Mums are having a tough time at the moment. 1.2m mums are missing from the workplace. Another million want to work more hours. And many more struggle to fit their work around their family commitments and are fed up with their work-life balance. There are all sorts of reasons why mums find it tricky to find a satisfying job that they can fit around their family, including the astronomical cost of childcare, bosses unyielding to part time hour requests, and skills becoming out of date in our fast-paced world. Thank goodness then for Digital Mums – a new social enterprise co-founded by Kathryn Tyler and Nikki Cochrane – a dynamic duo who feel passionately about removing these barriers. Digital Mums provides mums with social media management skills that allow them to set their own hours and work from anywhere. It’s the only social media marketing training programme that has been designed with mums for mums. We caught up with Nikki to find out more about their exciting new business venture.
Co-founders of Digital Mums, Kathryn Tyler and Nikki Cochrane
1. How did Digital Mums come about?
My co-founder Kathryn Tyler and I met in Thailand on a yoga treat seven years ago and have been friends ever since. We both had a background in Social Media Marketing and were really passionate about setting up our own social enterprise to solve a huge problem in the world. We also wanted to create a flexible working environment.
We set up our first business, Hackney Social, in 2013 when we recognised that small businesses in our community wanted help with digital marketing and needed an affordable solution. There was such a demand for the service we were offering that Kathryn and I just couldn’t manage all the work by ourselves, and Digital Mums was born.
Digital Mums recruits and trains mums and connects them to organisations in their community that need social media management. The eureka moment for the business came one afternoon when we were talking about what makes a great social media manager. The list included the following: being a great listener, a community builder, a nurturer, being able to stay calm in a crisis, and having good judgment. We realised we had just described a mum! When we started to research maternal unemployment and discovered that it was at a 25-year-high we were totally shocked. There are all these amazing and talented women out there who have taken career breaks to bring up their children and now want to get back to work in a flexible capacity.
2. Why did you decide to focus on mums?
Kathryn and I were both affected by the issues that mums face when we were younger. When Kathryn’s dad died, her mum struggled because she had no focus outside of the family home – there was nothing she could throw herself into. My mum was forced to raise me, my brother and my sister alone after our dad died. We were all under the age of four and the only part time work she could find was cleaning jobs so she’d have to find babysitters or take us with her.
We are often asked why focus on mums and not stay at home dads. Kathryn wrote a blog post about this recently, which explains that maternal unemployment is a huge problem and why the social media manager is an ideal role for mums who have a natural set of transferrable skills. We designed the training with mums for mums and as a small business just starting out we need to stay focused on this for now. That said, we’d love any dads who are interested in the role to get in touch!
3. How do you become a digital mum? What skills and qualities do you need and what training is involved?
In order to become a Digital Mum, you need to complete an application. At the moment we take a small cohort each month and the application process usually starts with a call with either myself of Kathryn. There are two routes. Firstly, our Foundation Course, which is perfect for mums or mumpreneurs with their own business who do not have a prior marketing background. The second option is, the Advanced Course which is for ideal for mums who have background in PR, Marketing and Communications, and client services. In this course, all our students are matched to a live business which allows them to apply what they are learning immediately in a real world setting.
Both courses are delivered in a really fun and engaging online environment which was co-designed with our first group of pilot mums. All the students work together in groups providing support and feedback in weekly google hangout sessions, which are all overseen by a digital expert. In addition to this they all become members our Professional Network of Freelance Social Media Managers.
4. What does the job involve and what are the benefits?
The obvious benefit is the flexibility of the role which means you can fit your work around childcare and other responsibilities. A typical day in the life of a Digital Mum will start at the beginning of the week with a call with her client. The average Digital Mum will work 10 hours per week. This is usually broken down into client relationship management, research on content curation and online engagement.You can read about three of our amazing Digital Mums here:
1. Kathryn had no direct experience of marketing or social media management before joining Digital Mums but came armed with some transferable skills and lots of enthusiasm.
2. Elvira was a marketing professional before deciding to become a home parent. She’d been doing this for three years, looking after Georgie, 5, and Molly, 3, before starting the Digital Mums course.
3. Penny was a power marketer before joining Digital Mums. She spent several years working in senior and global brand management marketing roles most recently from Diageo, the leading drinks company.
5. How do businesses and whole communities benefit from the work of Digital Mums?
On an individual level we see our students grow in confidence as they move through the training programme. Whole communities benefit as we try to connect the right Digital Mums with the right businesses in the local community. As well as connecting people and communities, all our students automatically become members of a really supportive network of working mums.
6. What do you love most about being social entrepreneurs?
Every day I wake up and think how lucky I am to be doing what I love and working with a brilliant team. Creating a business from scratch has been a huge learning curve and extremely rewarding. We get to meet the most amazing and inspirational women on our training courses and being able to help rebuild their confidence and support them into meaningful employment is an awesome feeling and something I’m very proud to be part of.
7. What have been the toughest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Interestingly I find it difficult to even remember the toughest challenges (perhaps I’ve just blanked them out!). I suppose the biggest challenge of all was in our first year, when we were a bootstrapping startup! We were piloting and building the training course in the evenings and weekends while working in part time jobs to just cover the bills. Making decisions around investment has been hugely challenging as finding the right investment partner who shares the Digital Mums ethos and philosophy is incredibly important to us. As a social enterprise our social mission really matters to us but we also have to ensure we have a sustainable business so there’s a balance to be struck.
8. What is your advice for a successful business partnership?
While we were friends beforehand, we are lucky that our skill sets compliment each other – this is vital when it comes to running a business. We both bring different perspectives to situations which is really powerful when you work in multiple areas of the business. My advice for finding the right co-founder is to make sure you share the same vision for the company. If you have the same end goal you will stay focused and make the right decisions along the way.
9. What technologies are exciting you at the moment?
There is so much exciting tech out there at the moment. The stuff that most excites me is when it’s doing good and making a difference in the work. ‘Peek Vision’ is pretty awesome – it’s a portable system for testing eyes for cataracts anywhere in the world.
10. What is your big dream?
Right now our big dream is to get over 1,000 mums back into the work place.
If you’d like to find out more visit the Digital Mums website.
A winning pitch from David and his partners in Dragon’s Den
