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Home / Hawkes Bay Today

Mum's business goes global

By Patrick OSullivan
Hawkes Bay Today·
29 Jul, 2014 02:00 AM3 mins to read

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Thanks to savvy web-based technology, Ursula Maidens' businesses are thriving worldwide. Photo / Supplied

Thanks to savvy web-based technology, Ursula Maidens' businesses are thriving worldwide. Photo / Supplied

Ursula Maidens knows first-hand the demands of parenthood while making a living.

She and husband Peter have three children aged 3 to 7 years and run several successful businesses they started from scratch.

Her husband owns Kauri House Auctions in Havelock North as well as AA Hawke's Bay Removals, but her businesses have gone global.

In 2006, she launched her web-based babysitting and nanny recruitment agency Rock My Baby in Hawke's Bay.

She embraced the franchise model and, with help from local web agency Mogul, rolled out her business nationwide.

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"We moved into Australia through client demand," she said.

"A lot of Australians come over here and use our services, so we thought it would be pretty easy to set up in Australia. But of course, it was quite difficult - a lot harder than you would imagine."

A foothold was established in Sydney and when she advertised for Australian franchisees there were inquiries from Europe.

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"It moved to Switzerland, Israel, the UK but the growth from our Swiss office blew us out of the water. We didn't expect it to take off so quickly.

"We thought we may as well open up to the rest of Europe, because clients were coming into our Swiss office and wanting help in places like Italy and Spain. So we decided to merge the website into the whole of Europe.

"From there, we have added more services to what we were initially doing. We were a childcare recruitment agency over there and clients were looking for household staff, so we launched into our private household division."

She said there were plenty of other similar businesses in the world but the 24/7 web-based booking system set Rock My Baby apart.

"The clients can book a babysitter and confirmation can be made within seconds, as opposed to the traditional that are probably open from 9am to 5pm and you have to pick up the phone. But if your child is sick and you know at 10pm that you will have to go to work, you can just jump online and book.

"Also with the recruitment side of things for nannies, we run a pretty efficient automatic, robust system to get those jobs out to the right people at the right time.

"We quickly get the information to the clients and try and make that process seamless and quick, as opposed to having to wait days or weeks to get the right candidates in front of you," she said.

"The other big key is our candidates have all been through vigorous screening processes - police vetted, reference checked, interviewed. We do a whole lot of online interviewing before we do the face-to-face interviews. We are thorough in the process of getting the right candidates, so when the right job comes up we can get packaged-up candidates to those people."

Her newest business is a Ministry of Education-funded, pre-school home care in partnership with her New Zealand Rock My Baby manager.

Rock My Baby Homebase operates in Auckland and will soon launch in Waikato and Taupo.

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"Our clients were going to our competition, so why not become ministry-funded and licensed and keep our clients with us?"

Her businesses have facilitated a million bookings and she was recently named Best Online or Technology Award winner at the Fly Buys Mumtrepreneur Awards.

The prize is 10,000 points - enough for a family holiday.

"My children are already up on the website trying to spend them."

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