Our next featured woman on the Women Making Work Work Series is Bronwen Gray who has found a combination of freelancing and running a network marketing business to be her way of making flexible work work for her family.

You can connect with Bronwen on social media here:

About You

With 2 children now in secondary school there are lots of changes to our family routine. I miss the school gate catch ups, but it is rather exciting to be thinking a little more about myself and my wants and needs! I’m a guilty feminist because I work my career around my family and home life! Over the last 10 years I have become a wellness cheerleader working with my own network marketing business. I also mentor consultants in wellness and take on individual projects and collaborations in London.

How do you make work work for you?

Using my city acquired sales & account management skills I have primarily worked with individuals but increasingly am freelancing on a few corporate projects. Recently I have been working in my old financial services field but also in the charity sector (corporate fundraising). Everything revolves around my flexible Arbonne ‘business in a box’ which also allows me to justify prioritising MY health and well-being as an end user(tester?!) of the products I recommend.

Why did you start your business/ start working on a freelance basis?

The four day a week ‘part time’ trap I got stuck in 15 years ago after having my babies was in many ways the worst of both worlds but as much flexibility as I could get at the time & I wasn’t in a position to stop earning or learning but didn’t have my OWN business idea to launch. So when I discovered Arbonne it seemed worth a go and meant, for me, being a stay at home mum but still paying my own way (and at the very least not giving up on quality skincare which I could now shop at discount AND justify as a business expense!).

Choosing how to spend my time – putting the things I want to in the diary first and then working my work around them – I have done my time on ALL the school assemblies and really do treasure those moments now both my children are at secondary school.

What isn’t so great about working for yourself?

Trying to fit it all in – sometimes the sum of the parts and all the different hats I wear adds up to more than 100% but I am getting better at learning to say no to requests/offers/suggestions & focus my time more effectively. The downside to working from home/for yourself is when people seem to think you need ideas on what to do to fill your time & learning to ignore these/not feel guilty when you DO give yourself some timeout (at the Lido for example!)

How do you balance your personal life with your working life?

I am still learning to juggle…(see above!)

If you are selling a product or service tell us about your favourite…

I LOVE a serum to super charge my skincare and now wouldn’t be without mine – Arbonne offers 3 different types so am happy to help with recommendations – they have just added a serum and body lotion so am now seeing if this will work wonders on my mum tum…