From Stay at Home Mom to Starting a Business – My Entrepreneurship Journey
I started blogging 22 years ago. Now I own eight blogs and a digital education company. Whenever someone hear that, they ask me how I got started. ‘Was it difficult with little kids in tow..?‘ Mothers ask me if it is possible for them to do so too. In this blogpost, I am sharing my journey of how I found time and lessons I learnt along the way.
My first blogs were just hobby
Once upon a time, long before I got married, I had a hobby blog. I used to write about my life as an aspiring scientist. I was studying at university at the time, and my blog was to help me in my future career as a science writer. (Yes, it was helping. It bought me a lot of opportunities.)
After getting my masters, I worked for a few months as a lecturer, and then moved to Saudi Arabia newly married.
As a new trailing wife and a lot of time on my hands, I started a new blog about my crafting adventures. We didn’t have social media at the time, so blogging was how I shared my activities with my friends around the world.
Everyday after my husband went to work, I would craft a bit and then hop on to my blog to share my pictures and thoughts. Very soon, I became a mom. So together with a fellow blogger (who was also having her first baby), we started a collaboration blog where we wrote about our new mom adventures.
New babies are easy, so while my son napped during the day, I would write about my crafts or his adventures and how we were doing.
One baby boy to a brand new baby girl later, I was still writing and crafting, but soon my friend stopped blogging, and it was just me. After a while, I stopped writing on that blog too.
Then my daughter passed away. After her death, I started to use blogging and crafting to heal from the trauma and grief. I clubbed all my blogs together and started writing about my crafts more than mom life.
In 2011, I bought my first domain.
Until then I was on a free domain and hosting. I wanted a formal address to my “internet home” so I got myself a dot com domain.
At that time, when I paid for my domain (although it was just $4 or so), I wasn’t sure how I’d pay for it next year. I was spending my pocket money on my hobby and that pinched. So looking for ways to monetize, I started ads. Within a few months, I could not only afford to pay my next year’s bill… we even bought our own hosting!
I hardly wrote on that blog because soon, I had two more babies. The traffic was still stable and the ads were still sustaining the blog. There wasn’t much profit but I was gaining followers and fans.
In 2014, after the birth of my fourth baby, I started thinking about my career. I was diagnosed with a tumor on my liver while pregnant and three months after delivery, I was awaiting surgery. I was really sad at the time. There were all sorts of negative things going on in my head and I was feeling hopeless.
Alhamdulillah, the surgery didn’t happen and I was miraculously cured. When I came back home, I started thinking more about my life and future. I wanted to ensure I was using my skills and my education. I mean, when you have been that close to dying, you tend to start thinking about how you will live differently moving forward.
One thing led to another until I ended up writing my first life plan.
That life plan changed my life.
I had never, up until that point in life, ever thought about who I was – my skills and qualities, nor had I ever thought about planning how to live my life on my terms.
You see, most Muslim women — we are trained to only “conform” and “fit in”. We are taught how to be good daughters, wives and members of society but sadly, it is the culture that we are always made to believe that women cannot and must not dream big.
My life plan helped me think a lot deeply about everything – who I was, what Islam is, how Muslim women should be, and I also started to think in depth about the Quran and Sunnah. I also started reading more and more about the stories of the Umm al Mu’mineen and women who were promised paradise.
There were deep discussion with hubby after the kids were in bed. For the first time in my marriage, my husband and I started to have really different kinds of conversations.
We started thinking of our life as one big dream project.
We started discussing our ideas about how we wanted to raise our kids, what we individually wanted in our life, our future, our home — there was a “we” in everything now. Previously, we had never thought about “us” like this.
Somehow before the life plan, it was as if we were both just doing whatever we could to stay afloat… but now, after we had discussed our ideas, the understanding grew stronger. We could both see what made each of us happier and that was what we both intended to do — succeed together.
After the life plan — once I understood what I really wanted to do in my life, I started thinking of how I would make my plans work. I started looking at my life from a different angle – what was I doing right, what needed improvement, how can I find time to do the things I wanted to do without sacrificing my children’s upbringing… but mostly, at that stage, all I wanted was to make my home my dream home, and my family my dream family.
This realization helped me in keeping my intentions front and center.
Intentions fueled by prayer and action give wonderful results. When you put God at the center of your life, things perfectly start falling into place.
The first thing that I started improving was my routine.
I wanted to be a good Muslim – the one who prays five times a day on time and the one who has a strong connection to the Quran. So, that is what I did. I started by adjusting my routine around the five daily prayers.
Now, for so long I was the “late to bed and lazy to wake” kind of a person, so when I started getting up early, after the initial “oh this is hard” and “what am I gonna do with all this time in the world“, I started to gradually find a rhythm.
I was waking up early and waking the kids early too. They had a 7am to 7pm routine – that meant early to bed and good naps and feeding timings. Of course, I had worked a few years to establish that routine for my first two kids, so I knew how it worked by the time I had my next two. But this was what helped me the most in having my routine around the five daily prayers.
At that time, I had a 6 year old, two year old and a new baby. The babies napped and fed on time and I had quality time to spend with my busy boy. I found that because we were waking early and they all went to bed early (7-8pm), I had a lot of time on my hand.
The babies had 2-3 naps during the day and the elder kid napped for 2 hours in the afternoon. I had a time for cooking and exact timings for when I would feed them or when they napped.
It was during the nap times (where I was strict about not having eye contact with them), that I would crochet or tat lace. The kids would be bored that I didn’t talk or make eye contact so they slept on time.
This nap time was when I would blog.
I also got two hours after their bedtime, but usually I would reserve that for my husband. Some days when he was busy working on his “dreams”, I would sit by his side working on my laptop. It was how we connected.
These nap time journalling/blogging habit was how I created all the content on my first “professional” blog.
At that time, I would only write on the blogs. That is all I had time for, so hardly ever did I share on social media. But I had friends who I would share my ideas with, and often I would write to answer their questions on the blog. Some of my friends were bloggers and we would blog and visit each other.
After a year or so of creating content, I started getting opportunities to talk about blogging, and then brands came asking me if they could send me their products. When I said no to free products, they asked to pay me. When I said no because I was too busy, they asked to pay whatever I demanded. Then fellow bloggers and often brands wanted my advice on the “business of blogging.”
My little blog started to earn good money.
In 2016, a brand told me I was the most popular website in Saudi Arabia and the only blogger writing about mom life and parenting so successfully. They said I should have a better name and so Jeddah Mom was born.
A year later, I was invited to talk about Blogging a few times, so I started another digital business about the Business of Blogging and soon another… and another…. and another…
In 2021, after having success with my own blogs, I realized that I could help other people like me (moms with big ideas) succeed. So I started looking to start my own company.
Until that point, I was an Indian in Saudi with a blogging business in India because blogging in the GCC was almost non-existent. People were still not taking bloggers seriously. Except the UAE of course!
So in 2022, I started my company in the UAE because that is where all “my kinda people” were hanging around.
Entrepreneurship was not an easy decision
In fact, it was one of the most scariest decisions I ever took. Because up until that time, I was an Indian with a Saudi resident husband. Me starting a company meant, I would have an Investor Visa and PR in the UAE. I would be traveling to the UAE for business and often to just keep my residency active. My kids were 15, 10 and 9 years old.
But my husband told me to embrace it. His exact words were, “If you want to help more people, you have to step out of your comfort zone.“
And I did.
From being an overwhelmed mom, running between diapers to dishes, surviving nap times to bedtimes, I became a business mom. And that is how I got started… into entrepreneurship.
Now, if you have made it this far, I am sure you were hooked because you too dream of doing big and hard things in life. May be you are currently in the position where I once was, and you want to know how you can be like me. So, here is what I recommend you do.
Five steps to start your own entrepreneurship journey.
- Write a life plan. Just do it. Stop being scared of seeing too far into the future. Give yourself the permission to dream. Think about your life and get clear about where you stand in life and where you want to go.
- Stop resisting the Islamic way of life. Embrace the barakah of praying the five daily prayers on time. Learn how to create an Islamic routine. Strive to become a better Muslim because at the end of it all, everything is from God. Get to know God. Put him at the center of your life. Stop living for people. Live to please God. He can help you. He loves you more than anyone in your life ever can.
- Take out time for your self. Explore who you are and what skills you have. Have hobbies, try different things, take care of yourself, look for ways to be happier because it is the happy people who are confident and confident people dream bigger and fearlessly.
- Invest in your skills. Put real money where it is needed. Don’t waste time on free resources. Learn from the experts. Take your dreams seriously. Choose to spend time and money on learning what you don’t know. Use your money to make more money, and your time to create more time.
- Practice what you learn. Putting money into courses and books, and then just reading them like novels is the stupidest thing you can do. Don’t waste your time and life on just acquiring knowledge. USE IT. Apply what you are learning to your life. Experiment. Play around. Don’t quit early.
To start a business, you need ideas – skills that are sellable. These five steps I share with you above is what will open up those opportunities for you. But when opportunities come knocking, you must have enough time and confidence to be able to cash them – this can only happen when you are an organized person and have surrounded yourself with the right people.
So… in my opinion, these are the five steps to starting your own business and ensuring you keep it profitable.
How I can help you in achieving your goals
And if you want me to help you, I have a lot of resources. Sign up to my courses, study them, email me, stay in touch. I started my company to help Muslim women just like you be successful in life.
When my students succeed in their life – have happy homes, start hobbies, side businesses and companies, I consider that my success. It is a blessing to be chosen to help others. So, I’d love to help you with your dreams and hard work as well.
Here are all the ways I can help you:
- Struggling to find time? Join the Everyday Productivity Course. EPMM is a way of life for me. It is the #1 system that I believe helped me succeed as a mom and business owner. It has helped my students too. I’d love to teach you my system of how to manage home, family, faith and your dreams. Join here to become a CEO mom.
- Need clarity and dreams? Join Life Planning for Moms. LPM is where I teach moms go from being “just a mom” to become “more than a mom”. It is a complete framework for not just creating a life plan but how to show up in your life as a leader of your home and community. We talk about planning eleven (11) areas of your life, plus goal setting, confidence and resilience too. Learn more about LPM here.
- Want to know how to be successful in your goals in spite of your busy chaotic life? Join Goal Setting for Moms Course. GSM is where I teach you how to make working on your goals second nature. What most people cannot achieve in 12 months, I will teach you how to do it in 13 weeks or less. Join here.
Depending on where you are in your life, if you have big dreams, one of these resources may be what you need right now. Join one of my programs. InshaAllah, I look forward to be part of your journey.