How have you been since we last spoke to you?
Very well thank you. Can’t believe it’s been a year since the awards!
Are you still working hard to juggle your career commitments and spend valuable time with your family?
Yes, very much so. I’m starting to work a bit more flexibly now, and as my son is now in his toddler years, getting out more is becoming more and more important.
It’s never that straight forward though so over the last year I’ve focused on having some proper time away too. Seeing a change of scenery and getting a bit of R&R is so important.
Have you taken on any challenges or set new goals for yourself over the past year?
I wanted to double DaddiLife’s site traffic and start creating some campaigns that would really make a mark and difference for dads.
Are there any milestones you’ve achieved over the year, either at home or work?
Yes! In relation to the above goals, we’ve nearly tripled site traffic and have had the honour of working with amazing brands like Sudocrem on our ‘Play More Month’ campaign. This is after finding out that children on average are spending around 45 hours per week in front of a screen, but only 5 hours playing outdoors. The campaign was aimed at changing that and it was so successful that even the CEO of Barnardo’s contributed a piece to it!
We’ve also started to focus on more lighthearted and fun elements of our content too. Some examples include talking about those all-important dad gadgets or how to make slime for endless fun with the family!
Your website already had a huge following, have you noticed an increased awareness around Working Dads over the past year or any particular trends you want to highlight?
Definitely. We’ve had the privilege of working with Working Families,Working Mums and others to improve the focus on this particular area.
We’ve also interviewed Rob Bravo from Talking Talent after finding out that 72% of working dads feel close to having a burnout every single day!
There’s going to be even more of this that we focus on next year. We want to do our bit to help dads going through that same tension.
Through DaddiLife, do you receive feedback from other dads inspired to become more like yourself and be more involved with their home life?
I see and hear from more and more dads everyday – not always with great stories to tell. Some just want help and advice which I’m happy to do.
Truthfully, it’s harder than ever to have that balance. Work pressures are huge for dads all over the country, and with living standards essentially not having improved for best part of 2 decades, I see DaddiLife’s role as helping dads along the journey. This is especially true for times when things aren’t that easy and where dads may feel they need to be smarter or more creative in what resources they have available.
How has the DaddiLife developed since winning your award, and what is the next focus for DaddiLife?
We had a site make-over a few months ago, so we could bring out more content and make it more accessible for our viewers. We’ve also been busy building our partnerships with the likes of Working Mums, where we focused on the subject of Shared Parental Leave. We had parents who did and didn’t take shared parental leave to talk through their own experiences.
It’s certainly been a busy time, and we’re going to concentrate on that even more over the next year.
Did winning the SuperAchievers award benefit you in any way? If it did, how so?
Definitely! It was the first award we’ve ever won, which was not only nice, but gave us the platform where other organisations could start to engage with us about the work we are doing and how they could also bring the modern-day dad voice to life. I can’t thank you guys enough!
