Johanne Hardwick was in a high performing corporate career for 10 years, but the birth of her third child in 2019 made her rethink that. Working a senior sales and marketing role in the hotel industry, Johanne was put in a position where she found it difficult to balance work and family. Wanting to also provide a more intimate environment for her youngest child, who she worried might find a mainstream setting overwhelming after having been through the pandemic lockdowns, Johanne revisited her previous ambition of becoming an early years educator.
In 2020, she retrained through Tiney, a platform which offers training, insurance, billing and administration support, as well as marketing, to childminders , for a percentage of its members’ fees. Read Next Six ways to keep your mortgage costs down Johanne opened her home nursery in Surrey in 2021, where she also looks after her son. Such is the demand for childcare in the area that Johanne has turned away 50 families this year already.
“You have to weigh up – is it worth walking away at the end of the month for a couple of hundred pounds after having your child in full time childcare, or actually being worse off, and saying ‘no, I’m going to restart’,” says Johanne. Johanne has felt the financial impact of moving out of the corporate world, but has applied her business savvy to making childminding a profitable venture. She brought in £65,000 last year, just £3,000 less than in her corporate job.
On top of that, she .
