
Ever since I became a small business I have had a new love and appreciation for other small businesses. It’s true what that age-old quote says on Pinterest: every time you order from a small business, a seller who has spent years developing their craft into a trade does a happy dance. They – we – really do!!

First impressions of someone you follow online can be weird. I find it’s often split into two camps: you think, yep, you’re the exact same person I see on my phone every day, which I always think is quite a comforting realisation. Or you’re baffled at the difference between the on-screen personality and their real-life counterpart.

My barnet and I have been through the mill together these last few years, long before Beauty Pie haircare arrived on the scene. It started falling out two and a half years previously – most probably because of an incredibly stressful time – and the experience of losing so much of my hair was, quite frankly, harrowing.

“What other people think of me is none of my business” is a mantra I adopted a couple of years ago. I’d been lucky that, in my career of writing a blog and newspaper column, the negativity aimed towards me had been kept to a minimum, but for some reason, as I began being more vocal about my journey out of the doldrums to happiness, the trolls became more vocal, too.

Cat Sims, AKA Not So Smug Now, Is an honest-talking breath of Instagram fresh air whom I’ve admired online for a good long while. Writing about family life with two daughters and a musician husband, Jimmy, since 2014, Cat’s online presence has become a place of support and solidarity for her close-knit community of mothers.