Before You Quit Your Business at Year One: A Real Talk on Motherhood, Grit + Branding | Rebecca Farley

Manouchka: Hey Boss Mama, welcome back. This is the space where we explore building a business you love, raising your family, and creating a life that works for you. I’m your host, Manouchka Elefant, business coach and fellow mom entrepreneur.

Have you ever looked at another mom entrepreneur and thought, how is she doing all of this? Beautiful brand, dreamy clients, everything looks amazing, and you’re just trying to get things done without drowning.

Today I’m talking with branding designer and studio owner Rebecca Farley about what it actually looks like to build a business alongside motherhood: the messy bits, the burnout, and the magic.

Rebecca started her business when she was eight months pregnant with her eldest, who’s now six. She’s a mom of two boys, the founder of Sugar Branded and a studio space business, and she has more than ten years of experience in marketing and branding. She has helped clients land features in Vogue, Grazia, and Harper’s Bazaar while navigating pregnancy, postpartum, and relationship ups and downs.

In this conversation, we get honest about starting a business with a newborn and zero spare energy, the truth about “having it all,” and how to design a business that fits the life you want, not what Instagram tells you it should look like. We also talk about branding beyond logos. Your brand is the whole experience and feeling people have around your business.

By the end of this episode, you’ll feel less alone, more grounded in your own definition of success, and you’ll have practical mindset shifts to help you build a business that supports your life as a mom and as a woman.

Grab your coffee, your stroller, or your laundry basket, and let’s dive in.

Manouchka: Hello Rebecca. Thank you for joining me. I’m excited to have you here because you have a lot to share about motherhood, business, and the ups and downs.

You built Sugar Branded, where you help businesses build their brand. I want to know what all of this is like.

Rebecca Farley: Thank you for having me. Most of my audience and clients are mums, and I’m passionate about helping mums in business thrive. Your value of making people feel less alone is so important.

I’m Rebecca. I’m based in Bristol in the UK. I’ve had my business for seven years. I started when I was pregnant with my eldest, eight months pregnant, typing away on my laptop, and it grew from there.

Now I help clients create websites, launch businesses, and build brands. Many of my clients are in beauty and wellness. I also become the business bestie because when you’re mums, you get it. Meetings can include kids in the background and real talk about the hard parts.

Manouchka: You were eight months pregnant, had the idea, and built it. How did that go with a newborn?

Rebecca Farley: It was a lot. I didn’t know any different. I’ve always had a business or side hustle, so I was entrepreneurial already.

But a newborn and a business is a different ballgame. If I knew what I was going into, I might have thought twice. I naively thought, I’ve done business before kids, how hard can it be?

It was exhausting. My relationship wasn’t great, and my business was an escape. Everyone starts this journey from different circumstances, and we can’t compare.

Looking back, I would have wanted to soak up more moments. But when you’re in it, you still have bills to pay and goals. Those don’t go away because you have a baby.

Manouchka: I find being a mom is harder than being an entrepreneur because you can’t turn it off. It makes business more complicated, but also more rewarding. My values evolved. The stakes are different now.

Rebecca Farley: It’s completely different. Motherhood and entrepreneurship are similar in that they both rely on you. They’re tied to identity. If they collide at the same time, it’s a lot.

But you gain skills from being a mum that help business thrive. Efficiency is a big one. Time becomes precious. You learn boundaries, you learn that done is better than perfect, and you learn to ask for help. Those skills develop faster when you become a mum.

Some mums feel less capable, covered in baby sick and just surviving. But we should remember we are capable. We do hard things as mums, and that helps in business too.

Manouchka: I posted about that recently. I have to be intentional. I can’t test everything or delay work for hours. Childcare is still being put in place, and until then it’s a perpetual juggle.

Rebecca Farley: That’s why community matters. Social media can be disheartening. You don’t know what support someone has.

Some clients are self-funding from scratch while on maternity leave. Others come from privilege and strong connections. It affects everything, and it’s not necessarily about ability.

Childcare differences matter. Kids are different too. My eldest was easy. My youngest is clingy and screamed in the car. Even that changes your capacity.

Manouchka: We have to give ourselves grace. Otherwise, we risk burnout.

Rebecca Farley: Yes. I’ve experienced burnout recently for the first time. I’d been working full out for years, then had my second child and never slowed down. You have to change how you work. If you don’t, you burn out.

Manouchka: How did you realize you were nearing burnout, and what did you do?

Rebecca Farley: I’m someone who always shows up, even when I’m sick. That can be good, but we’re human.

I had issues with my hand and got a blood test. My iron was three. Below fifteen is anemic. Three is extremely low, almost hospital transfusion territory. I had been running on empty for so long that I thought it was normal.

I also had intense projects draining my mental energy. I felt like I hit a brick wall. I couldn’t do more.

I acknowledged it. I’m taking a month off to slow down, rebuild my health, and rebuild my business in a way that supports me as a mum of two. We get stuck in day-to-day survival and lose the bigger picture. We need space to ask, is this working, or are we just surviving?

Manouchka: That’s why I built Hey Boss Mama. I want a space where we can say what it looks like when it’s hard, and how we get out of it.

Rebecca Farley: Perspective is the key word, and it’s hard to get when you’re in the humdrum. People make it sound easy to take CEO days, be present, do self-care. It’s not easy.

Manouchka: Self-care advice can become another thing to feel bad about. Some nights I’m so exhausted I’m debating whether I even take off my makeup.

Rebecca Farley: Exactly. We have to avoid adding self-care tasks that make us feel worse.

For me, it’s like reparenting yourself. No one is coming to rescue you. We have to take pressure off ourselves. Self-care can be an internal conversation. It doesn’t matter if the washing isn’t done. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t hoover. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t watch the masterclass. Put boundaries around what you expect from yourself.

Manouchka: Also make sure what you’re working toward is what you want. I was talking to a mastermind participant who felt intimidated because others had employees, and she realized she doesn’t even want employees. So why feel intimidated?

We compare and imitate models that won’t make us happy. As mom entrepreneurs, we can craft a business around our needs, but we need time to pause and ask what we want and what we need.

Rebecca Farley: The first five years are really about figuring out what works for you and learning the skills. How would you know earlier?

The beauty of being a mum is that you have so little energy left that you stop doing things you don’t want to do. Everything becomes more aligned. Your kids will get older, and you will have built a business you love that works on limited time. It’s a gift.

Manouchka: I feel that. I compromise with people close to me, but now I’m like, no. I don’t have the energy to do things I don’t want to do anymore.

Rebecca Farley: It’s a big skill. Maternity leave can be a moment when people start businesses because they want to build what they actually want.

Manouchka: What’s one thing someone should do if they want to start a business while pregnant, and one thing they should avoid?

Rebecca Farley: First, find a community. You need support, accountability, and honest voices. Otherwise, you’ll go in with unrealistic expectations.

What to avoid? Putting all your self-worth on work. You’re allowed time to be a mum. It has value. That doesn’t mean you can’t go for your goals. It means you don’t have to forgo motherhood to prove you’re productive.

Manouchka: You don’t understand motherhood until you feel the tiredness in your bones. Lower expectations. It will take more time, but it can happen.

Rebecca Farley: Yes. You can reassure someone that they will reach their goals, but they still need to lower their expectations.

Manouchka: You focus a lot on beauty and wellness business owners. People always ask whether they should niche or stay broad. How did you decide?

Rebecca Farley: Niching is important, especially starting out. You can’t be an expert in everything.

Because many of my clients are in beauty, I have context. I know their language, trends, and references. If I worked across wildly different industries, I couldn’t understand every world deeply.

Niching also makes marketing decisions easier. I know where to show up and where to invest my time and budget.

I fell into beauty and wellness partly because of my experience in cosmetics and my design style. Word spread in that community.

Even with a niche, it doesn’t mean you only work with one type of business. I also work with coaches, home fragrance brands, Pilates instructors, and jewelry brands. A niche is about claiming a space so you become an easy yes for the right people.

Your niche can be your audience, your style, your geography, or your angle.

Manouchka: I used to worry that niching meant losing business. But when you speak clearly to one person, others still see your expertise.

Rebecca Farley: Exactly. You can’t be an expert in a hundred things. A specific audience also helps you understand problems like a best friend.

Manouchka: Branding is often misunderstood as just logo and colors. What is branding for you?

Rebecca Farley: Branding includes visuals, but it’s so much more. Think of it like a person. We are human beings, but we also have values, a voice, associations, style, and behavior that influence how people experience us.

In business, brand is personality and experience. It’s your tone of voice, where you show up, your collaborations, ethical sourcing, pricing, customer experience, all of it.

People put too much weight on the logo. Instead, make conscious decisions across all those layers so they pull toward one end goal. A brand feeling comes from the combination, not from one single element.

Manouchka: It’s really how people feel when they think about your brand.

Rebecca Farley: Exactly.

Manouchka: One last question. When your sons are older, what do you hope they say about you?

Rebecca Farley: I want them to say my mum worked hard to give us what we needed, but she also asked for help. My mum was a single mum and worked hard, but she struggled to ask for help and sacrificed herself.

I don’t want my kids to only remember that I worked hard. I want them to know I could be vulnerable, ask for help, and take care of myself too.

Manouchka: That’s beautiful. Where can everyone find you?

Rebecca Farley: Instagram is best. It’s @SugarBranded. You can DM me branding questions, and I try to reply with video responses. My website is sugarbranded.com, where you can see my portfolio and services.

Manouchka: We’ll put the links in the show notes. Thank you for coming on.

Rebecca Farley: You asked great questions.

Manouchka: Thank you. I loved your perspective and how simply you explain things.

Rebecca Farley: And you’re doing important work creating communities for mums in business. It matters.

Manouchka: I’m publishing this episode about a year after recording. Mom life, business life. Listening back, I love the honesty and how it normalizes the experience of juggling everything and still building something lasting.

Remember, you get to decide what having it all means for you. Your business, your brand, and your schedule are allowed to look different, especially in your season of motherhood.

If you’re close to burnout or craving a reset, take time for yourself. If I can help, grab my free Mompreneur Reset Guide at heybossmama.com/reset. It will help you realign your time and priorities so your business works with your life.

Until next time, Boss Mama, you’ve got this.