More Than Just a Mum: Celebrating Gemma Daniels as a woman in business on Mother's Day

Unflappable leader Gemma Daniels has been part of running our agency for 12 years now.

Today she specialises in client management as the Client Services Director at Hydra Creative, originally founded by husband Ryan Daniels in 2009, and is also a mum to 16-year-old Megan.

As the nation prepares to mark Mother’s Day this Sunday March 19, we talked about her journey of juggling both business and parenthood together.

Why did you first decide to join Hydra in 2009?

I’d previously worked in banking and early years and wanted a new challenge. The business was also taking off and getting too busy for Ryan to do everything on his own.

He had two employees and needed someone who could take over things such as the admin and the networking.

I’d previously worked in sales so I knew about selling and the importance of making a profit. That said, it was a very steep learning curve!

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How did you manage that steep learning curve while being a parent?

Megan was only four when I joined the business. When she was little I worked shorter hours so I could be more flexible.

When it came to things like evening networking, I would go and Ryan would take on the primary care role with Meg, so it worked well between us as a team.

What have been the biggest challenges of balancing business and motherhood?

It’s always hard on any parent when your child is ill, and that was a real wrench when it happened.

We’ve always had a great support network of family who could help out but it is hard to be going out to work and compartmentalise when that happens.

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How did you keep going when things got tough?

You’ve got to get on with it!

Ryan is a really good support as well and it was always useful to have someone going through the same thing, who could give you a different, valuable perspective. That’s incredibly important in business.

We do try not to talk about work at home but sometimes we just have to, because there isn’t enough time in the day.

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What have been the biggest benefits of running a business and being a mum?

I have been able to be a little bit more flexible sometimes compared to say, an office job.

I’ve been able to plan ahead around events in our lives, for example.

Most importantly it has also shown Meg exactly how much hard work goes into building a career or a business.

That’s really important for younger generations who often look at influencers and people on television and think it’s easy to make money, so they’ll just do that.

Megan has grown up seeing how much we put into every element of the business and is very aware of the reality of work.

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Over the years, do you think the business world has become more flexible for parents or is there a lot more to do?

There’s always more to do. But I think it has become more flexible and there is more awareness now - the pandemic was a big catalyst for that.

If you are at home on a Teams call and the kids are there, the pets are there, people are in their home environment, it does build understanding of the person and empathy.

I think we are a little bit more European now in that respect, a bit more ‘love me, love my family.’

What is the number one piece of advice would you give to mums considering running their own business?

I would say that pretty much every ‘disaster’ which happens, and they will happen, isn’t as bad as it seems at first. You will find a solution and forget about it a week later.

Also, when you are running a business it’s the employees which help make it a success too.

It’s so important to have a great team around you and that doesn’t mean a team of experts, you need people of all different ages and stages of their careers for a varied input.

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Would you encourage Megan to follow in your footsteps if she wanted to get into business?

Meg actually wants to be a lawyer already.

But she wants to do it through a degree apprenticeship, because she wants to get stuck into the world of work.?