WEDGETASTIC

Holly Millbank - 6 Jun 14

The tipping point for me was when my husband asked me (in a slightly patronising, dad-type of a way) to justify spending £25 on a face cream (admittedly an extravagance for me) literally at the same time as signing for an Amazon package which turned out to be a pair of 80’s retro tennis shorts. £75. Just because it made him feel nostalgic.

And boom. Just like that, I had a small angry internal combustion and set about making myself financially independent.

When two people who have flourishing careers (both journalists in our cases) and fall in love and make plans for the rest of their lives together, it doesn’t normally occur to most women (and occasionally men) that one of the many sacrifices you have to make amongst all of the usual ones when you begin a family, is that sense of power and control over your own personal financial affairs.

I would never dismiss how hard my husband works to pay the mortgage and all the bills – but I miss being able to contribute and feeling more equally a part of our financial output.

Some women don’t miss the daily grind of working and so accept graciously and without question that their disposable income is no longer a private activity. I have friends who have no problem with the occasional (or frequent) scrutiny thrust upon their spending habits. But most ex-career women I know miss the dough. Even more than the hard cash though, is missing being able to earn their own money and spend it as they wish.

This doesn’t mean being frivolous or irresponsible, it just means that level of control which is often lost in giving up a paid job to raise children.  We all know the benefits and delights to giving up work to have babies. Its incredible, but sometimes that pleasure is tarred slightly when your partner looks through the bank account and demands once or twice too often why having a cappuccino in an actual café (how dare you!)  is frankly, irresponsible.

And so I set up my own company. Like most stay at home mums, I had endless fantasies of being my own boss.  But until that pivotal moment it was just a dream while I folded the laundry and bathed the children. And so I tapped into what I was good at and what I I loved doing and came up with the idea to start a children’s publishing company.

I wrote a watertight business plan after months of research and found investors. I slowly set up all the different relationships essential to printing and selling books and found some amazing debut and published authors and illustrators.

Fat Fox was launched in February and our first books will be published in September and we are just about to embark on a summer of very exciting marketing events.  I have a fantastic team of other mums with excellent skills who are helping me to build the company and our launch titles are ready to pre-order on Amazon and in Waterstones and have already received incredible response from the publishing industry.

I cant pretend it hasn’t been hard work – I have an office at home which makes me available to carry on as much as possible with raising the children and running the home on top of starting a new business – but my drive and motivation is unquestionable: I want my financial independence back.

So when the children are all sleeping, the dinner has been cleared away and all I really want to do is crawl into bed, I work until late editing stories, finding new illustrators, writing up contracts, responding to emails. And just as my eyelids droop, I remember how good it feels to have a healthy bank balance that’s all mine… and on I go.

Discover Fat Fox here…

Holly Millbank

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