Here's a plot twist for you: Ashley Chang built a business for working parents before she was a parent herself.

Ashley is the founder of Sundays — an executive assistant service that pairs working families with (mostly) mum-run support, both at work and at home. She spent years deep in the research, talking to exhausted parents, watching the drop-off that happens the second ambition meets a baby. Then she had her own son, four months before we recorded this and got to test every assumption on herself in real time.

I loved this one. It's rare to talk to someone who studied the juggle or parenthood from the outside and then lived it from the inside.

We get into:

- Why she scrapped her plan to build an app and built a team of humans instead, because parents didn't need another system, they needed capacity

- The "make impact vs. save your life" framework her husband uses, and how she's learned to slide up and down that scale instead of picking a lane forever

- What actually changed for her once she had her son – it wasn’t a big philosophical shift, just a much harder line around what's worth her time at work

- Taking two months fully off her own company and having to trust her team to run it without her

- The coaching question that cracked her open before maternity leave

- Why she went into leave trying to just be present, instead of chasing another goal to hit

There's a line in here about how the messaging we get is that having a baby derails your career for years — wait until they're at school/secondary school/the kids have left home. Ashley's four months in and already proving it doesn't have to be that way. Not because it's easy, because she's decided she gets to choose.

If you're in the season where you're trying to work out how much of you gets to stay you and chase your own career goals while you're also somebody's whole world, this episode is for you.

You've Had a Baby, Not a Lobotomy is an independent podcast, produced by Decibel Creative.

Welcome to You've Had a Baby, Not a Lobotomy, with me, Samantha Murrell. This is a podcast where we disrupt the narratives around what it means to be a good mother. No experts, no tips and tricks, no textbooks, and no judgement. We're all navigating motherhood alongside everything else happening in our own lives. So consider this your invitation to question everything that you've been told about motherhood and then do it your own damn way.

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of You've Had a Baby, Not a Lobotomy podcast. This episode is with Ashley Chang. Ashley is the founder of Sundays, and they provide executive assistance to working families. This interview was brilliant with Ashley, and I really found it interesting because she actually started her business before she became a mum herself. And it was interesting to hear how working with parents and working with other mothers influenced her own decisions on motherhood and then going back to work, and also how she might find motherhood. And obviously until we've experienced it and gone through it, we don't exactly know how it's going to be. But I found it really interesting that she was working with parents before she became a parent herself. And she also references the influence of her own mother on founding her business, and how she wanted to mother herself. So I'm sure you're going to enjoy this episode and I'd love to hear your thoughts. Let's get into it.

Samantha: Ashley, talk about your story of building Sundays — from before you were a parent, to becoming a parent yourself, having maternity leave, and then coming back to work after maternity leave. Thank you for coming and sharing with us.

Ashley: Thank you so much for having me, Samantha. So I'm Ashley. I am co-founder and CEO of Sundays, and Sundays is an executive assistant service for working parents. We're about two years old now, and it's really been a journey to get here. I also just had my first child — he's almost four months old now. So I'm kind of going through a company-starting journey and a parenthood journey simultaneously. I've said a lot to learn from both of those.

Just a little bit more about Sundays: I started it by doing a ton of research with all of the parents that I knew who were trying to balance family and work. And every person I talked to just told me how they didn't have enough time in the day. Originally, with a tech background having built a bunch of apps, I thought I was going to build an app that would solve this problem for families. But the more people I talked to, the more it became clear — these are really smart people, they don't need a new app, they can figure out systems, but there just is too much going on for parents. So what we do today is we have a team, mostly moms, who need flexible work, and we bring them onto our team as executive assistants. Then we pair them with families that we support, both at work and at home. At home we'll do a lot of meal planning, camp planning, things like that. And we'll often also support people who are starting their own businesses or consultancies — blending those two long to-do lists together.

Samantha: That's great. And I love your story of what inspired you to start Sundays — it was your mum, wasn't it?

Ashley: Yeah. As I mentioned, I just had my first son. The experience itself is new to me, but my mom was a computer scientist in the eighties, and she had a really exciting early trajectory to her career. But then when she started having kids, felt like there really wasn't support for doing both family and work, and she decided to stay home with us — which I'm super grateful for. But I also know that she missed out on a little bit of personal fulfilment outside the home. And I feel like the world also just missed out on, especially moms, being able to contribute and choose so many things they could accomplish outside the home too. Then when I entered the same tech industry twenty years later, I saw that this is still a huge issue. A lot of women enter, and in the first few years of their careers are doing some of the best work at the company. But then when they have kids, they really take on a lot of the burden of parenthood, and you see a really sharp drop-off when you get to those executive levels.

Samantha: That's really interesting that you started this company as a non-parent yourself, and actually saw the hurdles that parents had to go through and the time constraints. Talk me through that — were you forward-thinking about whether you'd become a parent yourself, and what you wanted? Just talk to me about that entrance into parenthood for you — that journey into becoming a mother, and the decisions behind that.

Ashley: Yeah, I mean, some of it was definitely prep for myself. I'm a very type-A person, and I think I really wanted to have both — the career and the family — and thought, what is that going to take for me? So the research with all of those parents was really helpful. And I think the best thing I learned out of all of that was that it's just really hard for everyone. When you look from the outside, or on Instagram, it looks like everybody has it put together, and that's just not the case for like 99% of people. So that's the really good perspective for me going into parenthood myself — that it's just hard, and it's a big learning journey.

And then, yeah — we were talking about trust a little bit just before we started recording, and I think that was really interesting for me. There was a period where I was thinking about it and planning tactically — okay, what's my maternity leave plan going to look like, who's going to take on what — but I still had this mental block, I think I was just trying to protect myself. I was like, it might not happen, things might not work out. And then it wasn't until the moment I actually had the baby, and they put the baby on my chest, and I was like, oh my God, there's actually a baby here. I don't know if that's a common thing other parents experience, but that was mine, very first experience.

Samantha: We're often surrounded by friends who've had children, or maybe some idea of what it's like to become a parent. But you specifically interviewed and did lots of research with parents about becoming a parent. So what for you were the biggest things that came out of that — in terms of how you thought becoming a mother would be, from all the research and work you've done, versus actually becoming a mother yourself? What have been the biggest things you've seen, and the changes?

Ashley: Yeah, it's really interesting. I'm surrounded by parents all the time — our customers are all parents who generally are trying to lead pretty ambitious careers and are super busy. And then we also have a whole team of parents making different choices about what's important to them in terms of flexibility. I see the whole spectrum of how people are approaching work and parenthood.

I think what I found is that there's this spectrum, and you might move at different points in your career. Maybe for one year, career is really important, and things are a bit more settled on the family side. Or maybe this year you're having a new baby, and career takes a bit less priority. One big thing I've learned is that it's not always the same year over year. My husband likes to reference this framework — one side of the spectrum is "making impact," and the other is "save your life" — and sometimes you're moving between those two, but you just want to be honest with yourself about where you are. So for the past few months, I've really been on the "save your life" side — I've been spending as much time with my baby as I can, being present with him. That also meant I took two full months completely off work, even though it's my company, and I trusted my colleagues to run it for me — but that meant I wasn't there trying to make an impact in that way during that time. Now I'm rotating a little bit back towards the centre.

Samantha: That's a really interesting way to look at it — you're moving up and down that scale in different things at different times. And that's the messaging we get, isn't it — that you have a baby and your career is ruined, very strong messaging that you're going to be completely derailed, and years and years are going to go by and you can't do anything until your kids go back to school, or even secondary school, or even until they've left home. And actually the reality can be very, very different to that. Already, so early on, it looks like you've started to navigate this in a way that works for you and your family — looking at it from a place of, okay, at the moment I'm veering towards "save your life," and then maybe going towards more impact, and you can slide up and down that scale.

Ashley: Yeah, I think even within the same day you can move between those things. That's one thing that's been interesting — I don't have as much experience as all the people I work with, but just the transitions of, okay, I'm going to be really focused on work for this block of hours, and then I'm going to spend this next block being really present. That's something I want to be able to do, but it definitely takes some work to make those transitions.

Samantha: I love the way you describe that, because it's this idea that you have to be either all-focused at work or all-focused at home. And actually, showing that women can have what we'd call high-flying careers — I don't necessarily like that term, but just to give an idea — and grow a business, hasn't been possible for a very long period of time. I think often we've seen women who've done this either don't have children, or we're told it has a negative impact on their family life, and they're having to almost choose between the two. And actually what you've just described is a really good example of, within the day, there are times when you're moving in and out of different priorities in your life, and that's you creating the home and work life that you want, and that balance.

That's the teaching of my work — that we get to decide. Nobody else can tell us what the best way to do it is. We often just go along on our life and follow this track, and actually you can go, that's not quite what I want, and it's about recalibrating that and really digging deep and connecting into what's right for us. So I'm interested to know — in terms of how you think about your business, your work and your career, is there much difference in how you think about it now compared to before you had your son? He's only four months old, but have you seen any shifts for you?

Ashley: Yeah, that's a great question. I think I'm just thinking a lot more about time — instead of time in the individual day, having harder boundaries of when I want to switch from work to family, or vice versa. And when I am at work, what can I do that is actually the best use of my time? I'm a person who loves organising things, or making a document look really good, but that's not really a great use of my time in general. So I'm trying to be a lot more focused with my time while I'm at work, doing things that are a good use of my energy and brain power, rather than trying to be the person who does everything.

I'm really lucky to be able to do that — the company also grew a bit before I had the baby, so I was able to have other people take ownership over different areas. It was interesting — when I got pregnant, I was doing almost everything, and over the course of nine months I was able to bring on two or three people who took on a lot of the work I'd been doing. So now I'm able to be more focused on what I'm actually uniquely good at, and spend more time doing that. I don't always get it right, but I keep trying.

I also think about what time horizon is important to me. For example, in the business, we set new sales goals for the year, and I could spend an extra hour working every day and potentially reach our sales goals faster. But if that's not actually the most important thing to me — if it takes six more months instead — is that actually a big issue, or is that fine in the scheme of things? It doesn't mean I don't want those things anymore. I still want them. It's just that maybe I don't need them as urgently, or I'm not willing to make the trade-off of skipping time with my baby.

Samantha: Absolutely. And I think when you have that ability to choose for yourself — that freedom of choice — it really helps, doesn't it? Because you can say, well, I get to choose what's important. Yes, I'd like my company to grow quicker, but actually I'm going to look back and be really glad I spent that extra time with my son rather than more time in the office. And again, if somebody wishes to do it a different way, I always say this is about individual choice, because when we don't get to choose, that's when it becomes restrictive. And it sounds like you're doing that really beautifully already, and that you've set yourself up really well for a long working career that you can be fulfilled in alongside having your baby — and everyone benefits, don't they?

That's really lovely to hear. I'm interested to know — as a woman building your own business, there are probably some cultural differences in the UK compared to the US and elsewhere. For example, a typical maternity leave in the UK, if you work for an organisation, is twelve months. I appreciate you have your own business and work for yourself, and I know maternity leave in the States is a very different matter — culturally there will be differences anyway. But I'm just interested to hear the comments, advice, or anything from family members or friends about your decisions on how you've done this, in terms of coming back to work at this period of time, because I think everyone often has an opinion on everything, so I'm just interested to hear how that's gone for you.

Ashley: Yeah, good question. It's interesting — in the US, I think if I'd been working at some of my previous jobs, I probably would have gotten six months of maternity leave. I ended up taking two months fully off, and another month where I worked part-time, and that felt like the maximum time I could take. I really wanted more time away, but I needed to come back to make sure the business was okay — and it was, I'm so proud of my team. But when I was going on leave, people had all different types of opinions. Some people were like, oh, the baby sleeps all the time in the beginning so you'll have so much free time, and others were like the opposite — it's going to be so bad, you'll be so tired, it'll be the worst few weeks of your life. For me, it was somewhere in the middle — there's beauty to it, but it also was really hard.

I think what was most useful for me going into leave — and what I hadn't done when I was prepping — was that I'd made this really detailed plan for how the business would run, but I hadn't actually taken the time to pause and think about what I actually wanted from this time off. What did I want it to feel like? How did I want to feel, how did I want to be, taking advantage of this period? I ended up doing a coaching session with someone who asked me those questions, and I was like, wow, I hadn't thought about that before — and it ended up being really powerful for me. What I realised I actually wanted from leave was to be really present. I'm always a person who's goal-oriented, chasing the next thing, but going into leave I decided to take a different approach — just try to be present in this time, not try to achieve anything, get to know this baby, and hopefully heal myself. I think that ended up being really useful — I went in and I'm really happy with how I spent my time, having done that thinking ahead of time about what I really wanted it to be like.

Samantha: I love that — some interesting questions there for you to think about, and it sounds like it was really profound for you to consider them. So I suppose that leads me into my last question — it might be a similar answer — what would you tell your former self, just before you were about to have your baby? Obviously you're four months into your journey now, and this answer may change as you go through motherhood, and that's completely normal, but I'm interested to know what you'd tell your former self, just before you'd had the baby — advice, or vision, or anything.

Ashley: It's a good question. I think my hard, tactical advice is that it gets a lot better at six to eight weeks, because then the baby is actually engaging with you, which is way more fun. Right now is a super fun time. The first few weeks are different — I thought they were still fun, but it's an interesting period to go through.

But I also think there's so much growth in it, and allowing yourself to change and learn, knowing that you're not going to be the same person after this experience, is really valuable. And your partner is probably not going to be the same person after their experience either. Just leaving space to allow for that change, and then to reflect on it and see how you've grown — because it will be crazy how much you've grown in a short period of time — and then seeing how that aligns with who you think you want to be, and how you might want to evolve from there.

Samantha: That's lovely. Thank you so much, Ashley. You've been a fabulous guest, and I'm excited to see what's coming up for Sundays, and for you as a mum — so much beautiful time ahead. Thank you again.

Ashley: Thank you so much, Samantha.

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Thank you for listening to this episode. If anything really resonated with you, I'd love to hear from you. You can leave a comment if you're listening on Spotify, or come and find me in my DMs on Instagram — you'll find everything you need to connect with me in the show notes. And if you're looking for more structured support as you navigate motherhood, identity, or returning to work, you can find more about how I can support you through these seasons of life there too. Do subscribe to this podcast to help us reach more women who need to hear these conversations, and of course a five-star rating doesn't go amiss either.

You've been listening to You've Had a Baby, Not a Lobotomy, with me, Samantha Murrell. This is an independent podcast produced by Decibel Creative.