We found our world turned upside down in the best way possible when our little man was born. He’s your typical toddler – small, cute, ridiculously inquisitive and 100% full-on! To say life has changed is an understatement, but it’s definitely changed for the better!    

   After Joey came along, we also founded a new business called brightplaybox – we create bright boxes filled with information about your child's development, plus carefully selected age-appropriate toys, books and activities to help you and your child meet their development milestones. We then deliver this to your door every two months.  

   The idea came from our own experience as new parents. We want to give Joey the best start in life and help him develop. From the beginning, we wanted to know about the stages of his development, how to encourage that development, the best toys to stimulate him and we wanted it all quickly and easily. But we couldn’t find this anywhere. And after speaking with friends, we realised we weren’t the only ones who wanted this. We started to find out the answers to our questions and, with encouragement from other parents, we launched brightplaybox.   

   I’ve always wanted to run my own business – the independence and ability to manage my own time has always appealed. I never imagined it would be in this field, but then becoming a parent changes a lot of things in life.

   Life before Joey was VERY different. I worked in product and brand management for large and medium-sized healthcare companies and did a fair bit of travelling.  ​Once I had Joey, I realised that I couldn’t return to my old job – I had a three-hour commute each day, I travelled a lot and I wasn’t able to get part-time work. That coupled with the encouragement from family and friends made me realise that now I had an opportunity to ‘go for it’ and see whether I could create my own business.

   I was lucky enough to do Google Campus start-up school, which is a great, practical course which helped me learn about some of the skills I’d need to start a business. It also gave me the courage I needed!

   I find it both fascinating and rewarding to research and share the best ways to help encourage development with parents who are looking for a bit of easy but useful guidance in a minefield of children’s toys (just like we were). And who wouldn’t love working in the children’s toys and book industry? Playing with (I mean testing and researching) the best children’s toys, books and activities is a lot of fun. 

   The best part of running my own business is being able to spend time with Joey during the day. I love that I’m getting to see him change and grow. The hardest part is finding the time to work – most of my work needs to be done at night and there are evenings when I’m tired and I’d rather collapse than fire up the laptop! 

   I’d really like to grow brightplaybox and be able to achieve some kind of balance between having more time to be with Joey and running the business.  

 

If you'd like to try a box from www.brightplaybox.com, they are offering a 10% discount for MumsAboutCookham.com readers if you use the code COOKM16.

Email Lisa at hello@brightplaybox.com