Helping business-owning mums through fires, floods and even a pandemic

To help other mums, Carrie co-founded Mums & Co in 2016, a digital platform to provide upskilling and networking to the estimated 345,000 Australian business-owning mothers. The movement was created to help women who want to launch, grow, scale and follow their dreams. What Mums & Co provide is an entire network and support system. Women helping women. Mums supporting mums. Business owners supporting business owners.

What she could never have predicted was the back-to-back natural disasters which unfolded in the space of two years. And how her own business would have to pivot to help these mums.

Fires. A Pandemic and most recently floods. Carrie and her team realised that in order to help women overcome the enormity of these challenges they would have to think like mums.

So, as a starter – they developed a chatbot which just like mums has an  ‘always-on’ approach, giving women critical 24/7 access to flood-related advice, tools and resources.

We describe ourselves as Australia’s most caring business network and our purpose is to help women at all stages of business and motherhood.

We strive to be ‘her’ digital co-business partner and guide them through the business journey.

We advocate for women to live in a world where they don’t have to choose between a career and caring.

The immediate impact has been significant as businesses are struggling to survive which also has a big impact on mental health.

We’re really feeling an increased level of stress and anxiety following two years of disruption due to the pandemic and home schooling.

We really are seeing the whole scale of the support that is required – support for their families, their businesses, and themselves.

Right now, our community can give help and get help online via our chatbot.

When we ran the chatbot during the pandemic for business-owning mothers trying to get help, we saw unexpected spikes in activity at 1am and 3am.

The chatbot is so reliable, it could direct them to different resources at all times of the day.

When the floods hit the east coast, we used the chatbot as a digital check-in for flood-affected women in businesses.

Best experienced on a smartphone, the chatbot provides information and resources specific to each individual business stage, sector, location and their family situation.

We’re all more connected than ever, yet it can be hard to find the right information at the right time.

Using emerging technology in this way is enabling our community to get the right information from verified sources.

It reduces the mental load of traumatised women living through a crisis by providing ongoing support at scale.

The ‘Co’ in Mums & Co refers to the community around business-owning women, helping them in business and in life. Mums & Co is offering flood affected business owners FREE Accelerate Memberships. To claim your free membership or if you need help after a flood or for other reasons, visit the Mums & Co chatbot now.