But like you’ve got to, you’re right, like, and she was a very wise old lady, like you’ve got to get this stuff out. And if you don’t feel comfortable, like it’s better that you go and scream in a field or scream into a cupboard than scream at the person. Because it’s, yes, of course the person has triggered whatever it is, but it’s on you, it’s your reaction. So you need to deal with that in a non-destructive way. And then again, the breath work.

Michelle (26:26)
Yeah.

Exactly that.

I was going to say exactly that.

Victoria (26:49)
Like that’s something you can do for yourself that is a sort of act of care for yourself, but it is also a way of like just breathing this stuff out, you know.

Michelle (26:58)
Thank

Yeah, it is

totally that. so on every full moon, I do a rebirth in breathwork.

It is exactly that. If I don’t do it, I feel continually like I’m being topped up, like I’m almost full to the brim and I need to release all of that energy, which is what I do with that breath work in order to reset myself each month. And when I haven’t done it, I feel it. I feel it in the way I am, my emotions, you know, and we’re navigating all of those things all the time anyway. But if I know this works for me and all I need to ring fence is a couple of hours, it shouldn’t be that hard.

But it is, it is really tough to carve out the time for yourself, isn’t it? It’s so hard to prioritise doing that thing for yourself, even though you know that it’s the right thing to do. And actually, the benefits that I’ve felt from doing it have been far reaching. It’s not just the marriage situation that it healed for me. There was a lot of other things that came up through that process. Unexpected things, how I parent, know, my connection with my son, with my mum, deeper.

than that even, you there’s a lot of things that were really powerful shifts that came out of it. But it came from taking that time to do that. But I need to remember to do that because when it’s good and you can forget, you kind of think, I don’t need that this month or, I’ll be fine. I’ll just shift that along until you’re not. And then all of a sudden you’re like, I know why. Because I haven’t done that thing that I know really helps me, that actually keeps me calm and, you know, gives me back that kind of…

Victoria (28:29)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Michelle (28:39)
the lift that you need, the spaciousness that you need, to just have a moment, to just be you and remember who you are. Because let’s be honest, we are absorbed into our little people’s lives, or big people as they almost are now for me, all the time. And then when we have run a business as well, crikey, then it goes even deeper, doesn’t it? And being service-based when we have clients, you know.

Victoria (29:02)
Yeah.

Michelle (29:07)
For me, I’m head deep in other people’s businesses all the time as well, so I’m holding all of that energy. That’s a lot. There’s a lot of things happening in there. We have to find some space to be able to process our own emotions and feelings. But how we do that is different from person to person. And I think that’s probably one of the biggest or hardest things to figure out is what is right for you.

Victoria (29:15)
Yeah.

Michelle (29:31)
because we do look, don’t we? We look to Instagram, we look to Reels, we look to, for the answers, we want quick fixes to everything, but actually there’s lessons to be learned from the process of finding that thing as well, the things that don’t necessarily work for us. And in the current day and age, we want everything immediate, thick, fast, let me just fix everything. That’s not the way it works, is it?

Victoria (29:31)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah,

well, it’s the prevention over the cure. You you walk into hospital, you know, quivering, shaking, looking like death warmed up with sepsis and the hospital, the doctors all surround you and they have to cure you. Whereas you can go and take yourself off every full moon for a few hours and do some work that is about you and about filling your cup back up and about you releasing some of that stress.

Michelle (30:11)
Yes.

Victoria (30:27)
And that’s prevention. And it’s just finding the thing. We can get trapped thinking that we have to do all the things. And this is something that obviously is impossible for a mum. You you can’t, you you need all the sleep you can get. You’re not going to get up at 5 a.m. and start doing this elaborate morning routine and drink your matcha and do a stretch and manifest and meditate and all of the things. You know, if you can just find one thing that really feels good to you.

And that’s obviously what you’ve done. And you can just lean on that one thing. Fine. If you want to throw in a sound bath once a year or do a bit of a yoga video on YouTube as well. Fine. But you’ve got your one thing that you know works for you. And then it’s just being really disciplined about holding space for that to happen. And I think sometimes, you know, you’ve been through that whole process where you’ve had that experience of going into hospital.

and your body’s been literally screaming at you that you need to take better care of yourself, your head and your body. And often it takes that for us to learn these lessons. But I think just by sharing that story, you know, we can all take something away from that because we are carrying an awful lot day to day. And like you say, we’re carrying stuff we didn’t even know we were carrying, you know.

micro traumas from our childhood, whatever it might be that you know, that day the dog died and someone said something to you that didn’t help, you know, there’s all sorts of stuff and we don’t know the weight of those things. And actually, if we can find something that lets us just every now and again, and it doesn’t have to be daily does it like less pressure just every now and again tap in.

Michelle (32:03)
No.

I think that’s the thing. think we’re, because of the way the world is at the moment, we are overwhelmed with, you know, in a business terms, we’d call it content, but we’re overwhelmed with things to consume. Information, news.

Victoria (32:19)
Yeah, information, yeah.

Michelle (32:24)
often negative, not balanced at all anymore. It feels like it’s very overwhelming to just exist. And so we’ve got to find a way to figure out space and time for ourselves in a way that actually benefits, because it doesn’t just benefit me, it benefits everyone around me if I carve out these two hours. I’m like a different person afterwards. know, genuinely, I feel a shift in me. I feel a calmness come over me. And so I need to do that in order to

Victoria (32:47)
Yeah. Yeah.

Michelle (32:54)
to a better human to the other humans around me, know, which ultimately, you know, as a mum, that’s always our focus, isn’t it? Is trying to do the right thing for them, trying to set a good example, trying to…

Victoria (32:59)
Yeah.

Michelle (33:08)
encourage good behaviors and you know like life’s messy. We talk about the messy middle all the time. Life is really messy. So finding something that can get us through those moments I think is just so powerful but it’s not always easy to even find that thing. It takes a bit of time and a bit of patience sometimes as well.

Victoria (33:28)
Yeah, yeah, no, definitely takes time and sometimes a bit of persistence, you know, get curious, try a few different things and just keep going until you find something that actually, you know, so often, at just a moment like you had like, you’ll never forget that day you went to that first session, obviously, because you just shared it. But like, there’s a turning point and you can feel it. And that is a good sign that you found something that is going to work for you.

Michelle (33:54)
100%.

Victoria (33:54)
and that you can

carry forward because business building and motherhood, I think are two of the messiest, most intense things that you can do. And if you’re going to do them alongside each other, you have to take good care of your head.

Michelle (34:09)
You do. You do definitely have to take good care of your head. And I think you have, you learn, I think both of those things like parenting and business. One thing that we not always talk, it’s not always spoken about is following your gut instinct on things. You know what’s intuitively right for you and your business or your child, you know, and I think sometimes, and that’s the other thing about being overwhelmed about information and stuff that’s around us is that actually

We know we need to trust ourselves a little bit more and trust is really difficult. That’s a big challenge for me. Trust and safety are two big, big, big issues for me. And I recognise that in my mindset. So I need to have ways of working through those things. it’s an ongoing process. It’s not something that you just fix. It’s something that you are continually working on.

And I don’t think we realised that when we started business either, do we? You know, we just thought, start a business, here we go.

Victoria (35:07)
No.

I do tell people this podcast, I’m like, yeah, it’s intense. It’s like the most intense personal development exercise that you could go on. And then motherhood thrown in, like you need to be ready to confront yourself and fail in public and do all the scary things because it is hard and it does push you to…

Michelle (35:23)
time.

You did.

Victoria (35:37)
get real and get to know yourself in a really honest way in order to allow you to move forward with it because there are so many stories that we’ve been conditioned to tell ourselves throughout the whole of our lives to this point. And we have to take a lot of them and analyze them and throw most of them in the bin if we’re going to build a viable business. And that is work. That is hard work. So tell me about your

Michelle (35:57)
Yeah, 100%.

Victoria (36:05)
business evolution to date with Flow. How has it been? Tell me the story.

Michelle (36:10)
Okay,

so when I started it, I started it as a as

I wanted a front on it. I wanted flow business support to exist so that I didn’t have to show my face because I was obviously feeling very vulnerable. My confidence was low. I did not want to be showing my face. I did not want to be doing anything that involved having to interact with people. was low on confidence both in skills and in terms of showing up. know, like it was, there was a lot of trauma around what had happened, which meant that I didn’t, had trust issues, but equally I didn’t want to be public facing.

So I started it as a very much a business entity and I was really really fortunate to be introduced to a lady called Grace from Eden Assistance and she was amazing and she became like a mentor to me because she actually started that pathway of virtual assistance. So at a time when I felt like I didn’t want to overexpose myself or to try new things I felt like

virtual assistants and being an administrator in a business I could work from home I could work flexibly and I was able to do things that actually I found really rewarding and I love the nuts and bolts of business I love making sure that things work well and that people can

navigate around their business without it feeling clunky, you know, and I didn’t realize at the time but going back to that was actually really important and that’s part of what I do now with other businesses but I can explain that in a bit. So I started as a virtual assistant and over time

I was really, really fortunate that I grew a customer, a client base that really stuck with me and it was really, really great. And I started to try different things, working different platforms, different tech platforms, and I couldn’t help myself. The process, so in corporate land, I was a process improvement analyst. I’d worked in business analysis as well and I was project driven. So I was very much in the operational side of things.

Victoria (38:00)
you

Michelle (38:24)
the real tech level, always somewhere between the end users and the tech. And so what I didn’t realize was that I was obviously bringing all of those skills and experience to what I was doing and I was getting much deeper than your average virtual assistant would do in a business and I was going much much more into that. But I was also doing some creative things and I loved the creative side of you know the social media and those kind of things like being able to create things. And then I happened upon Kajabi through one of those

clients and that kind of like really made me realize that I want to work with online businesses and I just loved it but I realized actually I was operating at an online business manager level rather than a virtual assistance level so and I still love the virtual assistance and

as I say, it’s the nuts and bolts of any business. So I truly, truly hold virtual assistants a very high esteem because I just think that they can make such a huge difference, especially to single or small business owners who are trying to do all the things themselves. So what happened was that I quickly got a little bit busier than I’d anticipated through that horrible moment of COVID. Everyone else was having their Netflix.

flicks and chill moments. And I was working my butt off and was like, there is no chill in this house. I am busy, busy, busy, but obviously homeschooling, trying to do all of that as well. But it was a key moment for me because actually the clients grew and I realized that in order to make some more money, I had the opportunity to have some associates working for me.

Victoria (39:46)
Chill.

Michelle (40:11)
So I went down that path, but it was not planned. And this is where it gets a little bit interesting because it grew really fast. And before I knew it, within a couple of years, I had like 13 associates working for me. And they were all fantastic. They were brilliant. But there were two things. The first thing was that I was being pulled away from doing the stuff that I actually loved, which was…

Victoria (40:23)
Wow, okay.

Michelle (40:39)
the business management and the tech elements and the processes and all the online business management element of it that I loved so much. And the second part of it was that I was being drawn into doing things that I didn’t love so much, which was people management and sales. And that were the things that I hated when I was in corporate. I know this about myself, in corporate I hated it. I knew that I didn’t want to do it then. And so…

Victoria (40:58)
Yeah.

Michelle (41:07)
I was at this moment where I was like at a bit of a crossroads and we’d had an incident with one of the associates which happens there was a little bit of a conflict and I was like I’m just not loving this this is not what I had intended at all and it also felt like

the business had kind of got a life of its own rather than me choosing to do things. Of course I had choices, but it didn’t feel that way. It kind of just felt like I’d kind of gone down this path and it was a growth path, but it wasn’t one that I had anticipated, planned for or enjoyed. So I was like, okay, I have power. I can make a change here. And this is again, where I’m really proud of myself. I mean, I’m not going to do this anymore. And I stripped it right back.

Victoria (41:28)
Hmm.

Michelle (41:51)
And at the core of it, I wanted to come back to being a really strong, powerful support service to people, but I wanted to give them more than a…

administration I wanted to give them some of the other elements that I could offer but I wanted to structure in a way that it felt like you had sort of a I call it wraparound support but basically you’ve got like a little team that exists and they support you and they give you enough of what you need to make sure that you can get back to doing the things that you want to do without it feeling cumbersome and difficult and painful.

Victoria (42:25)
Hmm.

Michelle (42:26)
So I stripped it back and at the same time that I did that, I started to think about maybe it was time for me to come out from behind the flow business support Heidi screen and show my face and become more of a personal brand. And I’d worked with a marketing consultant and she sort of said, yeah, you should do the personal brand thing. And I was like, ooh, I don’t want to put my face on things. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to show myself.

But at the beginning of 2025, that was what I did. And I feel like actually that was such a moment. was those two things. So changing the business to what I wanted it to be with intention rather than it just being an evolution of circumstances and situations and to stepping into that personal brand really made a huge difference. So that now I feel like actually I feel like I’m placed

and I own my business more, which I know sounds so bizarre, but these things have a tendency to have a life of their own. Like you can just get caught in the snowball effect. And actually we have power to make change. And I think again, as moms or as women in business, there’s some mindset shifts around that that need to happen because we are powerful and we can do this. We can do whatever we want. We need to remember that and make those changes.

Victoria (43:28)
Hmm.

Michelle (43:55)
so that we are carving business or shaping businesses that we want to exist in. So now it’s a really lovely feeling. I said this last month and I’m genuinely looking at the date because I’m like, it’s actually probably about a month to the day that I actually feel like I belong in my business. And that’s such a lovely, lovely thing because…

Victoria (44:00)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Michelle (44:16)
It didn’t, like I say, it didn’t come from a choice or a, I say to people, most businesses start because you’re good at something, you enjoy something, or you recognize that there’s an opportunity in something. Mine come from none of those things. It came from a situation of change. And so now feel like I belong inside of it is amazing. And I have such incredible people around me like you. And

Victoria (44:34)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Michelle (44:45)
amazing people that are doing such incredible things. I get inspired and I get motivated through the people I now meet because there’s always something to learn and always something to do. And I’m only just getting started. That’s how I genuinely feel now. I’m like, this is just the beginning. That was that chapter. That was that part of the story. Let’s press on.

Victoria (44:52)
Hmm.

Yeah.

literally beaming hearing you say that because again, you cannot separate the two. feels like beforehand in the early stages of flow, you were in a place of reaction. Like everything decision you made was reactive, like I need some money, react, start a business. The business is in high demand, like react, hire some people.

Michelle (45:22)
what? What?

Victoria (45:32)
You’ve now got lots of people react to get into people management start selling let them do the stuff that actually you started the business to do in the first place and then it’s like react and make the change again, but sometimes It is yes, it is mindset, but we can’t like force those mindset shifts time Needs to pass so that we can heal from the stuff that has gone on before and get to

the place where we feel like we’re not working for our business. Everyone talks about working in it or on it, but there’s a for it. You’re kind of an employee of this entity that is not even a human being. It’s just like this thing that you’ve built, which you feel trapped within and isn’t aligned. And it all happened accidentally because you’re just reacting. And actually I think after such a big life shift,

Michelle (46:17)
Yes.

Yeah.

Victoria (46:30)
with all the trauma and the challenge that’s wrapped up in it. As a human being, like we need time to recover and yes, we have to function. Yes, we have to provide. And so life goes on, but it might take years until you get to the point where the business you’re building feels good. And that’s okay. Like give yourself the gift of time. Give yourself the

Michelle (46:51)
Yeah. Yeah.

Victoria (46:56)
gift of care, find the tools that you can implement in your day to day. You found the breath work that just helped to rebuild you brick by brick by brick until you get to a point. It’s these triggers, isn’t it? The trigger for you was walking to the hospital with sepsis, that something has to change. There’s another trigger where you look around at your business and there’s something going on with one of your employees, one of your team.

and there’s a conflict and you’re just like stepping out and seeing the bigger picture and being like, I’m not having fun right now. So that’s a trigger and you change and you get to a point where you feel okay to step in front of the camera and start talking to your phone, which is a big deal. It’s a bloody big deal. Massive. Yeah. We sort of take it for granted, but it’s huge. Yeah.

Michelle (47:40)
It’s wild, is massive, it’s huge. Yeah, and I think in

the modern day, I was listening to somebody this morning, and like in the modern day, you’re expected to just be okay with being on social media, you’re expected to just be all right with putting your face on things. And I…

I’m the opposite of that. think because of what happened, didn’t want, I don’t want anything. I never had any social media until I had a business, albeit in the previous business, but I didn’t have a Facebook account until I started a business. I just didn’t want it even then. So it was really interesting to me. But what I did like was writing and I liked, I liked imagery. I love beautiful things. That’s why I love everything that you do. But it’s kind of…

Victoria (48:05)
Yeah.

Wow, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, that’s very kind.

Michelle (48:26)
It kind of started where I started to feel comfortable with it was on Instagram. had, again, and these are all these funny little things that I’ve done along the way that have shaped me. had a food blog for a little while because I love cooking and I love, you know, so I was one of those original annoying people on Instagram that put pictures of their food on because I was happier putting pictures of the food than I was of myself. I didn’t want to be on there. I was happy for there to just be loads of photos of the food that I was cooking. So actually, I think we massively underestimate

Victoria (48:40)
Yeah. Yeah.

Michelle (48:56)
how hard it is to be part of the modern world when actually a lot of us are really uncomfortable with those things. And I think, like you said, we need to give ourselves grace. We need to give ourselves the grace to recognize that things are not gonna happen overnight and we’re not gonna be comfortable with things overnight. And we were both at an event a couple of weeks ago and there was one of the quotes that were given there stuck with me the last couple of weeks, which is, we massively overestimate what we can achieve in a week, in a year. Sorry, I’m gonna say that again.

We massively overestimate what we can achieve in a year but underestimate what we can achieve in a decade and I think that’s really true because actually as busy mums especially our year is packed isn’t it? is jam-packed. Our calendars and I’m talking about school calendars, personal calendars, you can even think about business calendars.

Victoria (49:45)
Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Michelle (49:54)
So actually trying to…

build something that you are really, really happy with and proud of and comfortable inside takes time. And you’re trying to squeeze that in around everything else that’s happening. You’ve got to give yourself some grace that actually that’s not going to happen immediately, that it’s not going to happen overnight, that actually those shifts are going to happen, but they might be micro movements. They’re not necessarily going to be the big leaps of people that are

perhaps solely in their business without children or partners or those kind of things, those kind of other life demands that can focus entirely on their business. So yeah, I think it’s really important that we’re just really kind to ourselves and we celebrate what we actually do achieve because quite often we underestimate that as well.

Victoria (50:41)
Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. But just celebrating the fact that you took some time out and did the breath work, which is just for you. Because as you say, our calendars are packed out before we even inject ourselves into them. Like before we put our business in, before we put ourself in, you just lay out a calendar, January 1st, and it’s kind of full already. And then everything else is kind of squeezed in because we’re playing by different rules as moms. Like we just are, especially when your kids are younger, but really in general, like

Michelle (50:58)
you

Yeah.

Victoria (51:11)
We just have far more demands on our time than the average man in his twenties. And so we cannot judge ourselves by their standards, no matter what is out there on social media. Like we have to be really careful and celebrate those small achievements because you’ve managed to do in a relatively short time, considering all the other demands on your time, something that fine, you know.

Michelle (51:13)
We did it. Yeah.

100%.

Victoria (51:37)
somebody who’s unencumbered completely, footloose and fancy free might be able to do in a week. If you did it in a month, you are doing well. Like you are worthy of that celebration. And I think you’re so right. It’s giving yourself grace. Definitely.

Michelle (51:43)
Yeah.

Exactly.

I

think, so one of the things that I talk about quite a lot now is celebrating your wins, but they can come in any shape or form. So it could be business related. And I do think it’s a nice thing to do for your business, but it can be personal or it can be…

Motivational it could be any anything that you feel that you’ve done that’s that needs to be celebrated So we have our to-do lists. They are endless. They are not a finite list They are ever evolving and but what we don’t do is recognize Actually what we did not only from that list, but actually what we did past that list So for example, if you’ve got a to-do list, it’s gonna have all of these actions upon it But actually something that I did that wasn’t on my to-do list was come on

podcast today with you and talk to you and this is massive to me absolutely huge like this is me using my voice and trying to connect with people in a different way and talking about my experiences and opening up in a way that I have

never really done before. You know, I’ve done two other podcasts prior to this, so I’m really new to this as well. And every time I’m learning more about myself in the preparation process and, and actually how I want to show up and where my limits are and where my boundaries are. again, giving myself grace around those things, but taking a moment to celebrate those are really, really important. So it’s not a new concept, but I love a to-da list. Like the to-da is the antithesis of to-do. So you have a to-do list, but

Victoria (53:06)
Hmm.

Yeah? Yeah?

Michelle (53:25)
At the end of the week when you’re done with your week and you look at your to-do list and go shit I didn’t do half of what was on there. What you do is you write a to-da list and your to-da list are all the things that you are proud of yourself for achieving in that week and that is such a powerful powerful mindset shift to actually recognize yourself.

Victoria (53:39)
Nice.

Michelle (53:46)
And it could be, as I say, could be business related. This podcast is definitely going to be on that list for me this week. It could be mindset shifts. It could be that you went to yoga once that week or that actually, you you went to your son’s school show or whatever it is. It can be anything, but something that you’re proud of yourself for doing. Be kind to yourself and recognize that actually every day you’re making effort. You are trying your very hardest. And I think we don’t take those moments to do that. So the to-da thing I do,

Victoria (54:10)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Michelle (54:16)
on a Friday and I do it every Friday and by the end of the year I have a lovely little book that’s got a list of great things that I’ve done inside of it.

Victoria (54:25)
I love that. That’s so much better than what I do. What I do is I take the surprise extra tasks and I put them on my to do list and cross them out immediately. But your idea is much better.

Michelle (54:33)
Bye.

No,

but we’re not misaligned here because actually the great feeling comes from the crossing off, right? Yeah, that’s nothing better than ticking something off to do this. So actually, I’ve created a notebook of my own, my own to dial this that’s got actually space for you to tick something off and then to pull out a highlight moment as well because I’m like, we need to recognise ourselves. We are making so much effort, even if it’s just showing up, even if it’s like, I came in and I’d done my work for my clients this week, some weeks,

Victoria (54:41)
yeah, I love it. Yeah, so satisfying. Yeah.

Yeah.

Michelle (55:05)
is enough. That’s still a massive thing to be able to deliver and show up and do the things or perhaps it’s caring for a parent or whatever it is you know life life is just full of the curveballs and this is a way of us trying to recognize that in the best possible way and cheerlead for ourselves really.

Victoria (55:05)
That’s enough. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I love it. I’ve never heard this before and I’m going to adopt it. No, I’ve never heard it. I don’t know where I’ve been. I’ve been under a rock or something, but yeah, I’ve never heard this. I love it. It’s so much better. And I love the idea of like compiling it all so you can look back because it’s the stretchy things or it’s the things that you can kind of put down as like, oh, I got distracted. I had to do that thing. And so I wasn’t able to do my to-do list, but actually that had to do that thing. You can always reframe it like,

Michelle (55:30)
You know, I love it, darling.

We’re

Yes.

Victoria (55:57)
actually fine, you had to go and see your granny in a home or whatever it might be. But what a beautiful thing to have done that and to have taken time away from your to-do list and what that meant to your granny. You can reframe everything.

Michelle (56:07)
Exactly, exactly that. And as mums,

aren’t we just always firefighting?

Victoria (56:16)
Mmm.

Michelle (56:16)
Let’s just take that analogy. If you were fighting a fire, you’d be like, I fought a fire. You know what mean? Like, not only was that terrifying, but I did it. I did that thing. But we’re not going, we’re just going, we’re just firefighting. We’re just firefighting. We’re dismissive of it rather than recognise it. Actually, what we’re doing makes a difference to people, to lives, to outcomes, to all of those people around us as well. And I think that we need to be really, like I say, cheerleaders.

Victoria (56:21)
It’s terrifying. yeah, true!

Yeah. Yeah.

Mm.

is enormous.

Michelle (56:46)
ourselves a little bit more because you don’t get that naturally either through life’s process and certainly not in business. Certainly not in business. There’s no one standing there going, well done for coming on that podcast when you were absolutely breaking it this morning. I mean, no one’s going to say that to me. So actually I need to …

Victoria (56:54)
Hmm.

Exactly. I am. Well

done.

Michelle (57:08)
But you know, it’s true, we need to do that for ourselves. So if we can find a way to do that, and you know, that’s just one idea, whatever it is that we do, I just think we need to celebrate ourselves more because actually that gets the endorphins going, it gets all the good stuff going for us, which is great for, again, for managing that nervous system, isn’t it? And for regulating all of our levels and just having that moment. It’s literally a couple of minutes. Like it shouldn’t be a big deal for us to do that.

Victoria (57:21)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

feels like the perfect point to close the conversation. Because you’re so right, we don’t take that time and we absolutely should we have to champion ourselves. So let me let me ask you one last question. What would you say now, if you could go back and have a conversation with eight year old Michelle?

Michelle (57:41)
Thank

We do. We have to change it.

I would say don’t worry about what everyone else is doing, just follow your own path. You do you in the kindest way.

So I say to my son, I say to him, there are three things that I would like you to always strive for, and that is to be kind, to be clever, and to be confident in equal measure. Because if we get that combination, you’re doing things with good intentions, you’re a good person, and you’re always working towards something more for yourself and for other people. So I would say, don’t worry about what everyone else is doing, follow what

want to do because I was all caught up in trends and keeping up with the crowds and none of that stuff really matters, it really doesn’t. If we’re kind and we can be clever and we can be confident or work towards being confident because that’s a whole different discussion but know showing up confidently in your business is not always easy then they’re the things that I would say to myself I think.

Victoria (59:09)
Perfect. Where can everybody find you Michelle?

Michelle (59:13)
They can find me on Instagram, Michelle Newman Flo, or they can find me on my website, which is Flo Business Support. That’s probably the key places.

Victoria (59:23)
Amazing, I’ve honestly loved this. It’s been so good.

Michelle (59:25)
Oh, I have to. Thank you so

much. I really, really appreciate you giving me the opportunity to just come on and yeah, it’s been amazing. Thank you.

Victoria (59:34)
It’s been a total pleasure. I love it. Thank you so much, Michelle.

Michelle (59:36)
Yeah.