I ditched my sales job for childminding. I make £65k and save £20k on childcare

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.

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 saves up to £1,700 a month in childcare for her own son. She takes around three weeks of paid holiday a year, which she advises her families of in advance, but she isn’t paid if she has to close unexpectedly for other reasons.

“The initial year was hard, but I’m really lucky I now have a profitable, successful business. Experiencing the corporate world of sales and marketing has really aided how I budget and I run my business. But that doesn’t happen overnight. It takes investment and work to get to that level,” says Johanne.

“Yes, I am on a slightly lower salary point, but my work-life balance and seeing my children, and being here, by far outweighs that, because being able to pick them up from school is something that in five years time I won’t be able to do – those things are short lived.”

From children’s law to childminding

A family law solicitor for 16 years, Andrea Latham was promoted quickly early on in her career and extended her qualifications to become an accredited specialist in private children’s law, and in negotiating complex financial agreements for separating couples.

Andrea was successful and well-paid, so it came as a shock to her colleagues when she made the decision last year to leave the industry – and retrain as an in-home childminder. Despite the money and prestige of a legal career, the long hours and high expectations were proving incompatible with raising three young children.

“Even with a part-time contract, I found I was still working early mornings, late nights, most nights of the week, so it was close to working full-time hours,” says Andrea, who is based in Warrington, in the North West.

“That was for me to meet client expectations, and deadlines that I imposed on myself to make sure I was giving my clients the absolute best service that I could. My husband is a teacher, so he can’t be flexible with his hours. With one child at school, one at preschool, and my youngest then being 12 months old, it just didn’t work.”

By the time she paid nursery and wraparound childcare fees for all three children, Andrea came to the conclusion that her lucrative law career had to be put to one side. Fascinated by child development, Andrea became a childminder last year with Tiney,

Andrea completed the training part-time over three months, and opened her in-home nursery in September 2023, using the large playroom that had already been purpose built for her own three children. Andrea’s nursery is open term-time only, so means she’s available for her family in the school holidays. Her youngest, now two, is part of the childminding group, and her older children join them after school.

She’s taken a small hit financially, but says the benefits outweigh that, and it hasn’t affected the family’s quality of life.

“It’s worth it, to be able to spend that time with my own children. It makes a massive difference. I had a 45 minute commute before and I had to register my older two children in a nursery close to work, so they used to do the commute with me,” says Andrea.

“We were getting home at 6.30pm, then you’ve got a lot to fit in with homework, dinner, and bedtime, so I’m very happy doing what I’m doing now.”

For childminders like Andrea, being part of Tiney’s network rather than registering with Ofsted on her own gave her the confidence to make the jump.

“I’ve never been self-employed before. They provided all the guidance that I needed in terms of setting up my own business, and they take a lot of the stress away. I used to have a secretary or paralegal support, and I feel like they’ve stepped into that role, as they deal with all the billing and marketing support,” she says.

But spreading the love isn’t always easy

But becoming a childminder to make money while taking care of your own child isn’t always an easy solution. Rebecca Olaleye was once the head drama teacher at a top secondary school, but having a 13-year-old and two-year-old, coupled with a lack of nursery spaces, and rising prices, also had her reconsidering her career path. After retraining with Tiney, she opened her nursery in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, last September.

While Rebecca did save on nursery fees by having her daughter in the group, she hadn’t anticipated how difficult it could be to divide her attention between her and the other children.

“My youngest has had to see me giving other children hugs. For someone who’s still growing and becoming a little person, seeing that Mommy’s not completely available just to me is hard,” says Rebecca.

“She’s had to share her toys, and make compromises, but there are times when I have to go to other children before I can go to her. It’s been hard accepting that, and every day when a new scenario happens, you have to just learn from it.”

It’s one of the reasons Rebecca is considering returning to teaching part-time, along with the fact that she does earn significantly more money doing that. The shortfall has meant her family hasn’t been able to go on as many holidays, and saving has been more challenging. She does, however, plan to still offer childminding services in school holidays, and on evenings and weekends.

As a new opportunity for other parents wanting to better balance work and family life, Rebecca says she would still recommend becoming a childminder.

“As long as their mind is not just on money,” says Rebecca. “My intention was to be able to prioritise my own child, which was why I stopped working as a teacher in the first place. Then I wanted to help other people’s children, while helping my own child.”

Can career changers solve the childcare crisis?

New childminders could be the answer to the country’s shortage of nursery workers. The Government has admitted it needs to recruit 40,000 early years educators to deliver its expanded childcare funding scheme, which means parents of all children under five will be able to claim 30 free hours a week from September 2025.

Yet Tiney says it’s bucking the trend, registering 537 new childminders last year, and creating 5,384 childcare spaces. It’s noticing a growing number of women around the UK are leaving office jobs to embark on a new career as childminders.

“Despite being unfairly seen as an ‘old fashioned’ industry, women are moving from City jobs, teaching, hospitality, consulting and other fields to start childminding businesses at home,” says Brett Wigdortz, Tiney’s co-founder and CEO.

“By retraining, these women are able to launch successful businesses, and often solve their own childcare issues as a result, as well as providing more high-quality childcare places for local parents.”