‘WHY I WALKED AWAY FROM MY BUSINESS’

Some people couldn’t understand why Charlotte Philby said goodbye to her successful business, but she knew in her gut that it was the right call to make

Charlotte Philby reveals what made her say goodbye

My outstanding memory of the day I walked away from my business is a chocolate muffin. I remember the way it crumbled between my fingers like a physical manifestation of how

I was feeling as I sat in a humid church hall, reflecting on what had just happened. It was 2016, and a charity bake sale wasn’t where I’d expected to find myself when I left home that morning to sign a deal with the man who was buying a significant stake in Motherland, the online magazine I’d set up two years earlier. But then I hadn’t expected the would-be investor to drastically change the terms at the eleventh hour, just as my hand hovered over the dotted line.

Gone was the promise of permanent Motherland staff, as well as a budget for freelancers. Instead, he said, his advertising company would bring in money from brands and give me desk space in return for a substantial share of my business. This was so far from the original arrangement that it was almost laughable. I was left with two choices: either I could walk away from everything I’d worked so hard for, or I could have a partnership with someone I didn’t feel I trusted and a deal that did not benefit myself or my business.

I think he imagined he had me over a barrel until the moment I walked out, only to wander the streets in a state of shock until the church hall emerged like an oasis of sugary tea. After all, he knew that I had left my job as a news reporter at a national newspaper to launch Motherland, with an initial

agency investment. Taking a small wage each month, I had worked tirelessly to grow the website with articles, interviews and photo stories uploaded daily, alongside an events company, online store and a thriving online community. We had a pool of regular freelancers plus two part-time contributing editors, with my husband, Barney Beech, as art director, which he did on top of his own demanding business. Known for combining thoughtful journalism with sharp design, Motherland was read by 50k international readers. We had our stories splashed across the homepage of The Guardian and Stylist, held educational talks with start-ups, and had a syndication deal with a national newspaper; and we were being courted by brands that wanted to work with us. If I had chosen to persevere with it, I probably could have found another investor but, because it was not yet profitable, I was also working as a freelance journalist to prop up my income.

Given the constant narrative to aim higher and to never give up that sustains the pace of modern life, the would-be investor must have struggled to believe that I would just walk away. In truth, I’d been naive. I launched Motherland because I love storytelling and I wanted to create a space where women could share experiences of motherhood that were largely

‘QUITTING CAN BE THE BRAVEST CHOICE YOU CAN MAKE’

untold at the time. In that sense, it was a triumph. But as the site grew, it became clear from talking to advertisers as they bandied around terms such as ‘branded events’ and ‘influencer network’, that to monetise the business, I would need to turn it into something that didn’t interest me.

For a while, I tried to combine the profitable stuff with the more meaningful but, ultimately, it was too much for our resources. Two years in, when I started to seek out a new investor, I knew it was make or break. If I was to continue with the business, I needed not just more money but someone to hand at least one of the reins to. I was 32, with three kids aged five, two and one. The baby was with me full-time, my small monthly salary just about covered nursery fees, and I was working freelance to pay my share of the mortgage. I had only taken two days’ maternity leave with my third baby and still the business wasn’t profitable enough to be my sole full-time job. For all its on-paper success, Motherland wasn’t ticking the boxes that made it the right thing for me to be doing, financially or spiritually. I’m a self-confessed workaholic and I knew I needed a career that would fulfil me enough to warrant the inevitable stress and time away from my family.

What has been confirmed to me in the four years since I made that decision, is that far from being a passive act or a sign of failure, sometimes quitting while you’re ahead is the bravest and most rewarding choice you can make. Even if what follows is not necessarily the easiest path.

Walking away from Motherland wasn’t a flippant decision; it was entirely rational when I weighed up what it required from me and what it was giving in return. If I wanted to make money doing something that didn’t wholly fulfil me, but provided enough of an income to enable me to spend more time with the kids, rather than constantly having one hand on the baby-bouncer and another on my laptop, then I felt it would make more sense to get a regular nine-to-five. And that’s what I did, for a while – doing something that paid the bills and which renewed my sense of self-worth.

Dismantling Motherland was not an insubstantial process and it left me feeling bruised. For a while, I felt so sad, stupid and angry that it threatened to cast a shadow over the whole experience. Not least because as well as losing the company, I lost thousands of pounds. The staff we had employed based on the new investor’s promise still needed to be paid. Legally, I was advised that I could probably get away with not paying them if I folded the business, but I took pride in reimbursing them out of my own pocket, eliciting pleasure from doing the right thing. It had been the same commitment to listening to my gut and paying attention to what I wanted from my life, rather than just following the simplest route, that led me to walk away from a business that I knew wasn’t serving me in a way that made the work and family sacrifices worthwhile.

I wasn’t overly worried about the finances because I had only been taking a minimal wage for the previous two years, and my outgoings had already been stripped back. I also knew that I could earn what I had paid myself while working on Motherland by either taking on a nine-to-five or by freelancing – my CV was strong, and I felt confident that I could still find a new career that would both fulfil me and, in time, make me decent money. In the meantime, one of my kids started at the school nursery, which saved us private nursery fees.

After the initial relief, fear and the brief sense of failure

I felt closing Motherland in 2016, there was a moment of deflation, a quiet anticlimax once the adrenaline ran out.

It was in that space, while I freelanced for old clients, that I decided to try something that had been playing on my mind for a while. Six years earlier during my first maternity leave, I wrote a detective story, which was totally unpublishable (as politely confirmed by several agents at the time) and I promptly put down my pen. On reflection, I had lost confidence. Years later, the experience of starting a business gave me the confidence to try again. Within half an hour of Googling ‘online creative writing course cheap’ while the baby slept, I was booked on a two-month course. Writing no more than 700 words a week, while still freelancing, I had a eureka moment in the pub one emotional lunchtime when the idea for my first novel, Part Of The Family, which opens with a mother walking out on her family, was formed.

The book took 18 months to write, at first alongside freelance journalism, then on my commute as I took an in-house job in marketing at a start-up, then while I was a commissioning editor at a magazine. There were moments when I felt briefly like I might throw in the towel but, with my second novel,

A Double Life, just published and another one on the way, I have found a job that I know is worth every ounce of the blood, sweat and tears. Writing fiction allows me to explore ideas that the constraints of my current domestic situation won’t allow and four years in, I’m even earning a living of sorts. The good thing is that, other than the months I spent in-house at the start-up, I’ve never had a big wage, so surviving on a novelist’s salary wasn’t much of a shock. And now, with all the kids at school (pandemic notwithstanding), I no longer have to pay childcare fees and I’m in a better place than I’ve ever been. As Kenny Rogers puts it: ‘You’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em, know when to walk away, and know when to run.’ This time, I’m holding on with everything I have.