How I got here
There was a point where I was doing everything and nothing well. I was a working mum of two, supposed to be part time, but the job had other ideas. Messages at 10pm, emails on days off. The kind of creep that happens so gradually you don't notice until you're sitting at dinner physically present but completely somewhere else.
Family stuff was happening in the background. Big stuff. And I was trying to hold work, and motherhood, and marriage, and friendship all at the same time and never feeling like I was doing any of it well.
So I made a decision that scared me and freed me in equal measure. I stopped.
I took 12 months off to just be present and to focus on my family. We packed up and moved back to Melbourne. New house, new schools, sold one, built something new somewhere familiar.
And somewhere in the middle of all of it I started doing something that kept my brain ticking.
I started learning all about AI and automation. Courses, YouTube, late nights learning just because I wanted to understand what was possible. And as I started applying what I was learning I realised what a difference it could make, not just to businesses, but to real life. To our family. To the invisible mental load that nobody talks about but everyone carries.
And I noticed something. When the right structure is in place, things stop living only in your head. They start happening without you. At home, that meant my husband knowing the library book was due on Tuesday without me having to remember it, track it, and remind him. In a business, it means your clients get followed up, your invoices go out, and your onboarding runs without you driving every single step. That is what good systems actually do. They distribute the load.
I'd spent ten years in corporate operations at some of Australia's largest financial services firms, building systems that helped businesses see clearly and move efficiently. Then five years as the operational right hand to a senior executive, where I saw up close what it costs when a business has no foundations underneath it, and what changes when it does.
But it took stepping back as a working mum to understand what systems are actually for. It's not about squeezing more into the day. It's about building something that runs properly so you get your time back.
About removing yourself as the single point of knowledge in your own business so that things can run smoothly alongside you, instead of depending on you remembering it, knowing it, or being available for every question.
That's why I started Simple Solutions Studio.
Because the goal was never a perfect system.
The goal was always a life that feels like yours again.