Our WoMo of the week, Harriet Inglis, is the founder of the multi-award winning well-being brand Spacemasks. The struggle for balance or strive to get a few minutes of break as a working mother of 4 is ever-present for Harriet, who took on the task to develop a breakthrough relaxation product that helps you achieve ‘interstellar relaxation’. Read more about Harriet below.
Living in Central London with her four daughters, Harriet works from home. Her daughters are ages 11-18 and are independent enough to navigate the London underground without help—that’s something to be proud of! Harriet revealed that her children are secretly quite impressed with what their mum has achieved so far and if asked what her job is, they would respond sarcastically with ‘constant waffling on Instagram stories’. One of the funniest experiences she had with juggling her kids and work was when her children were walking home and couldn’t open the front door due to the numerous sacks of Spacemasks orders that the postman needed to collect. The kids eventually helped the postman, Lee, load the sacks onto the van in exchange for £1 each!
Her journey into entrepreneurship as a WoMo has taught her that strategy does not always equate to success, having values such as being polite and honest can help you achieve the same result. Her biggest advice to WoMos is to forget the scary business chat and to use your common sense.
When we asked Harriet how she felt being a WoMo (working mother), she responded ‘confident’. Her confidence radiates through her Instagram live chats where she shows off her products, relates to other mamas and spreads cheer for her following. While she’s confident as a WoMo, Harriet revealed to us that she would rather deal with a tantrum than present in a board meeting because she’s terrified of public speaking. Speaking in public can definitely be daunting, wouldn’t you agree, WoMos?
As WoMos, we all have our unique guilty pleasures because we deserve to treat ourselves! Harriet’s guilty pleasures include massages and facials. We all love a good massage and facial, don’t we?! As WoMos, there are times (or majority of the time) that we have to cope with lack of sleep and just ‘carry on’. Harriet describes that the least amount of sleep she’s had before going to work is 4 hours before things go a bit crazy by 4:30pm!
We asked Harriet what her greatest WoMo achievement was...
H: Probably raising £22k for The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity. My mother died at the Marsden aged 48 and we need to crack a cure.
And finally, when asked what Harriet wants to teach her kids about working mothers…She responded that as a mother of 4 daughters, it’s been brilliant for them to always see her work whether that’s a bit of ad hoc work when they were younger to running Spacemasks full time since 2017.
Harriet, as well as us at Team WoMo, believe that times are changing and there is still lots to do to make things equal for the working mother.
If you would like to check out the incredible Spacemasks discussed in this article, head over to this link and check out her Instagram here.