The story & evolution of this space:

This space began in 2010 just after I had my second daughter. At the time I was a stay-at-home Mum to two daughters and I started this blog as a place to record my journey of learning to sew. The first name of my blog was named “Mummas time to create”, and I blogged using the free Blogger platform.

Over the next year, I really found my “blogging voice” and this space developed into my online diary. I shared my journey of being a Mum, wife, new business owner, quilter and sewer.

I launched my Flutter from.Kat – a handmade design brand in 2011.

This led me to move my blog to WordPress, and change my first owned domain name of www.katsoper.com

In 2013 my husband and I moved our family back to my homeland of New Zealand. This led to us purchasing a house, which I then spent many months renovating full-time. It was this, project, and being back home with my family, that saw blogging for me naturally drop in frequency out of share busy-ness.

I carried on my Flutter from.Kat brand for the first 18 months back in NZ, successfully having an online shop and being a somewhat regular at the Wellington Underground Markets.

By mid-2014 I had reached my goal of being a stay-at-home mum while my children were really little and I decided I’d like to go back into the formal workforce.

I found the perfect role for me, working for a local Virtual Assistant (VA) Company. I loved this role – I loved serving clients, and the constant learning curve it provided me. I quickly moved up in the Company from a VA, to a Team Leader, and then to become the Head of Training & Projects. But, while I loved what I did, I missed the freedom I used to have – even though my job was virtual to my clients, I still had to rock up to an office each day for office hours. Whereas, prior to having children, I had had my own business, and the freedom I was used to over the last decade – of being both a stay-at-home-Mum and business owner was absent working for a Company.

So, in December 2015 I launched my own company – Helpful and went back to working for myself, but this time around my family.

For the first 18 months, I worked as a Virtual Business Consultant. Despite overwhelming challenges with my family life (my husband off work for 9 months with a head injury, my Dad extremely unwell with gastric cancer, and me being off work for 2 months with a broken wrist), my business was a success and I earned more than I ever had before.

Life was busy and blogging had dropped off my radar of priorities. I had to re-evaluate what my goals were for this blog – did I wish to keep it public? Or, did I wish to close that chapter?

In 2017 I rebranded my business to become The Helpful Academy, which it still goes by today.

This became my priority between 2017 - 2022, as I grew the business to a handful of customers to hundreds of customers worldwide. In that time I also great my online courses from 0 to over 40, and created my signature Take Flight Business Growth Program.

Here are some stats about The Helpful Academy that I'm proud of...

With the last few years having been spent focusing on business development (not necessarily all by choice - thanks Covid!) I'm ready to bite off the next challenge.

In February 2022 my husband and I have decided to pack our suitcases once again, and head over to the UK.

At this point we don't know how long we'll be going for - it could be 3 months, it could be 9 months, it could be 4 years, or it could be forever!

So, I've decided to dust off my blogging fingers and record this crazy journey.

Welcome to the next chapter...