Entrepreneur and Birth Beat founder, Edwina Sharrock OAM, is living proof you don’t need a business background to start an award-winning business with global appeal.

It may seem counterintuitive for an experienced midwife to start a birth support business because she felt unprepared during her own first pregnancy, but as health professional turned entrepreneur Edwina Sharrock OAM knows, some of the best commercial ideas stem from a deep desire to offer others a smoother ride. 

Sharrock’s online platform Birth Beat, which she launched in 2013, is devoted to providing evidence-based pre- and post-natal care to all new parents, regardless of where they live. “The closure of nearly half the country’s maternity wards has drastically reduced Australians’ access to quality childbirth classes,” mother-of-two Sharrock says. 

The majority of these closures were in regional and remote Australia, including her own town of Tamworth in rural New South Wales. “Birth Beat provides a solution to that problem through an accessible, fun and comprehensive online course with all the information expectant mothers and their partners need.”

Fast forward to today and the business, launched after a 12-week intensive sling-shot business accelerator program backed by health insurer HCF, is now one of Australia’s leading childbirth educators. 

While Sharrock has attracted awards and investor interest in the years since Birth Beat’s inception – including a $200,000 investment offer after she appeared on television show Shark Tank – perhaps the greatest testament to the CEO’s tenacious attitude is her selection as a finalist for the 2021 Cartier Initiative, an annual international program that aims to drive change by empowering female impact entrepreneurs. Not only was Sharrock one of just 24 finalists from 1200 global applicants, but she’s the only Australian to make the final list this year. Here she shares explains her journey from public health nurse to award-winning company boss.

Words: Rachel Sharp

We’d love to start back at the beginning, almost a decade ago when you founded Birth Beat. While you didn’t take things online until about five years after that, you were still way ahead of the game before COVID forced everyone there. Where did your digital foresight come from?

Like so many startups by women, mine started through frustration of not having access to something myself. Our local maternity unit closed its doors when I was 38 weeks pregnant, and even though I was still able to birth at the public hospital, it was just that impact on the community that resonated with me.

I've never had a clear plan or strategy with the business. People forget I didn't come from any sort of business background – I come out of 20 years of public health. I had a two and a four-year-old and I was teaching on the weekends, so [moving online] was a matter of practicality and sanity. Plus, we started to have people travel very long distances to come to our classes because they couldn’t find anything closer. We wrote a business plan, entered it in the Commonwealth Bank Innovation Award and won. That was the beginning of believing I could create an online platform that's engaging and fun, and that creates a community.

I didn't want it to be some static Zoom product – that's terrible online childbirth education. Ours is engaging and we get people moving, because that's what makes childbirth education and adult education fun. Then we follow it up with the community, so everyone can talk to each other, share their experiences. We've added a weekly live Q&A where you can ask your midwife any question and get it answered as opposed to Dr Googling. 

It’s interesting that, despite being a midwife with extensive knowledge and experience, you still felt you needed more support during your first pregnancy. Can you explain that more?

There are two points here. One is that I didn't let my husband be engaged, and I underestimated the role of a support person. It can be scary to your support person if they don't know what to expect. I'm highly competitive and I remember thinking, ‘I'm going to birth like a boss’ but what I’ve learned since then is you don't win or fail at birth. It’s about surrendering. It's about understanding how your body works, how your mind is related to your body.

I came at birth for my first child with a clinical approach. I did every birth course, every birth class, I was quite obsessed at that stage. And I'd watch birth courses led by midwives and obstetricians and physios and things and they'd be like, "And then you push and then the baby's born and then you have a baby." I was like, "You just missed some really important parts there." They don't teach you [about all the unpleasant real parts], but you need to be real and then it takes away the fear. I teach the dads what to do if they feel fear. It's practical, but you need to know these things. 

One thing we've found with a lot of the women in our community who’ve launched businesses is that it can be really challenging knowing how to advocate for yourself. What’s your advice when it comes to putting yourself out there as an entrepreneur?

I really believe in investing in you, and I'm always looking out for the personal and professional development. I've done a lot of courses, work with business coaches and leadership programs. You're the captain of the ship. If you're not firing on all cylinders, you can't expect your business to. This is totally a journey, and I think women are very good at prioritising everything else before us. I'm not saying that I've mastered it, but I think investing in you is probably the best thing that you can do for your business. A lot of us go, ‘oh, that seems expensive’ or ‘I'm going to prioritise the money to somewhere else in the business’. Also, women are the worst at expecting women to be able to do things for free.

You're based in Tamworth but operating what’s now a huge national business. Is there anything you must do differently working out of a more regional area and what are the benefits?

I pay much less rent. That narrative around country folk is true. We take five minutes to do a school drop-off, the post office is across the road, I walk to get my favorite coffee, I have lunch with my husband. I park the car in the morning and don't drive again all day. I’m in a co-working space full of business founders and everyone is awesome and loves what they do. They come to work enthused. I worked for 20 years in public health, and it wasn't unusual to be hearing ‘is it home time yet?’ at 10 o'clock in the morning. That starts to get you down, whereas in our office it's like, ‘Oh my God, it's five o'clock. Geez, the day flew by. What a great day’. 

You've been present at hundreds and hundreds of births. How does what you've seen drive you to ensure the opportunity for birth education is accessible for everyone? Why is it so important to you?

Because when we talk about birth education, people underestimate what we're teaching. People think that as birth educators, our job is to prepare you for the birth. Whereas I see it as an opportunity to prepare you to learn how to communicate with your partner, prepare you to have an empowering experience that prepares you for your parenting journey. I don't think you can underestimate how the birth experience can impact your regular relationship with your partner and your mental health and wellbeing. I really love supporting the partners or the support people because they're being born as a parent as well.

Then there’s all the practical things. I meet so many women who have incontinence after birthing their baby, and don't know that's not normal. They don’t have any community or support group that’s going to say, ‘you don't have to put up with that or hemorrhoids or pain’. It’s my job is to educate people around those things. Those things can really impact your joy and your joy of life and parenting and your partner and your sexuality. 

You describe your role as CEO is basically 'chief everything officer'. How do you switch off from it all?

I consciously work on it. I consciously work on turning my phone off or I read something or listen to a podcast. My priorities are my family, my friends, work, and my health really, which is fitness and eating well and not drinking [too much] wine. Trying to have all of those going at the same time is just going to end up in disaster.

I like to get up and have a walk each morning and I try not to beat myself up anymore. I've got a lot of inner monologues going on, but I try and talk to her often. She's often not kind to me, but I acknowledge ‘You're not being kind to me. We don't do this anymore’. Having an incredibly supportive husband and family does help. I've got a lot of single mums in the Birth Beat community and I just bow to them.

A large part of what Birth Beat does now is partner with corporates. Can you tell us more about that element of the business and why it’s needed?

Three years ago, when I started to speak to corporate organisations, when women were going on to their parental leave or their partners were going onto their parental leave, large corporates were still taking their mobile and their computer off them because they didn’t expect them to come back. In 2017, the ABS reported that 41 percent of women didn't return to their place of work within 12 months of having their first baby. How can we address the [gender pay gap if] half of the women are not going back to work? And there are lot of different reasons, but a big reason is lack of family-friendly, flexible work practices.

Birth Beat really positions itself now with these corporates because there has been a gap in the market to train executives to look after the mental and physical wellbeing needs of expecting parents. I think probably one of our biggest clients to have signed on for a second year is Salesforce. They’re market leaders in how to look after staff and we fall into their health and wellbeing benefits program.

How does your corporate offering work?

We have customised their end-to-end experience. With Salesforce for example, expecting parents are able to onboard onto the Salesforce Birth Beat co-branded platform. We look after all their childbirth education, prenatal yoga, mindfulness, health and wellbeing, their breastfeeding support, and after they've had the baby, they have 12 months access to the program. Plus, weekly, they get to speak to clinicians. That's the key. It's not a static online program.

We also did a whole lot of research and we found out on average, corporate organisations would give a gift to the value of $150 – so a bottle of champagne, a onesie, and a bunch of flowers. That's it. There’s no ‘we truly value you’ to new mums as they walk out the door to have their baby. We really position ourselves as not just about doing the right thing for expecting parents, but making it a good engagement, recruitment, and retention piece as well for the corporates. 

Mothers are incredibly efficient workers, and it's so sad to see all this incredible talent not return to the workforce because it's just not supportive enough. Obviously, the mothers are losing out, but so are the companies. They're losing out on incredible women. I wanted this to be a bit of a call to action to everyone who's reading, that if you're in a workplace where this isn't currently provided, and where there's not a culture that you feel comfortable going to your boss or your HR manager saying, "I'm expecting a baby", reach out to us and let us help you support that, because we have our full corporate offering up and going now.

For more information, go to birthbeat.com and cartierwomensinitiative.com.